Guest essay by Eric Worrall
More evidence that taxpayer funds are not required for climate research.
UN Environment and Google announce ground-breaking partnership to protect our planet
New York, 16 July 2018 – UN Environment and Google announced today a global partnership that promises to change the way we see our planet. Combining environmental science, big data and unprecedented accessibility, this joint effort aims to expand what the world knows about the impacts of human activity on global ecosystems.
When completed, the platform will leverage Google’s cloud computing and earth observation public catalogs and for the first time enable governments, NGO’s and the public to track specific environment-related development targets with a user-friendly Google front-end.
“We will only be able to solve the biggest environmental challenges of our time if we get the data right,” Head of UN Environment Erik Solheim said. “UN Environment is excited to be partnering with Google, to make sure we have the most sophisticated online tools to track progress, identify priority areas for our action, and bring us one step closer to a sustainable world.”
Too often, when a country seeks to implement real-time environmental action, they find their efforts halted by gaps in critical data needed to direct those actions safely and effectively. Through this partnership, and Google Earth Engine’s analysis and visualization tools, the world can finally begin to fill those gaps, enabling decision makers to better invest in environmental services.
“This partnership announcement builds on a common shared vision between our organizations,” said Rebecca Moore, Director, Google Earth, Earth Engine & Earth Outreach. “We are excited to enable all countries with equal access to the latest technology and information in support of global climate action and sustainable development.”
Long term, the partnership hopes to establish a platform for open-source data and analysis of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As an entry point to development, the partnership launches today with an initial focus on fresh-water ecosystems including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes.
These areas account for 0.01% of the world’s water but provide habitat for almost 10% of the world’s known species and evidence suggests a rapid loss freshwater biodiversity.
Google will periodically produce geospatial maps and data on water-related ecosystems by employing massive parallel cloud computing technology. Satellite imagery and statistics will be generated to assess the extent of change occurring to waterbodies, and made freely accessible to ensure nations have the opportunity to track changes, prevent and reverse ecosystem loss.
Other areas of collaboration include advocacy and capacity building activities as well as the development of partnerships with organizations like the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The partnership was launched during the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in at UN Headquarters in New York, where world leaders are gathering to review of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – a set of clear, measurable goals for global development – as well as best practices and progress towards implementation.
Isn’t this how it should be? Private organisations with an interest in a field of research stepping in with their own money, instead of demanding money from the taxpayer.
I’m open to the idea of government funding for pure research, but Google’s actions surely demonstrate that in a high profile field like climate research there is simply no need for taxpayer involvement, because there are plenty of private individuals and companies with the resources and motivation to provide the required research funding.
Update (EW): Fixed a typo (h/t Clyde Spencer)
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1. First, do no evil.
2. “Other areas of collaboration include advocacy…..”
3. Er…what was that first point again?
How about a Google database of failed climate disaster predictions that people can query online? It could show the predictions, key words, the author(s), their qualifications (or lack thereof), the year of the predictions, the year of the projected adverse effects, geographical location of impacts, source references, links to comments on the predictions, etc.
“Isn’t this how it should be? Private organisations with an interest in a field of research stepping in with their own money, instead of demanding money from the taxpayer.” Don’t bet on it. It sounds like U.N. will give some type of grant money to google which is the tax payer’s dime.
“Google said to be fined record $5 billion by EU over Android, report”
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-said-to-be-fined-record-5-billion-by-eu-over-android
Google is gonna need that grant money…Ouch ! LOL
There is actually a distinction between data and information. Data is a just a bunch of bits that are turned into information by a process and if there are more than one process you can get two or more sets of information from one set of data. And that’s where the problems start.
Here is an example : Data 362436 information:36,24,36
A good real life example is the way temperature data is processed into anomalies
Well, it goes deeper than that. As far as weather data (which in the aggregate becomes “climate” data) goes, “data” SHOULD be the actual readings from the actual instruments. Instead they “cook” this into something that, in the end, simply isn’t “data” anymore. And that’s BEFORE it is “processed” into “anomalies.”
The question to ask, Mr Worrall, is what Google will do with the results of the research.
If you think they will do anything but maximise shareholder returns, you are dumb.
Taxpayer funding gives taxpayers leverage. Google funding does not.
Is taxpayer leverage evil, Mr Worrall?
Do corporations treat humans properly, Mr Worrall?
Or are these fundamental questions too uncomfortable for you??
They could minimize returns I guess.
Define properly. When we have Bernie Sanders bemoaning corporate whatever and the United States cutting the corporate tax rate…
FROM THIS : “Google is supporting climate change deniers”
Earlier this month, Google hosted a $2,500-a-plate fundraiser for one of the world’s most powerful climate change deniers, Senator Jim Inhofe. And just two weeks before that, Google poured $50,000 into the coffers of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank that is also funded by the likes of the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil to put out faux “studies” that are used by policy-makers to deny climate change exists.
TO THIS :
“A global outcry is starting to build now that people see Google moving away from its unofficial corporate motto — “Don’t be evil”. Let’s make sure Google knows that tens of thousands of its own users want it to cut off all support to climate change deniers.
Pretty obvious WHO prevailed !
FICKLE BUNCH OF BASTARDS !
STILL…………IT’S THEIR MONEY …..THEIR CHOICE !
PITY THAT THEY CHOSE “The Religion ” AHEAD OF “The Facts ” !!!
While I am relieved it is not taxpayer money going into this (yet), I still find the whole idea vaguely creepy. No, make that prominently in-your-face creepy. That’s all I need, go to Google Maps to try to plot a trip to the beach, and instead of getting a route I get, “You can’t go to the beach today. It is inundated by sea-level rise because we say it is.” And you look at the Aerial Photo view, and sure nuff the beach is missing. Out of sheer perversity you drive to the beach anyway and find the same beach that was always there, with the same one-legged sandpipers and plenty of overweight sun-worshippers, and everything is the same as it ever was. But Google will be constantly intruding in my every search to tell me it’s not (I don’t use Google directly anymore. I switched to DuckDuckGo a couple years ago).
When the u.n. says it, I hear, “…Global Warming is not showing up in the data, so the data must be wrong…”! Don’t laugh, I have read that statement before! On RealClimate. I can no longer find the quote, but maybe the Wayback miners can help me. It was sometime between August 2008 and probably no later than end of October 2008, I believe I remember going to the right-hand side of the screen, same place WUWT posts links to Sea Ice Pages and Spaceweather.com and etc, they had Posts by Author, and I clicked on the first name I had heard of, and I think it was Gavin Schmidt (so the actual date of his post may have been some time before I went searching for it). About four paragraphs down he made that audacious statement, followed by, “…but don’t worry, we have some people working on that.” If anyone can find it, I’ll even pay a reward. What’s your favorite beer?
I’m afraid I’ll have to go back to using MapQuest (are they still around?).
yes.
https://www.mapquest.com/
UN Environment and Google announce ground-breaking partnership to protect our planet
Wait, what? They’re going to protect our planet? What are they going to do, set up a planetary asteroid defense system? A dust shroud around the earth to protect from gamma-ray bursts? A fleet of interplanetary warships to protect from alien invasions?
Eric, you got it all wrong. Partnering means Google will charge huge sums of money to provide services nobody needs. In fact the first part of partnership will be a discovery process where Google will enlighten UN of how the UN cannot exist without its cloud services. It will be all tax payer money.
I work for a company partnering with Google and they sell their junk very expensive.
I’d put my praise on hold until I was sure what Google was really up to with this….Google + Governments = Scary.
How about Trump and Twitter? Scary to the left, resulting in his election.
Twitter and Trump is interesting. If it was anyone other than Trump, twitter would have banned him long ago (like they have many other conservatives). During the election at first he wasn’t seen as being a serious contender who wasn’t really a conservative, so there was no need to take down his twitter account, once it was clear he might win the GOP nomination his twitter feed was seen as a source of fuel for attacks against him so taking away his account would have been counter productive (the left failed to realize that what they found to be “beyond the pale” in his tweets didn’t play the way they thought it would in flyover country) and now that he’s been elected it wouldn’t look good for twitter to take action against the President of the United States.
…and if they don’t pony up, the EU fine against Google will be doubled.
The EU just fined Google $5 billion on some trumped up anti-trust claim. Serves ’em right to suffer.
With the eventual loss of British money due to Brexit, the EU needs to find money from somewhere. Too bad for Google.
Entertaining — time for popcorn while watching leftist-kooks eat their own.
FFS
“user-friendly Google front-end.”
WHENEVER has google done ANY UI that wasnt screwed up and non intuitive
Oh, I See they have the google earth/engine folks involved
These are probably the worst guys when it comes to supporting users.
Mosher ==> I hate it when I have to agree with you……
I did UI for the early IBM-produced web sites for the Olympic Games and Tennis Grand Slams….interesting work.
GOOGLE considers arrogance a corporate plus.
[ I once surprised some early internet adopter by calling him from IBM International HQ in response to his complaint about some feature that wasn’t working for him……sorted it out in a couple of minutes. I did this over and over for several years — handling our complaints comments — as a hobbyhorse. ]
We once did a special version of BEST for google with 1km resolution for their earth engine
A ton of work and then they shitcanned the entire project and orphaned the work.
Google just got fined $5 billion by the EU
Google’s “progressive” stance on “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change®” is why I now use Duck, Duck, Go exclusively, for all my on-line searches, and why I switched from Chrome back to Firefox as my browser (latest version of FF ver 61.0.1 seems to have fixed the performance/speed issues which vexed earlier versions).
I’ve been a Firefox user for some time. Never liked Chrome anytime I tried it, even without the Google political shenanigans.
Well. Google owes the E.U. $5 Billion for Android shenanigans. This “pledge” will like be another to occupy the Pledge Bucket.
“We will only be able to solve the biggest environmental challenges of our time if we get the data right,” Head of UN Environment Erik Solheim said. “UN Environment is excited to be partnering with Google, to make sure we have the most sophisticated online tools to track progress, identify priority areas for our action, and bring us one step closer to a sustainable world.”
Not that you can’t see it from that pretty transparent statement, but one thing is a guaranteed certainty; when “UN Environment” is “partnering” with ANYONE, the one thing that absolutely WILL NOT happen is that they will “get the data right.” The only “data” you’ll hear about from this unholy partnership is that which fits their preconceived conclusions. Anything else will be “corrected” or suppressed.
“We will only be able to solve the biggest environmental challenges of our time if we get the data right”
Right.
“Too often, when a country seeks to implement real-time environmental action, they find their efforts halted by gaps in critical data.”
Wrong. The data often says they don’t need to worry.
All the more reason to continue to use DuckDuckGo. I wonder if they will use their engineers that told Google managers that renewables was a lost cause in their assessments to be provided to the UN.
This is about climate propganda and Google profits.
It has little to do with science.
Seeing the racks filled with servers and thinking how many 100’s of thousands there are now @ur momisugly google, IBM, Apple, Amazon, et al, all running 24/7 on fossil fueled electricity, it’s obvious why they should attempt a PR effort of saving the planet. If the warmists have a clue, they’d recognize that their theory of CO2 despoliation of the planet better not be true. NB: There are no server farms running on wind or solar. The Cloud runs on fossil genererated electricity.