We had many comments to our coverage of Dr. John Christy's keynote at the first Rocket City Geospatial Conference. His stance on global climate change as part of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stirred much discussion. Though many of you did not get to hear his presentation, you can learn about some of his thoughts and reasoning about the human impact on climate through an editorial that he published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday entitled, "My Nobel Moment."

Dead lost? Or just looking for the dead? It can be a problem in a cemetery where over 80,000 people are buried. At our Rocket City Geospatial Conference last week, Huntsville’s GIS Department sought to rectify this problem for relatives looking to find gravesites at Maple Hill Cemetery, one of the oldest in Alabama. Spanning over 100 acres, the cemetery opened in 1822. Information from each gravesite was originally recorded on scrolls in the form of a rough sketch that mapped block, lot and space number. The city’s GIS department pulled this information into a CAD system to create a digital cemetery layout (See photo at right; click for larger image). From there shape files were generated in which attribution can be attached. But according to Amy Keenum, the GIS analyst, developing the database was a nightmare! Data was first entered into an Access database and then into a SQL database for networking to the remainder of the city’s GIS. Now, a web-based solution, designed using active server pages and GeoMedia Web Map, allows visitors to the cemetery’s website to search by name, burial block and space. Now looking for specific cemetery plots is no longer such a grave experience.

Ed. Note: First a caveat...our keynote speaker at the Rocket City Conference is a good friend and fellow runner so I'll give you a biased and slanted perspective of his keynote presentation at the conference. Feel free to view his presentation though it won't mean much without hearing his words to explain it.

Dr. John Christy of UAH, a nationally recognized and awarded scientist on global warming and a member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, provided the basic numbers and therefore his interpretation of where the facts lead him on these highly charged and politicized issues. He doesn't take money from the big energy companies as his research is funded only by government sources. But my opinions here are in no way to defend his interpretations. He doesn't need my support nor my interpretation; he's been through so many other "grinders" by the media and grilling by congressmen that the confidence in his numbers is unimpeded by mere opinions shoveled by media pundits like myself.

Here is what I found significant. Christy has a global view of human progress and the effects of energy availability on humanity. He’s not just concerned about the energy resources we expend; not just the debate on whether it is possible to legislate away global warming; and not whether CO₂ should be labeled a pollutant. What I took away was that energy use will increase globally whether we increase fuel emission standards or not. We in the U.S. are significant users of energy because it is so readily available. That's not the case in the rest of the world. We're not ready to give up the SUVs even with the high price of gas. Are you? Are you willing to make the sacrifices? Will you lower your thermostat during the winter? Raise it in the summer? What will be your sacrifice to prevent global warming?

Christy was a missionary in Africa teaching physics in schools for several years. His perspective of energy use in countries with so little availability of energy is quite different. Energy is the responsibility of women who walk 3 miles each way every day to collect bales of wood to burn for cooking and sterilizing water. Children die because sometimes sterilization is impossible. He must find it ironic and disheartening to go before congressmen who bemoan our high-energy consumption and the cries of those who discern the loss of glacial ice as the only evidence that global warming will have catastrophic effects when he’s experienced first hand what it means to those who have so little and could benefit so much from some of the conveniences we so readily enjoy.

So while you can debate his interpretation (and even skeptical colleagues do not debate his research), remember to take off the big red, white and blue blinders first.

The other part of his presentation I enjoyed was his fundamental approach to research. “All science is Numbers” was his opening slide. “Count the polar bears” was another statement. Their population is rising contrary to what you might hear in the news. But his best statement was…“Climate is always changing.” That’s just a funny way of putting it right? We get so wrapped up in the concept that we don’t want our climate to change but in reality it is a dynamic phenomenon and always has changed (See slide #9). What do you always hear when you go to Texas (or Alabama or California)…if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes! I don’t mean to trivialize this concept but we are a bit schizophrenic sometimes when it comes to weather.

And then Christy pointed to the changes in the Central Valley in California. Indeed the weather has changed due to center pivot irrigation. He was asked to research the climate changes in this area. His statement to the governor when asked what to do about the changing environment…return the Central Valley to its natural conditions…turn it back to a desert! Whoa…that must have gone over big!

So, while we Americans like the thought of helping the environment, there are few of us ready to support it. But, by all means, write to your congressman and tell them you want an increase to the fuel tax and are willing to set your thermostats at 59 degrees this winter.