June 13, 2011

Climate Change You Can See

<a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change">Liam Gumley</a>/Wikimedia

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Ever come across someone who wants visual proof that climate change is real? Well, now it’s at your fingertips. Thanks to a joint effort by California universities and research centers, the California Energy Commission, and Google, Golden State residents now have access to a brand new interactive tool that showcases the effects of climate change. The website, Cal-Adapt.org, culls a wealth of information from the the state’s scientific community and reformats it into easy-to-use charts and maps. 

You can tailor the data to your specific location and voilá: The website will generate personalized local climate snapshots, wildlife risk areas, and sea level changes. Adjust the scale at the top of the tools section and you’ll see changes between decades. The site’s aim is to make the information publicly available, so your results can be easily downloaded.

I gave the eight climate tools a whirl by using my own address:

1) Here’s the climate snapshot for the San Francisco area. The high and low emissions scenarios correspond with the map  to the right, showing temperature rises based on location. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) The beauty of these graphs is that you can get a full decadal spectrum. This one shows monthly temperature increases from 1960 to 2090, a 150 year spread.

TK

3) Here are two maps that compare current precipitation to the high emissions precipitation prediction for 2040. The side by side comparison portrays an overall drop in annual precipitation.


And this website is full of extra goodies: There’s a massive publication archive dating back to the 1980s that includes climate articles on electricity demand, shrinking beaches, and intensifying heat waves. The “What is California Doing About Climate Change” section is embarrasingly scant, but as a consolation prize, Cal-Adapt is launching the Historic Photo Hunt Challenge. In a Geocaching fashion, Cal-Adapt will send out the GPS coordinates of photos taken in the 1920s and 1930s. Photographers will then go to those locations, take snapshots, and send them back to scientists, all in an effort to understand how various landscapes have changed over time. Finally, on a fun note, you can customize your background with one of several California scenes by clicking the arrows above the “About Cal-Adapt” box.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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