Emissions transparency - finally

 Climate change transparency

I have always been on the fence regarding Al Gore.  His Nobel prize for a powerpoint slideshow leveraging a 1980's discovery by others (climate change) sure bought that issue to the forefront. But I always questioned his values as his lifestyle contradicts his preachings.  Until now.  


Mr. Gore and Google were the driving forces behind starting Climate Trace (https://www.climatetrace.org)  whose vision is:

'We make meaningful climate action faster and easier by mobilizing the global tech community to track greenhouse gas emissions with unprecedented detail and speed.'

Finally we get some real third-party, objective measurements of all global carbon emission sources.  No more hiding behind bullshit numbers, manipulative politicians, and purposeful under-reporting of a country's emissions  (aka Brazil, Russia, China, India ++)

Some of the world's biggest players are involved in this, including RMI, Amazon, NASA, and Google.   I like one of their sound bites: we need to leverage hi-tech and science for earth more than Mars... as much as I love Elon Musk... here, here!

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Two other noteworthy items:


(1) Satellite images of forest poaching (as in burning them down, illegal harvesting, hunting) have just dramatically improved with Capella's new imagery that can see through clouds (and also walls!).  https://www.theburnin.com/science/capella-satellite-sar-imagery-see-through-buildings-2020-12-16/  


(2) There will be an IPCC meeting in Glasgow in November 2021 and thankfully we'll be fully engaged at the table after a 4 year hiatus.  Maybe they can use these new transparency measurement tools to hold countries more accountable to their pledges. 

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I believe that Climate Trace along with Drawdown (www.drawdown.org) and other strategic solutions based programs, will finally get to make a difference in our carbon emissions  The realistic downside tho, is that the cat is already out of the bag.  We need to remove existing carbon, methane and other poisons out of the atmosphere.  And with Climate Trace as a start, we'll soon be monitoring those and then we'll get some technology to monitor what we are doing to our oceans.



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