Google Maps Tracks Global Warming With New 'Fire' Layer, Tree Canopy Tool (arstechnica.com) 55
Google Maps is getting a few new features to help people better understand our burning planet. Ars Technica reports: The first is a new "fire" layer in the main map view, which will let you view the exact boundaries of a wildfire just as easily as you can look up the current traffic patterns. Google has done fire information before as part of the "crisis response" website, but with climate change making "Fire Season" a yearly occurrence in dry areas like Australia and the Western U.S., wildfires will now be a top-level Maps feature.
Google says the new fire level will bring "all of Google's wildfire information together" in an easy interface. In the US, it will also pull in data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), and the company says it wants to expand fire detail with other government agencies, starting with Australia in "the coming months." Wildfire boundaries should be updated on an hourly basis, and Google says you'll be able to tap on a fire to see information from local governments, like "emergency websites, phone numbers for help and information, and evacuation details. When available, you can also see important details about the fire, such as its containment, how many acres have burned, and when all this information was last reported." The fire layout is rolling out to Android this week, with iOS and desktop coming in October.
Google also announced it's going to expand the Tree Canopy tool it launched in 2020. This Google Maps tool combines Google's plethora of aerial imagery with computer vision AI to generate a map that shows tree cover in cities. Today's announced expansion will increase the Tree Canopy imagery from 15 cities to 100 cities worldwide. Google wants city planners to use the Tree Canopy tool to combat the phenomena of urban heat islands, where miles of asphalt and a dearth of shade from trees can cause cities to be significantly hotter than the surrounding areas. Google says heat islands "disproportionately impact lower-income communities and contribute to a number of public health concerns -- from poor air quality to dehydration. With Tree Canopy data, local governments have free access to insights about where to plant trees to increase shade, reduce heat and mitigate these adverse effects."
Google says the new fire level will bring "all of Google's wildfire information together" in an easy interface. In the US, it will also pull in data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), and the company says it wants to expand fire detail with other government agencies, starting with Australia in "the coming months." Wildfire boundaries should be updated on an hourly basis, and Google says you'll be able to tap on a fire to see information from local governments, like "emergency websites, phone numbers for help and information, and evacuation details. When available, you can also see important details about the fire, such as its containment, how many acres have burned, and when all this information was last reported." The fire layout is rolling out to Android this week, with iOS and desktop coming in October.
Google also announced it's going to expand the Tree Canopy tool it launched in 2020. This Google Maps tool combines Google's plethora of aerial imagery with computer vision AI to generate a map that shows tree cover in cities. Today's announced expansion will increase the Tree Canopy imagery from 15 cities to 100 cities worldwide. Google wants city planners to use the Tree Canopy tool to combat the phenomena of urban heat islands, where miles of asphalt and a dearth of shade from trees can cause cities to be significantly hotter than the surrounding areas. Google says heat islands "disproportionately impact lower-income communities and contribute to a number of public health concerns -- from poor air quality to dehydration. With Tree Canopy data, local governments have free access to insights about where to plant trees to increase shade, reduce heat and mitigate these adverse effects."
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Re:hysteria much? (Score:5, Informative)
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I guess you only focus on past few decades rather than ice core based determinations. Much less fires now, actually.
So you think a few seconds of google-foo constitutes some kind of great knowledge of the subject. Nope. You know nothing and have no point. You want to affirm some hang-wringing angst you made up between your ears
Meanwhile Greece, Italy, Turkey have yearly fires too.
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even at your link they use the word "may" about possibility of increased fires in the recent history. They don't know. And you surely don't, just spewing your ignorance because you want to bark along with all the hype dogs.
Re:hysteria much? (Score:4, Funny)
Wait until you meet someone from Texas.
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Four and a half million acres burning in California per year was the norm prior to 19th century. Now everyone is losing their shit over much smaller fires, and wailing "climate change!"
You can cite a fact and still not know fuck about shit. The natives used to set uncontrolled fires every year, but it didn't burn DOWN the forests, BECAUSE THEY SET THEM EVERY YEAR.
Some of the first laws on the books in California prohibited these burns so that white people could build cabins in the woods. And that combined with logging of old growth (the most valuable trees when it comes to combating CO2) has led directly to the current state of affairs with California burning to cinders.
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Your sentence means absolutely nothing.
The natural fires were managed through the man-made fires.
If you get near a point make it, but I suspect you are constitutionally incapable of same
I have the marshmallows (Score:2)
You bring the beer.
Environmentalists want (Score:3, Insightful)
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Do they, or is that a straw man?
Densely packed cities have many environmental downsides. What drives people to cities is not environmental considerations, it's work and amenities.
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Environmentalists want [...] people to live in densely packed cities, to reduce their carbon footprints.
Do they, or is that a straw man?
Yes, they do [berkeley.edu].
Densely packed cities have many environmental downsides.
What? No, densely packed cities have only one inherent environmental down side, which is that most food has to be trucked in. But the potential efficiency improvement [bloomberg.com] of not having to do much personal vehicle travel is vastly more significant.
The thing making most cities inefficient is that many workers can't afford to live there, and have to commute in. Even when done with public transportation this is less efficient than not commuting. But this problem can in fact be solved, so it's not inhe
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That link says the opposite of what you are claiming. The study says that increasing population density is not a good way to reduce emissions.
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That link says the opposite of what you are claiming. The study says that increasing population density is not a good way to reduce emissions.
Specifically because we are not using cities properly, because we are pricing people out of them, many cities have underdeveloped public transportation networks, etc. Cities provide obvious benefits if you have the right legal landscape which makes bad behavior unprofitable.
Er... no. (Score:2)
There is no contradiction between densely packed cities and trees. Population density is increased by building *UP*. Taller buildings do not adversely affect trees in any significant way. In fact, they can shelter them from winds allowing them to be safer for longer lifespans.
The thing that prevents trees in the urban jungle has nothing to do with population density it has to do with the pavement jungle we create for cars and vehicles.
Google (Score:1, Insightful)
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Yup. Educating us on wildfires and tree cover. Very "enemy" like behavior.
Does it distinguish arson fires? (Score:2)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
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I don't have an opinion on that woman's culpability, and haven't followed the story at all, but that article is fucking shit. It keeps talking about how the woman had CO2 cartridges on her person, as if that had any relevance to anything. CO2 puts out fires, it doesn't help you start them, so it's super-weird that they keep harping on that as if it were supporting evidence.
Australia has always had a yearly fire season (Score:3)
but with climate change making "Fire Season" a yearly occurrence in dry areas like Australia
Australia has ALWAYS had a bushfire season on a yearly occurrence, it is actually a rare year to not have one as our summers are very dry and hot in large parts of the country. No I am not suggesting climate change is not real or not making things worse but I really hate Bullshit statements like the above
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Yes, for tens of thousands of years, humans have been lighting fires in Australia, far more frequently than the natural lighting-strike fires were. The forest has either been destroyed and replaced by grassland, or become more fire tolerant. Many of the now-dominant species *require* frequent fires to propagate. But with the end of traditional hunting and fire lighting, larger fuel loads have been able to build in places. Climate change - warming and reduced rainfall - is just part of the problem.
It is no
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Actually the extra fires lit by the aborginals decreased the destruction not increased it
I think you are neglecting the massive changes caused by human arrival in Australia. When we arrived 50,000 years ago, the continent was very different to today or to 200 years ago. Megafauna roamed the land, and rainforest was more widespread. Different species dominated much of the continent. Humans hunted the large animals to extinction, and turned many forests to grassland to feed the remaining marsupials. Not so much planning as a case of trial, error and survival as the people and landscape adapte
Re:Australia has always had a yearly fire season (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it could all be a complete coincidence. But everywhere humans went outside of sub-saharan Africa, megafauna extinction followed.
Unfortunately the publications you have read are in recent years affected by politics. Any university professor would be afraid to publish anything that might be perceived as critical of indigenous people. It may sound silly that a palaeontology paper could be seen as racist or even lacking respect, but that is the reality of universities today. People fear for their jobs.
I guess there is an aspect that such science could be seen to conflict with current-day romanticised mythology of stone-age people "living in harmony with nature", or acting as conscious "Traditional Custodians". Myth-makers often feel threatened by science.
Re:Australia has always had a yearly fire season (Score:4, Informative)
P.S. Wikipedia is not yet that woke:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Many modern researchers, including Tim Flannery, think that with the arrival of early Aboriginal Australians (around 70,000~65,000 years ago), hunting and the use of fire to manage their environment may have contributed to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Increased aridity during peak glaciation (about 18,000 years ago) may have also contributed, but most of the megafauna were already extinct by this time.
Tracking fires is good, minimizing damage better (Score:5, Insightful)
How about some low CO2 energy sources. Some that can produce freshwater to keep the forest from drying out. That would be nuclear power plants on the shore. Plants that can produce low CO2 electricity, desalinate water, and produce synthesized hydrocarbon fuels.
We need solutions. We need people that take the problem seriously or we get unserious solutions.
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That would be nuclear power plants on the shore.
Sure, let's build those. But while we wait for the 20+ years it currently takes for nuclear power projects to actually get finished, how will we stop climate change?
We need a *nearterm* solution. I was firmly in team nuclear, but that ship has sailed, sunk, been rediscovered, and had a movie directed by James Cameron made about it.
Nuclear fusion is now firmly a fantasy solution to the problem of climate change.
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*** fission. ... Nuclear fusion always was a fantasy solution.
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Sure, let's build those. But while we wait for the 20+ years it currently takes for nuclear power projects to actually get finished, how will we stop climate change?
I don't care what you do in the short term, long term we will need nuclear power.
It doesn't take over 20 years to build a nuclear power plant, an experienced construction company can complete a nuclear power plant in six years. We won't get experienced people to build a nuclear power plant until we start building nuclear power plants. It may take 20 years to build the first one, and 10 years to build the second one, then after that it should take 6 years. Because a new nuclear power plant can be expected
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I don't care what you do in the short term, long term we will need nuclear power.
I agree. It just doesn't belong in any discussion about global warming. And we don't even need to have any discussion anymore other than short term.
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How about some low CO2 energy sources.
Good idea. Solar and wind are both ideal for Australia and can be built quickly and cheaply.
That would be nuclear power plants on the shore. [...] We need solutions. We need people that take the problem seriously or we get unserious solutions.
Yes, like nuclear power. Given that it costs more and doesn't decrease CO2 more and takes years and years to build, only a total ass clown would promote it in this situation.
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Electrical desalination is not very efficient and probably won't even offset the CO2 emissions from the nuclear plant. Then there is the small matter of how you get that water to the forest. You will need something a bit more substantial than a long hosepipe and lawn sprinkler. There's also the fact that nuclear plants take so long to build that by the time one is ready it will probably be redundant anyway.
I get that you desperately want there to be a reason for nuclear power to exist, but this isn't it.
How
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How about a realistic solution, like properly managing forests?
It is literally too late for that. The natives "properly" managed the forests for literally thousands of years by simply setting fires every year. These fires were intelligently sited but not "controlled" in any sense, like the only burns we do now. But if we set the same kinds of fires, then the results would be indistinguishable from arson, and they would also cause massive loss of forest because the understory has grown up significantly that the blaze would destroy the largest trees. A massive part of th
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Electrical desalination is not very efficient
Who said anything about electrical desalination?
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We need people that take the problem seriously or we get unserious solutions.
So you're saying no one takes you seriously.
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Only other nuclear playboys do. The rest of us have caught on to blindseer's game, which is willful ignorance.
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Only other nuclear playboys do. The rest of us have caught on to blindseer's game, which is willful ignorance.
Who's game?
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His last account was called blindseer, he spewed exactly the same bullshit under that one
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Cold maps already exist. You can go to any weather site, look at a map, and see where it's cold. Or if you must get the data from Google, you can use google earth [medium.com].
Great (Score:1)
Now wait one second (Score:3)
So the problem there is the NIFC is getting that data from state firefighting orgs and their boundaries are commonly bullshit, as in they were not accurate at the time of reporting, and reporting often lags spectacularly in California at least (you know... fire country) as if there's not someone whose job it is to report the boundaries. Which obviously there is, because it happens somehow... but generally not in a timely fashion.
If Google is saying they're going to pull in this data, it implies that their own data is sparse at best. And it also means the map data isn't going to be accurate, at least not enough to show "the exact boundaries of a wildfire".
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Fire I was loosely involved in in WA back in 2015 had nightly overflgihts to determine the fire boundaries, hotspots, etc... with the mapping data released the next morning. The data provided was very accurate.
IN the same area, this year, we had another fire. For that one, the FIRMS data from earth observing satellites was also quite accurate.
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Back in 2015 I was living in Lake county, California, and I could literally SEE that the boundaries were inaccurate, without even leaving my front porch.
fire good (Score:1)