Google Earth Now Shows Decades of Climate Change in Seconds (bloomberg.com) 66
Google Earth has partnered with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab to bring users time-lapse images of the planet's surface -- 24 million satellite photos taken over 37 years. Together they offer photographic evidence of a planet changing faster than at any time in millennia. Shorelines creep in. Cities blossom. Trees fall. Water reservoirs shrink. Glaciers melt and fracture. From a report: "We can objectively see global warming with our own eyes," said Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth. "We hope that this can ground everyone in an objective, common understanding of what's actually happening on the planet, and inspire action." Timelapse, the name of the new Google Earth feature, is the largest video on the planet, according to a statement from the company, requiring 2 million hours to process in cloud computers, and the equivalent of 530,000 high-resolution videos. The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery from the U.S.'s Landsat program, which is run by NASA and the USGS. When combined with images from complementary European Sentinel-2 satellites, Landsat provides the equivalent of complete coverage of the Earth's surface every two days. Google Earth is expected to update Timelapse about once a year.
bloomberg's website sucks (Score:3)
Re:bloomberg's website sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
I have so much ad blocker stuff installed that I didn't even notice. Another one if the blockers don't catch are plugins like BehindTheOverlay which sometimes, but not always, and re-enable a site that has annoying subscription overlays.
Many of these news sites keep track of cookies that let you check out a few articles for free each time period (week? month?), before showing you the subscription overlay. Browsing in incognito mode usually ends that trick.
Honestly, if a bunch of news publications got together and started a discounted membership where I could subscribe to all of them for some nominal fee. I'd do it. I don't really want to pay $5 a month for 5-10 different sites. I'd rather pay $15/month as a bundle.
Here you go. (Score:5, Informative)
Here. This is the gist. [assets.bwbx.io]
Also Bypass Paywalls [github.com] is great.
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Re:fitty years (Score:5, Insightful)
it's still science, even if it's not the complete picture. Frankly the general public doesn't have the attention span for the complete science on any topic, nor the background to grasp it. Although with effort people can learn it if they choose to. Scientists and educators struggle with helpful metaphors and visual presentations in order to engage the public and those who determine public policy. Continued failure will cost us dearly as a society.
Adult functional literacy is low [ed.gov] and science literacy (I did not find numbers for adults, sorry!) is considered a big problem as well.
fifty experts. (Score:2)
Frankly the general public doesn't have the attention span for the complete science on any topic, nor the background to grasp it.
Would explain the low turnout on science and technical articles on slashdot vs the social and political stories. e.g. RMS, religion, piracy, privacy, etc, a higher turnout with "experts" coming out of the woodwork.
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Slashdot isn't a rigorous scientific journal.
To use a car analogy, if you've bought a minivan expecting it to be the fastest thing on the road ... well, I'm not sure where you got that idea.
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The climate change we're concerned with is sea-level rise
Is that true?
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The effect there though (the shifting beaches) is erosion. The climate change we're concerned with is sea-level rise and it doesn't seem to change at all in those images.Unless we are now blaming humans for waves?
Except rising sea levels with speed up the erosion.
As will bigger and more frequent storms.
That erosion will usually dump the sand somewhere else, which is why some islands are getting bigger even with rising sea levels. Swings and roundabouts, same as all climate change. It won't be uniform everywhere.
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it's still science, even if it's not the complete picture.
No it isn't, it's theatre. Like when they show the typical photo of dry cracked earth on the front of a Climate Change report.
Well guess what, we had deserts before humans, and the actual 'science' says the extra CO2 is making deserts more green: https://www.csiro.au/en/news/n... [csiro.au]
Where is my animation showing the deserts getting greener thanks to CO2? You won't see it because it doesn't fit the narrative.
fitty [human] years (Score:2)
Well I imagine for a species that only lives roughly a hundred years, 4 billion years doesn't really matter.
Re:fitty years (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:fitty years (Score:4, Interesting)
To be clear, when the Yellowstone caldera blows, it'll be bad for a long, long time. And that's an understatement but living where I do... But normal volcanic activity isn't that much - you hear about one or two volcanic eruptions a year normally and most of the remaining volcanoes just give off a relatively small amount of CO2. From what I read even Krakatoa didn't really affect the global CO2 much. It did eject 6 cubic miles of rock though and was heard 1,930 miles away. So, there's that.
The thing is something big like Krakatoa or the Yellowstone caldera eruption does much more than just dump CO2 into the atmosphere. The last eruption at Yellowstone dumped up to 660 feet of ash in places in the US. The ash fall covered a good chunk of the west-central U.S. Covering all the farmland and ranchland (and interstates and railroads) in the U.S. with varying levels of ash isn't going to be short term good for anybody. There is frequently enough ash and other gases dumped into the air to reduce sunlight affecting lots of other systems. All this eventually settles and things get back to normal, but it is these other effects that I think are more important from the huge explosions than CO2 emissions.
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Let me call your elementary school math teacher, should give you a healthy dose of ass-whopping for not paying attention in class.
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That half the article is about urban sprawl and deforestation - might contribute to climate change but its hardly evidence of it.
Re: fitty years (Score:2)
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I believe that the NASA satellites were offline for a few billion years at the start of the planet. It was only recently that they were able to get them fixed and operational again. Sorry for the technical difficulties.
Uh oh (Score:5, Informative)
Top minds of slashdot are about to debunk climate change. For all the smooth brains out there here is a pretty picture to help explain things.
https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
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Na, you are just bad at math. The positive and negative areas below the curve are obviously identical in 1961-1990 range.
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Nope. Also, global temperatures have dropped since 2016, meaning his "best-case scenario" projection is already higher than the real global temperature track. His line also doesn't track the actual data from any of the temperature series.
But like I said, it's a cartoon. If you think a cartoon proves anything scientifically, you're an idiot.
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Nope.
Yup.
I know its hard, but imagine rotating the the shapes formed by the curve.
Also, global temperatures have dropped since 2016, meaning his "best-case scenario" projection is already higher than the real global temperature track.
So what? We are talking about how bad you are at math, not climate change generally.
His line also doesn't track the actual data from any of the temperature series.
So what? We are talking about self-contradictions in the cartoon. External data sources are irrelevant.
Re: Uh oh (Score:2)
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Who're you gonna believe? The climate change skeptics or your own lying eyes?
Millenia (Score:1)
Not disputing anything related to climate science, but the writing....
"Together they offer photographic evidence of a planet changing faster than at any time in millennia."
"The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery..."
Have we redefined the unit "millennia"?
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"The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery..."
Have we redefined the unit "millennia"?
They mean "millennia" for Millennials; for Gen Z and beyond, it's 5 years. :-)
Re: Millenia (Score:2)
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"The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery..."
Have we redefined the unit "millennia"?
And herein lies the problem with the Cult of Climate Change. There could very well be some real science under there, but 99% of it is cult-ish behaviour.
Most of the shock/horror imagery meant to show 'Climate change' is actually results of other things, mostly poorly implemented methods of industrialization eg the Aral sea.
Then the cult wonders why people don't buy into the rest of the lies.
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There could very well be some real science under there
Yeah, like basically all of it.
Then the cult wonders
I guess you are referring to the anti-science morons like you.
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Yeah, like basically all of it.
Then also:
I guess you are referring to the anti-science morons like you.
Science is about asking questions. When you simply resort to insults when you idea is questioned, you are more than likely in a cult.
The other value attribute to science is the ability to make useful predictions. How is that working out? https://cei.org/blog/wrong-aga... [cei.org]
Not AGW (Score:1)
Despite what the summary says, most of the examples are not a result of AGW. In one example, they show solar panels being added in an area over time. Cool, but that isn't even climate change.
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Exactly.
In another image land use change from forest to farm land in Brazil.
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No it doesn't. (Score:2)
It shows the EFFECTS of climate change as they have happened UNTIL NOW. These effects we experience are trailing actual climate change by 4-5 decades.
Important distinction.
What no shots of tree farms? (Score:1)
Selective editing doesn't really help build a case for "climate change." Carnegie Mellon should focus on real science and less on pop science with political spin. Absolutely pathetic. I guess that's the kind of thing we can expect to come out of a high class American institutions these days, as they continue to rot with the other legacy media systems.
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There are literally shots of tree farms, if you had clicked on the link.
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Click on the second link in the summary then click on "Changing Forests."
as long as ALL the data is available (Score:2)
can't see this being a bad thing.
problems occur when you can't check the source material....
Deniers will say it's all fake liberal conspiracy (Score:1)
Convinced (Score:2)
I was a skeptic until just now. I had my doubts that the people who can barely forecast tomorrow were going to be better at tax day 2121 or 3121. I had even bigger doubts about economic forecasts.
But I'm here to announce that I've officially changed my mind. This stunning new evidence has convinced me.
I pulled up a view near my home and watched the whole timelapse from beginning to end. Holy Shit! Did you know that we've had 36 mini ice ages since the era of digital satellite photography began 37 years
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More Global warming BS (Score:1)
How many more carbon emissions (Score:2)
Did they add with those 2 million hours of image processing?