The purpose of NASA's Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet.

NASA Earth Observatory

The MODIS Land Rapid Response system has been developed to provide rapid access to MODIS data globally, with initial emphasis on 250m color composite imagery and active fire data. The experience gained during the Montana fires of 2000, when the MODIS team was asked to provide active fire information to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), has led to the improvement and automation of several of the steps involved in MODIS rapid data provision.

Very close to what I'm looking for...

MODIS Rapid Response System

] Each day a different image or photograph of our
] fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief
] explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Some days are more interesting then others..

Astronomy Picture of the Day

] Talk.Origins is a Usenet newsgroup devoted to the discussion and
] debate of biological and physical origins. Most
] discussions in the newsgroup center on the
] creation/evolution controversy, but other topics of
] discussion include the origin of life, geology,
] biology, catastrophism, cosmology and theology.

This is an encyclopedic resource on theories of creation. Of course, those with particularly strong opinions are unlikely to be interested in reading this. But in certain cases it could be helpful. For example, someone told me a few weeks ago that Darwin renounced his theories on his death bed. Turns out thats not true... (or at least highly unlikely)

The Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution/Intelligent Design Controversy

This is pretty neat. Scientists have isolated a bacterium that turns a toxin into a plastic...very useful:)

Bacteria turn toxin into plastic

] The plus: the multidimensional topology of space in three
] dimensions will seem simple at last and a million dollar
] reward will be there for the asking. The minus: the
] solver does not claim to have found a solution, he
] doesn't want the reward, and he certainly doesn't want to
] talk to the media.

Maths holy grail could bring disaster for internet

] John Walker recently helped me run a little computer
] experiment with me to quantify the word linkiness
] distribution. Rather than wrestling with the vague notion
] of which words suggest which other words, we took an
] electronic dictionary file and decreed that any two words
] are linked if either of the words appears in the
] dictionary definition of the other word.

Rudy Rucker has been doing the sidebar on Boing Boing. The most recent post was kind of interesting.

Rudy Rucker on Boing Boing

A must-have for mad science laboratories everywhere.

Only you can prevent Gray Goo

] He was quoted as stating that "competent physicists,
] chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of
] thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not
] evolve from biological materials since the last quarter
] of the 19th century."

Hrm. This article is interesting in light of our discussions about energy. It makes two mistakes. First, it grossly overestimates how widely accepted this theory is. There are a lot of articles up on the net about this theory and its author. Largely, they seem to say that this is simply unproven. It might be true, but no one is sure, and there are reasons to be skeptical of it.

The second mistake is what this theory, if true, implies for oil as a resource. It does imply that we have a lot more oil then we think we do, but how much is totally unclear, as the actual theory is unproven. In order to measure the size of something you must first establish that it exists. Also, whether or not oil is "renewable" is debatable. Gold is talking about oil renewal in tens of thousands of year timeframes. Thats a far site more rapid then the millions of year timeframes the presently accepted theories promote. However, its not commerically "renewable" on human timescales.

WorldNetDaily: Sustainable oil?

As it happens, several significant new books ... could settle the debate right now -- if people take the trouble to read them.

Most public debates in the US seem to fall into this category.

Those looking for some facts to go along with their "rich people will destroy our future" hypothesis could do worse then to look at this information (and they typically do). The reality that we've accepted a several degree temperature increase over the next 100 years regardless of who is counting, coupled with recent revelations about bifurcations in the equilibrium states of oceanic systems. The worst case realistic scenario is in fact rather troubling. Not "we're all going to die" troubling, but certainly "England is no longer really a hospitable place to live" troubling.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.