Are Petabytes the key to solving climate issues?

I’m in Northampton, Massachusetts today; interesting little town. On the plane I read the recent copy of Wired Magazine. Interesting article about the End of Science, Google and the way cloud computing is changing many of the things we are doing and things we assumed. It is written by Chris Anderson, the author of “The Long Tail.”

Bottom line, we are not going to solve our climate crisis without the use of some really high powered technology number crunching computing power. (Google) There are some really big projects in the works according to the article. Not all climate related, but it gives an idea of what is possible. Here are some:

The CluE Initiative
Lanworth
Large Hardon Collider
e-discovery firms: Fios, Attenex
Europe Media Monitor
ESSENCE
Global emerging infections surveillance and Response system
Google Mapreduce
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
Majumdar (bone research)
Fastcast ( tracking airfare)
Catalist (political forecasting)
Microtargeting example: Republican National Committee Voter Vault and Aristotle Inc.
(give them false information!) Aristotle Inc.
Narrowcasting
Visualizing Data: Watson Research Center: Martin Wattenberg: Many Eyes