Friday, January 23, 2009

Information Is Always Nice

Here's a good idea to assist with dealing with greenhouse gasses: gather some data.

The satellite, called "Ibuki" or "vitality" in Japanese, will enable scientists to measure densities of carbon dioxide and methane from 56,000 locations on the Earth's surface, including the atmosphere over open seas.

This would be a considerable increase, and obviously quite useful.

That would compare with just 282 land-based observation sites as of last October, mostly of which are in the United States, Europe and other industrialized regions....

"Being able to measure what is happening is incredibly important to developing a robust international climate change response," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters last week. "You wouldn't expect it in this modern day and age, but actually our ability to monitor greenhouse gas emissions is still relatively weak -- weak in industrialized countries but even weaker in many developing countries."

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