Google Earth tool tracks CO2 emissions

The Vulcan Project, led by a team of Purdue University researchers, has created a Google Earth tool that shows you CO2 emissions coming from each county in the U.S.

The tool breaks down emissions into industrial, residential, commercial, and other categories for each county.

The team plans to be able to release emissions data by street or even by building as more data is collected.

This tool is really cool and a great way to see where most of our CO2 emissions are coming from. Check it out at the link above.

Australia's wildfires show signs of global warming

The worst wildfires in the nation's history are ravaging Australia, and there are already at least 171 people reported dead from them.

While its believed that arsonists started the initial blazes, experts are blaming two other culprits—drought and heat—for the spreading of the fires, both of which are tell-tell signs of global warming.

The L.A. Times reported that the fires "incinerated people trying to flee in their cars, sent towering walls of flames sweeping through small towns, and sparked a new debate over whether homeowners should be allowed to stay to try to protect their property."

The fires are so large that they are visible from space.

Dan Shapley, of The Daily Green, wrote that "the wildfires have struck a region suffering through the Big Dry, a multi-year period marked by drought and heat waves that has led many Australians to a new and immediate understanding of climate change."

United Nations reports worldwide rising carbon emissions

Worldwide carbon emissions from industrialized countries increased from 2000 to 2006, after showing a slight decline throughout the 1990s, according to a United Nations report released yesterday.

The release of the report comes two weeks before the U.N. is set to meet and discuss the issue at a major review conference. The conference is expected to work on an agreement that will serve as a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The United States signed the Kyoto Protocol but never had any plans of taking the necessary steps to ratify it, which would have made it legally binding for the country to reduce the six greenhouse gases named in the protocol.