Professor Hans Rosling gives a lecture with animated statistics about the carbon dioxide emissions of countries since 1975 - this also includes a brief comparison of China and the US's dependencies on coal to produce electricity. Other webcasts on the same site cover topics such as urbanisation and 200 years that changed the World to reveal how related standards of living have risen since the beginnings of the industrial revolution. NB: It would be interesting to see Gapminder produce an animation showing how much carbon dioxide each country has generated in total over the last two hundred years.
Purdue - Vulcan Project
Developed by Purdue University with sponsorship by NASA and the US Dept of Energy (DOE), the Vulcan project models emissions of carbon dioxide from coal fired power plants and other sources across the US.
Details has been prepared to the level of individual factories, power generation plants, roads and neighbourhoods. Users can view emissions via Google Earth fly-overs or by means of computer simulation.
HIPPO Project
Co-lead researcher describes how a series of pole to pole flights in a specially instrumented aircraft will be used to take extensive measurements of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at different times of the year. Further details of the project whose aim is to improve understanding of how these gases enter and are removed from the atmosphere can be located on the following UCAR web page.
NB: The Japanese GOSAT mission is beginning to generate measurements of greenhouse gases from space. NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed in February 2009 shortly after launch.
Greg Carven - How It All Ends
Greg and his alter-ego give a polished (and entertaining) presentation about the risk management strategies to be adopted in response to the threat of global warming. He argues the debate should not be about whether humans are changing the climate, but rather what is the wisest course of action to take in anticipation of the potential consequences. Well worth a replay if you wish to capture some of the finer points of Greg's thesis.
NASA Climate Change
This animation documents changes in annual mean temperature in one year increments between 1880 and 2006. Temperatures have warmed at nearly all locations worldwide, but surprisingly the greatest changes appear to have occurred at high latitudes, suggesting that warming is not due to local effects of heat pollution by people, but is driven by a global phenomena. The original material can be located here.
Black Balloons
Forming part of an energy saving campaign run in 2006 by the Government of Victoria, Australia, this webcast demonstrates how emissions of carbon dioxide might look if the gas was lighter than air and not colourless. Indeed, there would be few delays in negotiating limits on its production if it did have a colour like nitrous oxide (NOx), but then again there would be no photosynthesis in a world darkened by the gas!!
David MacKay - How Many Light Bulbs?
Professor Mackay is the author of an acclaimed book that explains the energy content of the goods and services we use and how a nation such as Britain might go about reducing its dependency on the fossil fuels that support its life style - see an earlier posting on this blog. In this video, he discusses the average individual's consumption of energy and points out that major changes in the way the UK generates and consumes energy will be required if the predictions of climate change scientists are to be heeded.
Dr Patrick Dixon – Concrete
A somewhat strident Dr Dixon explains that the manufacture and use of concrete is responsible for some 7% of global CO2 emissions. The figure is so high is because of the large amount of construction work going on in the developing world.
New types of concrete with the potential to halve the amount of CO2 released during manufacture are being researched, but will require years of testing to ensure their stability and structural integrity.
I'm Ready
A rather touching webcast from the Time to Change tcktcktck site released in advance of the conference on climate change held in Copenhagen last December.
This page presents links to a number of climate change related webcasts that have caught my attention and interest. Possibly, the most prolific webcasts of all can be found on Peter Sinclair's website whose Denial Crock of the Week is well worth a visit.
I will update details on this page from time to time.