Climate TRACE - The Al Gore Solution to Climate Change

While it didn't get a lot of attention when it was announced, revelations by Al Gore, one of the world's leading untrained climatologists, seem particularly pertinent given the pledges made during the recent COP26 summit.

 

Back in July 2020 while the world and lame stream media were focussed on the COVID-19 pandemic, a posting by Al Gore which appears on the Medium website announced the launching of a new tool to track global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.  Climate TRACE (Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions) is a "powerful new tool" that will allow tracking of greenhouse gas emissions using satellite imagery, other forms of remote sensing, artificial intelligence and collective data science expertise to track emissions as they happen.  Here is a quote:

 

"Climate TRACE’s emissions inventory is the world’s first comprehensive accounting of GHG emissions based primarily on direct, independent observation. Our innovative, open, and accessible approach relies on advances in technology to fill critical knowledge gaps for all countries that rely on the patchwork system of self-reporting that serves as the basis for most existing emissions inventories."

 

Climate TRACE claims that they have 50 plus collaborating organizations, 300 satellites harnessed, 60 terabytes of data analyzed and 110000 sensors utilized. 

  

Here is an introductory video explaining Climate TRACE's raison d'être:

 

Here are Climate TRACE's members:

 

 

Here are Climate TRACE's funders:

 

Isn't it interesting to see the connection between Climate TRACE and Big Tech through both Google and Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, Executive Chairman of Google and Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc?  Climate TRACE certainly looks like another division of Google, doesn't it?  I wonder what's in it for them?

 

Here is a screen capture of a page from Climate TRACE's website showing an inventory of CO by sector:

 

 

....and by nation for the top 7 emitters showing the percent change from 2015 to 2020:

 

 

In a recent interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Gore shared his vision for the future of climate surveillance:

 

"We're going to have real time monitoring of where the emissions are coming from and who is responsible for them....

 

It's a coalition of Artificial Intelligence companies, NGOs.  We get data consistently from 300 existing satellites, more than 11,000 ground-based, air-based, sea-based sensors, multiple internet data streams and using artificial intelligence, All that information is combined, visible light, infrared, all of the other information that is brought in, and we can now accurately determine where the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from and next year we'll have it down to the level of every single power plant, refinery, every large ship, every plane, every waste dump and we'll have the identities of the people who are responsible for each of those greenhouse gas emissions streams and if investors or governments or civil society activists want to hold them responsible they will have the information upon which to base their action in holding them responsible.”

 

While Climate TRACE sounds like an interesting development, it would be interesting to know the the climate impact of the satellites that play such an important role in the group's monitoring as well as the massive computing power needed to track the emissions.

 

And somehow this level of surveillance is supposed to be reassuring.  How long will it be before the technology is in place to monitor the emissions of individuals and punish those who exceed their government-ordered limits?

I almost forgot.  Here is a link to a very interesting paper on climate hypocrisy which just happens to discuss Al Gore's own "climate behaviour".  More "rules for thee but not for me" when it comes to the ruling class climate preachers.