The company behind the sometimes-annoying WeatherBug app has emerged with a new plan to build what it says will be the world’s largest global sensor network to track green house gas emissions. On Wednesday, WeatherBug parent AWS Convergence Technologies announced it’s rebranding as Earth Networks and will invest $25 million into building a sensor network with an initial 100 green house gas observing stations.
Yeah, it’s not exactly what I expected from the almost two-decade-old firm which has, until now, built a business around its 8,000 weather tracking stations. But Earth Networks has already partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has launched the first green house gas observation station in the network at Scripps.
There are a handful of these types of green house gas emissions observation stations in the world today, and the first was deployed by Scripps at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii in 1958. (Check out this excellent article in the New York Times last month on the Mauna Loa tracking station). But Earth Networks says these observation stations aren’t networked together and don’t provide a global picture of emissions in enough detail and in real time.
The Earth Network will track both carbon and methane emissions and many of the observation stations will be built on tall towers and high up locations. The data that comes out of the sensor network will be used to provide detailed reports and will also be integrated into the WeatherBug app, so companies, governments, municipalities and consumers can check out the data. You can also observe some of it live online.
Earth Networks is initially working with Picarro, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup that sells $50,000 greenhouse gas-detecting sensor boxes. The analyzers are about the size of a desktop PC, and they work by firing laser beams into the air to determine concentrations of green house gases, and then measure the changes in wavelength signals. While the technology has existed in labs for decades, Picarro has stuffed all this measuring capability into a portable, 58-pound box of sensors that requires little maintenance.
It seems it’s the greenies killing the planet, not Republicans.
“”Radio tags designed to monitor endangered penguins could be killing them, say scientists”. It is feared that flipper bands, used to identify the birds, cause physical damage and drag under the water. ”
Perhaps I will design an eco-loony monitoring station.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/killing-with-kindness.html
Meanwhile in Israel –
“Environmentalist Starts Israel’s Worst Ever Fire: Greenpeace Blames Global Warming.”
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/environmentalist-starts-israels-worst-ever-fire-greenpeace-blames-global-warming/
I wonder if they will place the sensors right next to the fizzing areas so they can “prove” their point.
Land fizzing like soda pop: farmer says CO2 injected underground is leaking
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/carbon-injected-underground-now-leaking-saskatchewan-farmers-study-says-113276449.html
And they said that Beck’s measurement data is suspect. This is FUBAR without deploying any equipment!