Climate Wizard

For those of you who, like me, believe that climate change/global warming is here to stay, here's part of an article I read on The Daily Green last night:

On the heels of a National Wildlife Federation report that showed how we can expect more extreme heat waves, thanks to global warming, and in the midst of damaging California wildfires that are among the best indicators of climate change, The Nature Conservancy has published a first-of-its-kind calculator that lets you see just how global warming will affect you in your state: The Climate Wizard.

This is among the first Web-based tools that gives people access to information that has been widely available publicly, but largely locked up in dense pdf documents.

One conclusion: The American Heartland -- Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa -- is in for some serious changes, on the order of a 10-degree jump in average temperature by the end of this century. (Since the last Ice Age, the Earth's temperature has increased about 15 degrees, so that's nothing to sneeze at.)

"The state-by-state, country-by-country temperature projections are part of a new tool called Climate Wizard that allows people to use an interactive map to explore past and projected climate change data on their computers," The Nature Conservancy states in its press release...

I checked out the wizard myself. It indicates that temperatures and precipitation will increase in the South Bend area over the next 100 years. Oh goody, just what we need here -- even more rain!

If you live in Egypt, the wizard indicates your temperatures will rise by 2 - 3 degrees by 2050. If you call Maine home, your temperatures stand to rise by 5 - 7 degrees in the same time period. And, if you happen to live in Alaska or Hawaii, you're out of luck because neither state is listed. That's one of the drawbacks with this tool for now; not every state or country made it into the database.

Notwithstanding the shortcomings, I really hope a lot of people take a look. It brings home the message of climate change in a more personal manner. It's one thing to read or listen to scientists talk about things in general terms. It's quite another, however, when you get to see how climate change might affect your life where YOU live.