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The Middle East’s Surprising Appetite for Oil

CFR experts examine the science and foreign policy surrounding climate change, energy, and nuclear security.

Seth Dixon, Ph.D.‘s insight:

Most everyone knows about the importance of Middle Eastern oil to the global economy and how that impacts geopolitics.  What isn’t well-known is the Middle East’s own demand for oil has been increasing as their wealth and standard of living has been rising.  This chart does not show the amount of oil consumption, but the “energy intensity.”  This is the amount of energy (often oil) used to produce a unit of GDP for a country’s economy.  

Questions to Ponder: How will this change oil-producing countries economic development in the future?  How does this make us re-assess these economies?  Does this impact how we think about climate change issues?

 

Tags: energy, resources, Middle East, development.

See on blogs.cfr.org

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Hong Kong and China: Growing apart?

The BBC’s John Simpson reports from Hong Kong, where the former colony’s increasing independent-mindedness is worrying Beijing.

Seth Dixon, Ph.D.‘s insight:

When the rule of Hong Kong transferred from the UK to China in 1997, the Chinese government was careful to ease the fears of those in Hong Kong that they would not have their political and economic systems turned upside down.  “One country, two systems” was the famous slogan to sum up the policy that some felt would simply delay the inevitable.  Today, many of the youth in Hong Kong are demonstrating against what they feel are pressures to do away with their unique status.

See on www.bbc.co.uk

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An Interactive Map of the Blitz: Where and When the Bombs Fell on London

The extent of the campaign is shocking.

Seth Dixon, Ph.D.‘s insight:

This map is just overwhelming when you consider that each data point represents a bomb dropped on the city. 

See on www.theatlanticcities.com

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The Voices of China’s Workers

TED Talks In the ongoing debate about globalization, what’s been missing is the voices of workers — the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world.

Our collective understanding of modern industrialization and globalization needs to go beyond the binary of “oppressors” and “victims.”  This lecture explores the voices and lives of Chinese workers that we so often simply see as simply victims of a system, but are full of ambition and agency.

Tags: industry, globalization, labor, China, TED.

See on www.ted.com

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Positrén: Spanish Train Map

Mapa de localización de los trenes de Media y Larga Distancia de España…

This maps shows nicely how mapping and spatial thinking can promote lead towards better logistics and improved transportation.   The real-time updates and schedules shows that social media and mobile devices are promoting greater innovation.

See on positren.nebulacodex.com

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China’s ‘Mountain-Moving’ Project

A promotional video shows planned development of a state-level development zone by government of Lanzhou, a provincial capital in China’s arid northwest…

The Lanzhou province is lightly populated mainly due to it’s semi-arid climate and rugged topography.  The goal is make a 500 square mile area (currently with 100,000 people) into a city with over 1 million people by 2030.  To make this new metropolis, developers are planning to literally remove mountains to create a more ‘ideal’ urban environment.  This makes some of the most ambitious environmental modification projects seem tame.  For more read, the accompanying article from the Guardian.

Questions to Ponder: What potential environmental impacts come from this scale of modification?  How will this massive influx of the population impact the region?  Could this type of project happen in other part of the world?

Tags: environment, urban ecology, planning, environment modify, China.

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White Christmas?

Probability of a white Christmas in U.S.

This is not a weather report; we are still too far out to start predicting that with any accuracy.  What this map does show is the statistical probabilities of snow cover thoughout the United States for December 25th based on past climatological data.    

See on www.ncdc.noaa.gov

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Crowdsourcing an Israeli-Palestinian Border

A new interactive tool allows you to decide how many Israeli settlers to annex and what constitutes a viable Palestinian state.

This article from the Atlantic is a great introduction to a mapping tool that puts the user at the virtual negotiation table.  Peace talk proposals often center around the amount of land that Palestinians want and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank that the Israelis want as a part of the state of Israel.  This interactive, titled Is Peace Possible?, allows the user to propose potential land swaps, see the demographic breakdown of West Bank settlements and videos to introduce users to on 4 major issues: borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem. 

Tags: Israel, borders, Palestine, territoriality, political, mapping. 

See on www.theatlantic.com

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NASA – Image of the Day

NASA.gov brings you images, videos and interactive features from the unique perspective of America’s space agency.

NASA has stunning galleries of images, including this link to images of the day.  NASA has also recently made the 172-page e-book Earth as Art a free download (PDF). 

About the Image: Portrait of Global Aerosols

“High-resolution global atmospheric modeling run on the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., provides a unique tool to study the role of weather in Earth’s climate system. The Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5) is capable of simulating worldwide weather at resolutions of 10 to 3.5 kilometers (km).  This portrait of global aerosols was produced by a GEOS-5 simulation at a 10-kilometer resolution. Dust (red) is lifted from the surface, sea salt (blue) swirls inside cyclones, smoke (green) rises from fires, and sulfate particles (white) stream from volcanoes and fossil fuel emissions.” 

See on www.nasa.gov

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