My previous work significantly touched upon climate change and environment. It’s a painfully complicated subject and the harsh reality is, it’s even harder to get people to pay attention continuously and engage in constructive conversations.
Tip of my hat to amazing work by groups like Climate Central, whose Surging Seas has really stood out with criminally simple visualization of the consequences and nifty tools (such as Mapping Choices) for average Joes to look up whether their communities are safe from rising seas.
[Above: Two scenarios of how rising seas will engulf the lower Manhattan area around the Charging Bull. Credits go to Climate Central, and be sure to check out Google Earth videos of more global cities here.]
Month after month, the world’s temperature records have been reset over and over again. And NASA Earth Observatory archive has it all. First one below on the rising temperatures on a global scale over more than a century, decade by decade with latest one of 2005-2014; second one about the first artificial palm island Dubai built on a beachfront.
According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade.
The first Palm Island constructed was Palm Jumeirah, and the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite observed its progress from 2000 to 2011. In these false-color images, bare ground appears brown, vegetation appears red, water appears dark blue, and buildings and paved surfaces appear light blue or gray.
Dubai, in early-morning hours, still registered temperatures in the 30s on May 28, 2016, only cooler than India, via earth.nullschool.net
Here’s what I write in a recent post on ChinaFile about sea level rise in interactive imagery and maps by Climate Central:
I think a big part of the reason why citizens of the world have not rallied to deal with climate change is the lack of a certain deadline that would warrant our immediate response to the grave consequences of our warming planet. There is no discussion of a specific hurricane or other specific imminent event. As a species we are very good at procrastinating. But Climate Central has published a series of shocking graphics that show the danger of rising sea levels faced by Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, New York, and many other cities.
Here are all the amazing slider images by Climate Central showing how much sea level rises 2C and 4C temperature rises will lock in in the coming centuries, enjoy sliding and playing:
Now here below is one map called “Surging Seas: Mapping Choices” also done by Climate Central. Zoom in and out, drag the map, and many other things to compare the two temperature rise scenarios and what they will do to sea levels and the city streets, in this case Greater New York City area:
Actually, in all the slider interactive images above, you can click/tap the link below each image to see the comparative interactive maps for that location.
Now I’d like to give a big shout out to the visual artist Nickolay Lamm who did the interactive city street images. And his big hit project of late is Lammily, or what a Barbie Doll should really look like in a normal woman:
Here below is what real 2nd-graders in a school in Pittsburgh, PA thinks about Lammily, the normal Barbie doll:
Asia Society is turning 60 years old this year and one way of commemorating the anniversary is marking a historic milestone in Asia’s rise and, along with it, a major contribution to the world’s explosive growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
If Asia were a country, it would have become the biggest emitter of CO2 in historical terms, just surpassing the United States around this year. Below is a chart with the orange area representing Asia, and the Leogryph icon is borrowed from Asia Society’s logo:
Glaciers in Asia are creating an uncertain future across the region. From Nepal to the Tibetan Plateau, Bhutan to India and the Bay of Bengal, a way of life is under threat. The climate is changing and life as we know it from the mountains to sea is falling out of balance. These glaciers are source to seven of the region’s greatest rivers. But our most precious resource is disappearing one drop at a time. The people of Asia are answering the call, harnessing determination, spirituality and science to adapt and survive in a face of a Himalayan Meltdown.
I contributed research and camera work to the documentary from Qinghai and Tibet in China. Here below is a trailer:
Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown, a co-production by the UN Development Programme, Discovery Asia, and Arrowhead Films aired on Discovery Channel, Sunday 15 May 2011, 21:00 hrs.
Airdates:
Sun. 15 May 11, 21:00 – Discovery SE Asia
Sun. 15 May 11, 21:00 – Discovery Malaysia
Sun. 15 May 11, 21:00 – Discovery Philippines
Sun. 29 May 11, 19:30 – Discovery Australia
Sun. 29 May 11, 19:30 – Discovery New Zealand
Sun. 05 June 11, 21:00 – Discovery Taiwan
A multimedia presentation co-produced with Emmy Award winning MediaStorm along with a magnificent photo exhibition of melting glaciers in the valleys of the Himalaya taken by mountaineer, Emmy Award winning filmmaker David Breashears. It was a years long combination of stunning before-and-after images of glacier photography spanning a whole century and many years of reporting and writing about climate change and its impact on local communities and the environment by Orville Schell (The New York Times) and Michael Zhao (World Policy Journal). Asia Society also published two reports making a case for a closer collaboration between the U.S. and China on climate change and energy. The exhibition and its evolving versions have toured Beijing, Shanghai, Paris, and soon will land in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016.
Below is the video introduction to the project:
I was the producer and project manager of both the web site design/development and the video production.
Screen shot of “On Thinner Ice” site, co-produced with MediaStorm. Click/Tap to visit on asiasociety.org.
Over the past three decades, China has dazzled the rest of the world with its stunning, high-speed economic growth. However, rapid urbanization, poverty reduction and transformation of city skylines have come at a grave price: air and water pollution, degraded forests, pasturelands and marine habitats, growing greenhouse gas emissions and a host of other environmental problems.
China Green has been documenting China’s environmental issues now and for years to come and will strive to serve as a web forum where people with an interest in China and its environmental challenges can find interesting visual stories and share critical information about the most populous nation in the world whose participation in the solution to global environmental problems, such as climate change, will be indispensable.
Homepage of China Green site. Click/Tap to visit on AsiaSociety.org
… the China Green project at the Asia Society, based in New York City but with a sizable presence in Hong Kong, has been tracking the mainland’s worsening environmental plight. As managing editor/producer of the project, Michael Zhao leads the effort to keep tabs and encourage reforms.
