Is the resolution of the images off? In my area where recent images have decent resolution, all images in time-lapse mode are very low res, including ones from. 2016, 2020.
Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
381–390 of 436 posts
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think other organisms have the capacity to destroy the planet and make it uninhabitable. That attribute is uniquely human.
There's some evidence that around 2B years ago microbes decreased the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere so much by overpopulation that 99% of the biosphere died.
I guess you mean The Great Oxygen Extinction Event (2.4-2.0 Ga).
In that case, it's presumed it was indeed a massive extinction (but no data to quantify any % over, due to no microbial fossils preserved).
... But for a different reason. It wasn't due to decrease in oxygen levels; contrary to that. At that time, oxygen was being first ever introduced into the atmosphere. This has left a unique geological trace we observe everywhere across the planet: the white sedimentary + red rust striped 2 Ga rocks.
The "microbes" were the first photosynthesisers. The oxygen was a toxic byproduct. Resistance to it had to be learned by evolution, and that learning took ~1e8 years. Many of life didn't manage to and went extinct.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#383Google Earth may be one of the most wondrous things ever created. When else in human history can you zoom in on the entire geography of the Earth, and now the timelapsed geography of the Earth? Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton, Galileo, or Darwin would say using this tool?
Visualising the Earth at planet scale is incredible. I was blown away when the first wind map [1] made it's way onto HN almost a decade ago. I always thought of wind being localised but to see all the currents flow across the USA was soooo cool. It's inspired me to work on my own map of live mountain shadows across the Earth (link in my user profile if you're interested) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37678…
Shade map is cool, which data source are you using for the height map?
I've been working on something similar (link also in user profile).
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your sarcastic point is kind of valid, IMHO. Humans establishing self-sufficient communities beyond Earth would prove that humans have the capability to thrive sustainably on Earth. It would silence forever any technological objections to the possibility of human sustainability on Earth. And a firm idea that humans can never establish self-sustaining communities in space is not that far from the idea that we probably…
I don’t think there’s anything more important than being an outward-looking, striving species. Once we get depressed and nihilistic and give up, the universe will be forever deprived of the colour and drama human civilization can add to all those bare rocks up there. I never considered that the implication is we could live here sustainably, but you’re right.
Striving for what though?
These discussions tend to be heavy on Asimov-inspired scifi-think and weak on just taking a walk in a forest on a nice sunny day in late spring. All this talk about having to colonize space is just rubbish, compared to the wonders of nature that would be worth preserving.
But the audience here is strongly biased. If most of your day is spent in front of a computer and reading scifi novels in the evening, then that's where the discussion moves.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Where do we start? Do you think running out of oil will go smoothly? We already can't stand still for 5 minutes without blowing someone up in a resource war and basically all of our resources are plentiful for now. Rising sea levels decreasing usable land. Rising temperatures destroying key organisms in the food chain. Mass deforestation is destroying the very things that allow…
One of the greatest features of mankind is the response to disasters. When situation gets really bad, we are capable of achieving incredible things that would normally be impossible. Example: Second world war. You might argue that it was not disaster comparable to climate change, but it did turn entire world upside down, disrupting everything aspect of life of vast majority of world's population. But it also led to i…
Oh ffs. Yes, "we" will survive, as in there will not be a human race extinction event, most likely. However, that's ignoring the hunger, suffering, and deaths that are coming our way. Many of "us" won't survive, and/or will have miserable lives, especially those of us who happen to be poor. As just one example of many, have a look at the potential of large regions reaching a wet-bulb-temperature above human tolerability: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838
Taking an approach that "we will sort it out" ignores that the disaster is already unrolling, just too slow for most of us to notice. The longer we linger, the worse the situation, and the higher the human toll.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It’s true that without dramatic action in the next couple of decades..." You missed the first part of their sentence. On the flipside perhaps you're a little too much into doomsday scenarios? We've quite literally transformed the entire planet and way of living inside of 30 years since personal computation technology took off. I really don't see it as particularly farfetched that we can correct for our negative cons…
How about these lines then: > Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades, if not centuries or > In the absence of major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by an average of 6 °C There is not much major action going on (except for the electrification of vehicles which is being driven by commercial venture)…
You keep picking half sentences that leave off the part saying we can do things to prevent catastrophe. At this point I can only believe you aren’t coming from a place of intellectual honesty.
You also keep saying scientific consensus and data points but considering I keep finding information to the contrary and you’ve provided nothing I really think you mean your own personal and emotion driven stance. Of which I don’t buy.
Yup climate change is a big issue, we'll probably solve it to a point humanity and the broader earth will be fine in a reasonable time. Just like every other crazy things we've pulled off during the same geological instant.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the greatest features of mankind is the response to disasters. When situation gets really bad, we are capable of achieving incredible things that would normally be impossible. Example: Second world war. You might argue that it was not disaster comparable to climate change, but it did turn entire world upside down, disrupting everything aspect of life of vast majority of world's population. But it also led to i…
Oh ffs. Yes, "we" will survive, as in there will not be a human race extinction event, most likely. However, that's ignoring the hunger, suffering, and deaths that are coming our way. Many of "us" won't survive, and/or will have miserable lives, especially those of us who happen to be poor. As just one example of many, have a look at the potential of large regions reaching a wet-bulb-temperature above human tolerabil…
Sorry, I meant it differently. What I was trying to say was that we (mankind) respond best to disasters = sudden catastrophic events, but really bad to frog-boiling ones.
It would be best to do nothing and let it all reach a critical point to trigger that survival instinct, because nothing short of that will be able to force us to do anything about it, other than some weak, irrelevant attempts.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mine isn't either of those, or any other variation. The point is that since you are not them, you can't know what they would do. Your "interpretation" is just making them after your self image, thinking that that is what it means to be "advanced".
A more charitable interpretation is that an advanced civilization would be more likely to ensure it's own longevity and durability by engaging in serious, disciplined conservation of resources. Pretty simple observation, really.
Their resources don't have to be the same ones you need. They might have technology to produce everything they need and disregard any other ecosystem, especially ours.
You are again just projecting what you/we need on them, like the parent comment.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Where do we start? Do you think running out of oil will go smoothly? We already can't stand still for 5 minutes without blowing someone up in a resource war and basically all of our resources are plentiful for now. Rising sea levels decreasing usable land. Rising temperatures destroying key organisms in the food chain. Mass deforestation is destroying the very things that allow…
One of the greatest features of mankind is the response to disasters. When situation gets really bad, we are capable of achieving incredible things that would normally be impossible. Example: Second world war. You might argue that it was not disaster comparable to climate change, but it did turn entire world upside down, disrupting everything aspect of life of vast majority of world's population. But it also led to i…
One of the worst features of humanity is that we’ve proven ourselves incapable of planning more than a few years ahead. The fact that it takes acute crises to get us to take dramatic action is the problem: climate change and biosphere collapse take a while to start affecting people (especially the global rich), and once things get bad enough for mass action it’s probably too late to save our civilization.
I look at the insanity in how the US responds to small movements of people now and despair at the thought of how we’ll deal with simultaneous waves of millions of climate refugees alongside the predictable handful of domestic crises.
Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's some excellent wishful thinking, and I hope you're right. Meanwhile, I've read plenty of articles suggesting that we're likely in for unavoidable and hugely disruptive warming, at the very least, and I don't currently see us globally acting quickly enough. I've also taken an amateur interest in ecology and the natural sciences, and once you actually learn a bit about the species around you, the loss of habitat…
I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for starters. There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The idea that humanity c…
That’s a very common line of reasoning which I would call magical thinking. Sure, there’s not really any risk that humans will go extinct in the near future, but our technological global civilization is much more fragile.
First, we look at the numbers concerning best case scenarios and see that a few degrees of warming is basically inevitable. Then, we ask how likely it is that well make rapid corrections now - personally I see little evidence of that, but I hope I’m wrong.
Next, try to remember that nothing in the world is disconnected. There’s a long scholarship concerning resource conflict and the destabilizing effects of mass migration. We don’t have a good track record of dealing with this, and I see little reason to expect us to become better at it soon.
The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me - what we’re really talking about are emergency uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster. We’ve organized our entire global economic system around carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from the atmosphere, which is a problem you’re underestimating the difficulty of.
Meanwhile, we need to worry about positive feedback cycles from various sources of methane, and the rest of the related threats to our biosphere (ocean acidification, wildfire, extreme weather).
To close, what has humanity done to convince you that we’ll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively solve this crisis “once it gets bad enough”?