Tuesday, November 21, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

I watched An Inconvenient Truth the other day and found the movie fascinating. I definitely recommend it, even if you are not a fan of Al Gore. Of course, you will have to get past listening to Al for 90 minutes or so, but his message is compelling.

The film presents an excellent perspective on climate change and is a call to action for each of us to get involved in what is, at its core, an ethical issue. If you think climate change and global warming is a myth, you should watch this movie. Not because I think it will be a mechanism to change your mind, but just because it will probably introduce you to some perspectives and science that you will need if you are attempting to make an informed decision on the matter.

An immediate result of watching the film for me, was that I have become much more interested in becoming better informed about climate change. Thus, I am starting to try to identify reliable resources to facilitate that. One of the random items I found when doing some online research was NASA's satellite tracking utility for earth observing satellites (J-Track). A screen shot of this utility is below. I came across this item after checking out the Earth Observing System homepage of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

The EOS, "includes a series of satellites, a science component, and a data system supporting a coordinated series of polar-orbiting and low inclination satellites for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, solid Earth, atmosphere, and oceans." Cool stuff.

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