I am currently sitting in on a talk regarding the transmission of information to many communities. The speaker has made a striking and valuable point that I would just like to share.  The speakers main point was that we already have a ton of knowledge out there regarding climate change, emissions, land use,….etc.  The real issue is not knowledge or availability of knowledge but rather easy to use interface and visualization tools that integrate that knowledge in simple ways that a non scientist/programmer can use.  He gave the analogy of a library.  Libraries contain tremendous amounts of information AND while it is organized you still may have to sift to tons of books in a given section before you retrieve what you want.  So even organization isn’t enough (sorry decimal system).

They then introduced and walked the audience through a website that serves to do this.  This website, which is not fully ready yet, provides visualization and data about everything from temperature changes between present and future as well as such novel things as coming up with an adaptation index to measure how a country fairs with regards to adaptability and mitigation.  I would love to link to this website but it is still in beta.

Written by AHMED TAWFIK.