Outstanding!! now we can have a look at how we all were blessed with our planet (history) and what we have had done to it. Hopefully we all contribute to restore it for better future...
Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
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Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#32This is the stuff I'd like to see Google do more of. Build things that are true to their mission of Collecting and organising the world's information. Truly remarkable.
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Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#33It makes the loss of the Amazon rain forest actually tangible instead of some vague conception of 10% gone. This is outstanding.
There’s lots of great tools to explore such things as well.
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/
https://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-...
I built an app which visualizes global fire history per year from 2001 to 2020, still working out some kinks but maybe will share here.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#34>unfold and witness nearly four decades of planetary change. four decades of meaningless uncontrolled overpopulation, destruction of pristine nature and its ecosystems, a march of techno-globalism across the planet. Every time I see these timelapses it depresses me quite a bit.
Something to get excited about: we now have a tool that will be used by the world to see the changes. Sometimes a picture can be a much more powerful argument than a billion data points.
p.s. username checks out.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#35I'm no fan of the deforestation that is being shown here, but for a Westerner to tell people in the Global South to not deforest is hypocritical and economically deceitful. Look at pretty much all of Europe and the Eastern United States. It has almost been all deforested and replaced with farmland at some point. Agriculture is an important step in a county's economic stability and progress. Some trees need to be cut down and that land be turned into farmland to help that developing county's citizens. Imagine being a poor framer supporting a growing family with an opportunity to grow more of your crop by cutting down some trees and having rich white people in a post scarcity society telling you you're a bad person.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#36I’ve built a Twitter bot around these timelapses a while ago – just updated to use the newly released data set: https://twitter.com/earthacrosstime
You can take a look at the source code here if you’re interested: https://github.com/doersino/earthacrosstime
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#37ok, but what about reaching parity with the desktop version?
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#38That's pretty cool! Like it or not Google does all this with the ad money they bring in. Imagine if all Google service were subscription based. Will they even have 25% of the capabilities they have now?
I agree with you, its something only possible because they are throwing off cash. But is it worth them having turned much of the internet into a cesspit?
I'm conflicted. On one hand you could argue it's like some dictatorship putting on lavish parades while conditions in their regime are generally terrible (I'm not trying to compare the magnitude of the problem, just the idea that having something fancy to show doesn't necessarily cancel out all the harm done)
Or is it a natural positive byproduct of capitalism that the internet has garbage strewn corners filled with listicles and "content" alongside genuinely cool stuff. And trying to clamp down on this would just make everything mediocre.
Anyway, there are definitely lots of good things Google had done, in research, in public availability of tech, and in cool stuff like this. Are we making the right tradeoff against all the bad they have done, I don't know.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#39This is an incredible tool. I know there are other ways to look at timelapses of aerial views but this is just so easy and useable. Watching the change of specific suburban areas in the US brings a lot of negative emotions for me. Seeing what used to be green areas slowly transform into more suburban sprawl, I can't help but think of the number of species who experienced their ecosystem's walls closing in on them. As…
I’m into geospatial science, and I get so much aesthetic appreciation out of it. It is super artistic. The earth is beautiful!
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#40I kinda wish that there was a timelapse for Google search. Search seems to be heavily biased towards stuff popular right now. It seems older things disappear fairly quickly.
I've been in a position where I wanted to search for a website that was popular in 2012 without having the exact name, and having to find an old forum post that linked to it to find it.