Second Life spex reveal real world CO2 impacts
You’ve probably heard too much about Second Life , and your moral pocketbook is undoubtedly showing signs of carbon footprint fatigue. But carbon footprints inside Second Life? Now we’re talking.
Carbon Goggles is a new project from Jim Purbrick, a developer with Linden Lab, makers of SL. It tags real world carbon footprint data pulled from the carbon counting web service, AMEE , to the virtual counterparts of objects like Honda Civics and Boeing 737.
As James Wagner Au, long-time chronicler of Second Life explains:
But what’s the point of associating real-world emissions with virtual objects?
"The nice thing about doing it in Second Life," Purbrick told me, "is that there are already lots of models of real-world objects that can be overlaid…so you can learn about real-world emissions, get a feel for the relative carbon cost of a kettle or car, without reading a spreadsheet."
Although the vast majority of Second Life’s two-million models obviously haven’t been annotated with CO2 data, the ease of integrating with the SL models allowed Purbrick and his team to build the system during a single programming craze at Mashed 08 in London last month.
Carbon Goggles shows the power of using virtual worlds to prototype ideas that are too difficult in the vastly more complicated real-world.
Now, if only an augmented-reality system would hurry into the market. One great looking future possibility is Enkin , in development for phones using Google’s Android OS. Via your phone’s built-in camera and screen, the software overlays navigation information straight onto what you’re looking at (oh, that’s the monorail! ):
Put the two together - while somehow finding a way to tag fast moving, small objects like cars - and you’d have a system for seeing the carbon aura of an object as easily as its paint job.
Want to know even more? Check out these videos of Carbon Goggles and Enkin .
Comments
Video: Carbon Goggles show you your carbon footprint: virtually | bitbucket.kylewelsh.com Jul 24, 2008 at 11:17 pm
[...] The Pop!Tech Blog alerts us to a cool, new feature available to Second Life users: Carbon Goggles. Second Life developer Jim Purbrick (known in-world as Babbage Linden) has created a project that uses the carbon counting service AMEE to let users view the carbon footprint of items they may use every day. When wearing the virtual goggles, Second Life users can determine the carbon footprint of an everyday item by looking at its virtual counterpart in Second Life. [...]
Sean Gibson Jul 25, 2008 at 1:14 pm
What about the carbon footprint of your avatar? I heard somewhere that an avatar consumes the equivalent amount of energy as the average Brazilian. Rumormongering maybe, but interesting. Current carbon footprint models track primarily offline lifestyles - time to update? I hear the average PC is idly generating power to the tune of 1,000 lbs of carbon dioxide emissions each year – and home electronics in an idle or “low power” mode account for 10% of total electricity in many homes.
Alexis Madrigal Jul 26, 2008 at 12:22 am
@Sean: I think it’s interesting but something along the lines of gesturengineering (see: http://is.gd/14vf). I have heard tell of a freeware app that’s going to be released next month, though, that will reduce your computer’s energy consumption 80 percent.
Get your carbon goggles on! « Jul 28, 2008 at 11:12 am
[...] perspective I think the goggles are a bit..utilitarian..but don’t take my word for it. Click here to find out more, oh and here to watch a wee movie about them, and congrats to Jim for a hugely [...]
subQuark Jul 28, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Second Life is a great venue to display this type of data. And it is another venue for increasing awareness and data visualization.
Great post, thanks.
Debra Jul 29, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Here we go again. More propaganda about something that is not true. Fact: 80% of the worlds CO2 comes from the sea. Fact: In a British court, it was found that the film made by Al Gore had 15 inaccuracies in it. 5 of these were completely untrue. One of these was the assertion that CO2 increases before the temperature rises when in fact it follows the rise by 200 to 800 years because it takes that long for the oceans to warm up to release it using the same data that was used in the film. Fact: The UN says it has 4000 scientists that support its THEORY that global warming comes from man, when recently, 39,000 scientists signed a petition stating that global warming comes from the increase in the suns temperature and the increase of volcanic activity in the oceans. Fact: CO2 is good for you because it increases the spread of vegetation which increases the amount of oxygen as it has always done when the earth is in this part of the cycle. Fact: Global warming is a precursor to an ice age. Anyone who thinks they can stop the natural cycles of the earth needs to visit the funny farm. Stop supporting lies and support the display of some truths for a change.
Bobbie Jul 29, 2008 at 4:25 pm
@Sean: I actually asked the team building the Goggles exactly that question when they were at the Mashed 08 event. It’d be good to get to the bottom of that claim.
@Debra: Your attempts to derail the conversation are not only pointless, but inaccurate. The British court ruling found nine assertions that were not supported by scientific consensus (much like your own statements), but the judge said he had “no complaint about Gore’s central thesis that climate change was happening and was being driven by emissions from humans”. I don’t see you spreading that one around.
This is not a forum for debate on climate change: please go and launch your trolling attacks elsewhere.
Debra Jul 30, 2008 at 1:56 am
Bobbie, I never said climate change wasn’t happening, plus anyone can find out for themselves about the court case to know the truth. The reasons for climate change needs to be debated everywhere to stop the lies that are being spread by those that have a vested interest in not telling the truth. Stop telling me what to do.
Dawn Danby Jul 30, 2008 at 11:42 am
As a visualization piece, this thing is great - and the artist is working with some of the best data available to him. Still, it’s a good example of the challenge we have around assigning CO2 footprints to products.
AMEE has some of the best CO2 data out there, but annotating objects with the Carbon Goggles involves assigning generic data to specific products. The example shown in the video takes a Scion tc 2008 and maps it to the AMEE database as a “generic” medium-sized car run on petrol. The outcome is a Scion tc 2008 that’s shown to emit 260 kg of CO2/month, giving us the false impression that the annotation is precisely linked to this car model. Which of course it isn’t - it’s just an average for all medium-sized petrol-fueled cars. (Yes, he does note that AMEE has some actual products in its database.)
Anyhow, looking forward to a time when we have the data to run this kind of thing properly
SusHI | Sustainability in Hawai`i » dude, get yer carbon goggles! on footprinting in second life Jul 31, 2008 at 7:28 pm
[...] “The nice thing about doing it in Second Life,” says Purbrick, “is that there are already lots of models of real-world objects that can be overlaid” (via poptech). [...]
Imagining your carbon footprint in Second Life at ecoviz.org Aug 7, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] learned about Carbon Goggles from the good people at PopTech. Carbon Goggles is a new application that allows us to visualize real world carbon emissions data [...]
Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » SL’s Carbon Goggles: Carbon Footprints Revealed Aug 11, 2008 at 10:06 pm
[...] reports that the motivation behind the project is to provide a real visual sense of the carbon emissions of [...]