Google Earth Maps Out a Catastrophic Threat

Who’s that booming baritone talking about the environment? Al Gore stars in a promotional video developed by Google Earth that shows environment degradation via the popular mapping program, a sort of “climate change simulator” of ice-sheet melting and rising sea levels. The promo was made to coincide with the Copenhagen climate conference.  —JCL

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words should we afford Google Earth? Hours can be lost skydiving your way towards your favourite locations. Seeing somewhere you know so well from above provides valuable extra servings of knowledge and perspective.

It’s pleasing, therefore, to see Google announcing on its official blog that it has developed some nifty new features to coincide with the Copenhagen climate conference, now only a matter of weeks away.

In collaboration with the Danish government and others, we are launching a series of Google Earth layers and tours to allow you to explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it. Working with data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we show on Google Earth the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.

To help introduce us all to these features, Google has asked Al Gore – who acts as a “senior advisor” to the company – to provide the commentary on an accompanying video.

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