Eyes on the prize: Google announces ‘Earth Engine’

Offering scientists and conservationists a better look-see at Mama Earth, Google Labs unveiled its Google Earth Engine yesterday at the International Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. The product puts an “unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data – current and historical – online for the first time,” says Google, allowing for monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s environment. The images are designed specifically for environmental protection use, providing information on the “locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping,” among other data. One important value of the system is that it will function like a watchdog camera, supporting the development of “monitor, report and verify” (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation. The company released an example image, generated in collaboration with Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, of a forest cover and water map of Mexico which is the finest-scale to date. The company says the map required 15,000 hours of computation, but was completed in less than a day on Google Earth Engine using 1,000 computers.

Happy birthday EPA!

Now more than ever is a good time to celebrate the Environmental Protection Agency. As the mostly on-our-side government agency is turning 40, it’s coming under severe attacks from a hostile new (corporate-sponsored) Congress, and other science and climate-change deniers around the the world. GreenBiz has it right when it says: “a testament to the scale and scope of the EPA’s successes over the past 40 years that they’ve faded into the background, or been woven into the fabric of daily life.” However, any take-it-for-granted attitude would be a grave mistake right now given the current political climate, and it’s good that sites like Green For All (ThankYouEPA.com), are out there helping to get the word out. There’s an informative quick take, too, from the Aspen Institute in a 10 reasons we love ’em format. Among the highlights from the agency’s 40 years are banning the widespread use of DDT, addressing the acid rain problem, championing the reuse of waste, taking the lead on reducing vehicle emissions, cleaning up our water supply and being a  general conduit for public information.

Strange life forms found in (where else?) California!

While you would figure NASA would spend a lot time looking up, the organization just announced that one of its astrobiology research efforts that’s focused way down under one of California’s weirdest lakes has led to discovery that folks are saying will fundamentally shift the way we define life – and vastly expand the playing field in terms of how we look for life on other planets. These researchers have discovered the first known microorganism able to “thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components.” Quoted in the NY Daily News, Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s astrobiology program, says, “It’s terrestrial life – but not life as we know it.” The story adds that “all life discovered so far, from teeny amoebas to enormous elephants, are composed of combinations of the same six elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus,” but the new bacteria (its catchy name is GFAJ-1) can live without any phosphorus and instead uses arsenic to build cells. Why do we care? “The implication is that we still don’t know everything there is to know about what might make a planet habitable,” says another NASA scientist. “Maybe we’ll be able to find ET now.”

Images: Google, jessica.diamond, NASA

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So the joke goes that there’s a guy stranded on the roof of his house. Flood waters are rising and he’s praying to God for help. A couple of kids come by in a canoe and say, “Hey Mister! Jump in!” Preoccupied with prayer, he ignores them and they paddle away. Soon the water level is higher and the local sheriff comes by in a dinghy, “Get in, pal! It’s gonna get worse!” The man says, “Please, officer, not now, I must focus on the Lord!” Before long the waterline breaks over the roof of the house and a helicopter comes by, dangling a rope ladder. “Climb up!,” the pilot shouts above the roar of his engine. With the water raging and chopper wind blowing fiercely around him, the man screams, “Leave me! The Lord will save me!” Finally, the flood overcomes the man. As he’s being swept to his doom he looks to sky and asks, “Oh Lord, why have you left me to die?!” “Left you to die?!,” booms the Almighty, “I sent you a canoe, a dinghy and a helicopter, you idiot!”

I couldn’t help but think of this joke when I heard the infamous and honorable Representative from Illinois, John Shimkus (who is currently seeking the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce panel in the next Congress), tell us that we don’t have to worry about global warming. Only God, says Shimkus, can destroy this earth, not man, and after all, He made a deal with Noah not to flood us out any more. I feel like shaking this guy and saying, “your Guy’s sending you data and science and smart people, you moron! He’s speaking to you and he’s saying: ‘Save thyself!'”

The War on Science is on and some people are telling us that He/She/It doesn’t believe in global warming and neither should you. By way of background, here’s a right-on quote from a blogger on About.com: “One of the principle driving forces behind all this [science] denial is a desire to get around the conclusions of science when they conflict with some preferred ideology – political, economic, religious, whatever.”

The political and economic issues behind climate change denial seem clear. As my father used to say, it’s always about two things: money and dollars. Corporate polluters have a record of funding efforts to portray good science as bad, promoting the notion of “science impotence” (portraying science as a  failure based on the fact that certain phenomena remain “unexplained”), and of course funding the campaigns of science deniers (take a guess where BP put its money this last election cycle). But what’s with the religious attacks? I mean, if you’re looking for something apocalyptic, global warming experts are offering up some crash and burn on a silver platter.

Of course there’s a thesis to be written here and we can go back to Descartes gumming up Church works with his thinking therefore am-ing, and then, of course, there’s our man Darwin who really queered the deal. But while portraying evolution as a theory as opposed to fact might be harmless enough (if ignorance can ever be harmless), denying changes in the weather puts people at risk. I don’t want to question Rep. Shimkus’ sincerity of motives; let’s not presume that his beliefs are really a front for corporate-backed efforts to derail climate change legislation. But his (and other policymakers‘) anti-science stance is dangerous and is based on antiquated thinking that precludes the coexistence of science and biblical creationism, something our greatest theologians would find ignorant, at best.

The truth is, there’s plenty of room for theology to exist alongside science and even support its conclusions as perhaps information coming straight from God’s workshop – tools “delivered” to us so that we might better love and protect ourselves and our neighbors. Whether or not one believes in creationism as the genesis of life, analysis of facts on the ground is just that – and a method to help preserve that life, wherever it comes from. Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, alternative energy technology is a gift from, well, just ask the folks at the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

You know, whatever one believes (or doesn’t believe), it’s important to have enough sense to come in out of the rain. You might even consider such a logical maneuver as taking refuge in God’s house. In any case, most of us can agree to this: finding a port in a storm beats going down with the ship.

Image: radiant guy

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