Google Earth Climate Change Simulator Stars Al Gore (VIDEO)

Al Gore stars in a Google Earth climate simulator video that shows the potential effects of climate change in different emissions scenarios.

The video has been released in time to coincide with the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. Watch the video below and check out the Google Earth site for more video "tours" of the potential impacts of climate change.

WATCH:

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Comments

[JerryAguy]

I don't understand why Al Gore would buy a condo right next to the ocean in San Francisco if he really believed all this catastrophe would happen anytime soon. He does stand to make a lot of money and has made lot's of money from the whole situation. I would think that he may lean to what butters his bread, no "man made catastrophe" no money to his companies and that would make anyone would want their money to grow, he is now very wealthy from all of this. I've listened to both sides but Al does not ACT as if he believes what he's saying.

[fumes]

professor happer @ princeton:
"But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn’t this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models." http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/happer_senate_testimony.html

[ReedYoung]

You're off topic. We're discussing a Google App that educates people about the fact of global warming, not entertaining deniers' talking points. Take it to Americans for Prosperity.
http://www.desmogblog.com/americans-prosperity-history-research-background-funding

[anothergringo]

Um, does anyone else think that the earth is rotating backward (from east to west) in the video?

Hmmm ... Isn't Al Gore the guy that called up a newspaper to tell them that they had published an image of the earth, photographed from space, upside down?

[ReedYoung]

No, I think that any spacecraft moving away from Earth that fast could also move on an arc opposite Earth's orbit, at least that much faster than Earth's orbit. Or possibly, it's a computer simulation.

[Ventoi]

Isn't this the building in that movie with Bill Nye...
where everyone starts to freeze to death for fooling around with scientific principles they don't understand...themselves?

[realpolitic]

Monitors, is there any way you can stop RomeoMD25 from dominating these threads on climate change. He may be paid to post here by some conservative cause, but we are not paid to read him.

[HekmabaJuzimax]

I don't agree with her either, but stopping her (RomeoMD25) from posting is really not what democracy is all aboot.

[realpolitic]

It would be the same if someone just came along and posted advertisements for their personal websites every few posts, it just gets ridiculous. What does taking a common sense action have to do with slowing democracy? If someone is paid by some conservative concern to post here, and he has to be, then that should already be some violation of rules and a reason for monitors to step in!

[ReedYoung]

Please look up RomeoMD25's profile, scan its comments, look at how it FLOODS threads which refer to global warming, and reconsider your position.

They are in response to articles and blog posts which are not posts about uncertainty about global warming, but RomeoMD25, with a few others, turns the DISCUSSIONS into that, preventing adult discussion of WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE FACT OF GLOBAL WARMING which the rest of us would like to have. I agree with realpolitic, and not to speak for him, my own belief is that such behavior constitutes abuse of the comment system. Although any one post may not violate the explicit terms of Huffington Post, RomeoMD25's pattern of behavior certainly contradict its intent, which is to discuss the topic raised in the post above, not digress into arguing the scientific consensus.

[eyepatch]

Scientist around the world agree that
Global Climate Change is a real phenomenon
and only the those on the very fringes
of science attempt to debunk what is
happening to the planet!

You may not like former vice president
Al Gore but the message he brings is
clear! The old ways of doing things
will only leave our children with an
increasing warmer planet which will
raise the sea levels to a point whereas
people living in low laying areas of the world
will have to relocate!

Conversely changing weather patterns will
cause droughts as we are already seeing
throughout equatorial Africa. We as Americans
must do what we can to gain energy independence
and develop clean renewable fuels that will
lower our carbon foot print! The US accounts for
over 30% of the green house gases emitted every year!

If we can fix the ozone layer by switching to different
refrigerants for air conditioning, then we can reduce the
amount of green house gases we emit into the sky annually....

I stand with Al Gore on this issue!

[HekmabaJuzimax]

That doesn't rhyme at all.

[eyepatch]

your attempt at humor about
such a serious subject reflects
poorly upon your personality

[Rudderman]

As we continue to see, there's little point in arguing with global warming deniers. Siting years of scientific studies by everyone from MIT to Woods Hole to NASA, to the USGS, etc is a waste of time. For pete's sake, many actually believe Gore created the entire "hoax" all by himself just to make money. Right, like he needs the money.
For sure, denial (and shortsightedness) doesn't help address the issue. However, the bigger problem in addressing the issue is greed. Big coal and oil among others will pound away (ala the health care industry) like there's no tomorrow (literally). They, their lobbies and denial websites, could care less about the future. It’s all about protecting profits, the planet be damned.

[demrepub]

More made up nonsense from the former VP with the largest carbon footprint in history.

[VPN]

More babbling from a dining room table.

[PWM]

I guess you believe Reagan

Washington Post: "Reagan, during his 1980 campaign, blamed trees for emitting 93 percent of the nation's nitrogen oxide pollution -- giving rise to jokes about 'killer trees.'"

[makeshiftriot]

Global warming isn't real. I don't care what the people who have gone to Ivy League collages and have the knowledge to tell me whats happening in the world say.

Conversation isn't necessary; we should just use like there is no tomorrow.

Obviously that is sarcasm.

It's cool, but its not necessary. I am all for conservation and everything, but really it doesn't need to be everywhere.

[Lemmy]

What we should do is institute a cap and trade bill that will result in crushing energy costs, millions of jobs lost and falling household income. Sounds like a great idea based on a myth!

[Exusian]

Crushing energy costs, millions of jobs lost and falling household income is the real myth.

[makeshiftriot]

Yes. Conservation is oh so horrible.

We won't have to worry about jobs when there's nothing left. So I suppose it works out.

Look. More sarcasm.

[RomeoMD25]

This is why everything about environmentalism is a scam. Can you think of a single good reason to spend $126 billion for the right to emit carbon dioxide when 97% of it comes from nature? The Earth emits CO2 all the time in the form of volcanic activity, the action of the oceans, storing and releasing it. When you exhale six pounds of it every day?

[sizogee]

And since the beginning of the industrial revolution, that 3% contribution from humans has increased the concentration of CO2 in the air by 35%.

[Exusian]

And its clear Romeo has absolutely no grasp of the carbon cycle either.

[Exusian]

To expand:

- Each year world-wide volcanic activity adds less than 1% as much CO2 to the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels does, even in a year with a really large eruption, like Mt Pinatubo in 1991.

- The ocean is a net absorber of CO2, meaning while it both emits and absorbs CO2, each year it absorbs more CO2 than it emits, about 2 gigatons more.

- CO2 from respiration adds zero CO2 to the atmosphere, it merely releases carbon absorbed by the plants that you eat and metabolize for energy back into the atmosphere.

Bottom line:
Human activity, manly the burning of fossil carbon fuels containing carbon that has been locked out of the active carbon cycle, is the cause of the 38% increase in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution.

This is what I mean by "Romeo has absolutely no grasp of the carbon cycle."

[realpolitic]

Just more Romeo spam!!!

[PWM]

Washington Post: "Reagan, during his 1980 campaign, blamed trees for emitting 93 percent of the nation's nitrogen oxide pollution -- giving rise to jokes about 'killer trees.'"

Of course, Reagan was a fruit cake.

[slithers]

if we don't do something now like redistribute wealth and raise taxes nothing will change. and if we do something nothing will change.... because nothing is happening.

[VPN]

Nothing positive happens for anyone other than the very wealthy when the republickers are running the show, thats for sure.

[danceswithtrees]

The earths temp. has actually COOLED over the last 10 years. When was the debate held that "settled" this issue. I don't remember EVER seeing that debate. the whole thing is a cruel hoax. We must stop this load of crap in it's tracks

[sizogee]

1. We pump CO2 into the air.
2. Higher levels of CO2 cause the air to hold more water vapor
3. Higher levels of water vapor in the air cause the temperature to be higher.

Which of these points would you like to refute? Which one is in any way controversial?

[PWM]

True. One need only look at smog in any major city to see what greenhouse gases do.

[Exusian]

No, Earth's temperature has not actually cooled, as in gone down, over the last 10 years.

[ReedYoung]

Only if you flagrantly cherry-pick.
http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998

[ReedYoung]

"When was the debate held that 'settled' this issue."

Science is not debated. It is determined collaboratively by experimentation and peer review. Above all, it is evidence-based, not rhetorical. There never will be a "debate" on the fact of global warming, nor should there be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRkcJ0BLS0

[RomeoMD25]

people have been duped because they don't know basic sciences like biology and chemistry. CO and CO2 are two totally different
compounds. CO, carbon monoxide used to be a big issue before catalytic converters. It kills. CO2 is what plants breathe like we
breathe oxygen. It gives life. This is scientific fact. Now, how these idiots in Washington got this fact confused is beyond me. Somehow,
they made a tricky transition from CO to CO2, probably thinking that the average person is so ignorant that they wouldn't notice this
slight-of-hand (thought). No,
I'm just an older person who was taught real science in the classroom before the dumbing-down process was started.

[Exusian]

It's a pity you didn't pay better attention in your science classes.

[realpolitic]

Exusian, he may have taken an anti-science class at a biblical university, but that would have been it.

[ReedYoung]

Okay then, prove you were "taught real science in the classroom before the dumbing-down process was started"; edify me about the absorption and emission spectra of greenhouse gases. What has every physicist since the 1950s misunderstood about the distinct bands of CO2?

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm#S2

[Chubbster]

I'd rather watch Al Gore get a 500 million dollar grant from the government for his new privately owned start-up.

[Jimmyboyo]

sadly cool