Climate Havens vs. Heavy Rain & Flooding

Sure, there are no 'true' climate havens, but to me northern Vermont & other remain places remain 'practical' climate havens despite their exposure to risk from heavy rains & associated flooding (e.g. Asheville, NC).

WMO 2024 State of the Global Climate Report

Here is the 2024 State of the Global Climate Report from the World Meteorological Organization.:

• State of the Global Climate 2024
• State of the Climate 2024 (Esri Story Map)
• Extreme Events 2024 (Web Map)

1970-2024

 

Deep Research Tools from OpenAI & Google

These tools can basically synthesize the information from 100s of websites into nice and tidy cited literature reviews. And that's great for many basic science & technology topics where there is enough information available out there on reputable online sources.

But the notion that this can replace a classic scientific literture review of meta-analysis is incorrect. First, these AIs do not have access to the actual scientific literature (which tends to sit behind paywalls). Second, there is a difference between a summary, a review, and a synthesis. Sure, a competent & trained amateur such as an AI can summarize, but reviewing & synthesizing requires a familiarity with the subject matter that can only be gained by years and years of deep immersion (aka. 10,000 hours...).

Air Tours & UpToWhere

Here are two cool apps for exploring the world:

1. Air Tours allows you to explore cities by combining Google Maps 3D, Street View and more. For example: here's Boston.
2. UpToWhere is a basic viewshed tool, but creates a great 3D visualization.

Census Dots

Finally updated for the 2020 Census: Census Dots (1 person = 1 dot)

The U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index

The U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index

From the website: Pulling in 184 sets of data to rank more than 70,000 U.S. Census tracts, the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index helps you see which communities face the greatest challenges from the impacts of a changing climate. This tool shows what is driving the challenges, so policymakers and communities themselves can take action to build climate resilience where it is needed most.

The MoAT: The Museum of All Things

This is just cool: The MoAT: The Museum of All Things

From the website: The Museum of All Things (or "The MoAT") is a nearly-infinite virtual museum that you can visit for free on your computer! You can find exhibits on millions of topics, from Arts in the Philippines to Zinc deficiency! The breadth of the museum is made possible by downloading text and images from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Every exhibit in the museum corresponds to a Wikipedia article. The walls of the exhibit are covered in images and text from the article, and hallways lead out to other exhibits based on the article's links.

One caveat: you need to actually download the museum software onto your computer:

• https://mayeclair.itch.io/museum-of-all-things (Windows, Mac, OpenXR, etc.)
• https://github.com/m4ym4y/museum-of-all-things (for the nerds)