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A Terrifying, Fascinating Timelapse of 30 Years of Human Impact on Earth
- ISL 13y agoScroll the interactive map to watch the Amazon. The build-out of some Chinese cities are impressive too.
- NamTaf 13y agoHong Kong's massive projects to reclaim land are captured in this and makes for very impressive viewing.
- MichaelApproved 13y agoI don't see why these pictures are all terrifying. I'm amazed and impressed by many of them.
- coherentpony 13y agoReceding ice sheets don't terrify you? The felling of rainforest, the Earth's inhaler of carbon dioxide. Disappearing. All because of one species. Human beings. That is a chilling.
- dylangs1030 13y agoI don't mean to diminish your point, as I fully agree with environmental concerns. But I laughed when you said it's chilling that the ice sheets are receding.
- coherentpony 13y agoHeh, I didn't even notice that.
- nathannecro 13y agoSorry to burst your bubble, but you may be vastly overreacting. Talking about what's happening in both the Atlantic ice sheets and the Antarctic ice shelves can become complicated, and as far as I can tell (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) not definitive by any means. However, rainforests are by no means the "Earth's inhaler of carbon dioxide (and by extension I took that to mean 'oxygen producer' as well)". According to many sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest#Tropical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest#Tropical, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/broecker.htm http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/broecker.htm, http://www.iub.edu/~act/files/publications/1992-93/93-03_Deforestation_LandUse.pdf http://www.iub.edu/~act/files/publications/1992-93/93-03_Def...), rainforests do not contribute much to global oxygenation. In fact, organisms like the prochlorococcus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prochlorococcus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prochlorococcus have been theorized to be responsible for at least 50% to 60% of the world's atmospheric oxygen (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6952/full/nature01947.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6952/full/nature0... there's a paper in the references there which has that statistic, but I don't remember which). Today, these microbes are still hard at work, churning out oxygen and while some mistakes have been made (iron seeding, etc) they're still the most populous microbe on the planet. I would also contest the point about human beings. (This is my opinion talking now). I will not disagree that the earth's climate is changing rather rapidly (relative to the measurable past). I will argue though that it is arrogant to presume that humans are the root cause. On a micro scale, humans have been rather destructive to specific ecosystems. However, I have yet to see convincing proof that humans can effect climate change to this magnitude on a macro scale.
- danmaz74 13y ago"However, I have yet to see convincing proof that humans can effect climate change to this magnitude on a macro scale" Ok, let's start with something easier. Can we agree on the magnitude of the global changes that humans caused on the extension of forests and on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
- yread 13y agoHumas produce on the order of 3.10^13 kg of CO2 [1] Atmosphere weighs 5.1 . 10^18 [2] so the CO2 we produce is 1/100000 (or 0.001%) of the total weight. Atmosphere contains 0.046% CO2 by weight [3]. So, next year, it's going to be 0.047% [1] http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html [2] http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.htm... [3] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition-d_212.html http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition-d_212.html
- brc 13y agoIce sheets don't concern me one bit. Ice and cold is definitely one thing humanity can do with less of. Felling of rainforest is more of a concern for me. Especially when it is for palm oil, soybean and sugar cane plantations to produce bio fuel. That one makes me quite concerned.
- turing 13y ago"Ice sheets don't concern me one bit. Ice and cold is definitely one thing humanity can do with less of." You say that as if the melting of the ice sheets doesn't have its own downstream effects on the world's climate and ecosystems.
- ars 13y ago> The felling of rainforest, the Earth's inhaler of carbon dioxide. Actually, if (and I'm aware it's a big if) they cut down the rainforest and plant new trees there, it's actually a net win for carbon dioxide. There is nothing better for carbon dioxide than cutting down a tree and using it for wood or paper AND replacing it with a new young tree. Of course I don't know if they are actually doing that. And it's likely to be bad for the animals that live there. Best would be to thin the forest, and plant new trees as you go. (Or let the forest self seed.)
- markdown 13y ago> Actually, if (and I'm aware it's a big if) they cut down the rainforest and plant new trees there, it's actually a net win for carbon dioxide. I believe it depends on what you do with those trees. A lot of the deforestation occurs through burning. An area is logged (bad for the ecosystem, not so bad for carbon), then its cleared by burning (bad for carbon) to make room for farmland.
- yread 13y ago> to make room for farmland (bad for carbon if they feed livestock or use fertilizers there)
- kaybe 13y agoDepends on the soil. Rain forest soil is not very fertile, and the vegetation is quick to recycle - most nutrients are in the very top layer and in the plants at all times. Thus if you take away the trees without letting them rot and release the nutrients you could run into problems very soon. In mid-latitudes, on the other hand, it's not as big a problem because the recycling is a lot slower and the reservoir is far greater.
- rimantas 13y ago90% of species that ever lived on Earth are gone without any help from humans.
- polymatter 13y agoand we're rapidly getting through the remaining 10% too.
- rfatnabayeff 13y agoso if it's fine with the vanished 90%, why should one be bothered about 10%?
- itsybitsycoder 13y agoBecause we are in that remaining 10%, as are all of the species we rely on for food. Most people have an interest in the continuation of humanity, at least in theory.
- rfatnabayeff 13y agoMost people is interested in continuation of themselves and their close relatives. Seven billion of people, driven by this interest, form a hivemind that dictates their own fate. Should it be the extinction of 9.999% of species - so be it.
- icefox 13y agoThe rainforest's use up almost all of the oxygen that they put out. As far as carbon dioxide they are pretty net zero in the end. It is the Algie blooms that produce the oxygen surplus. While fun to say, rainforest's are not the earth's lungs. But don't take my word for it, checkout either the very good video (or search the transcript for "lungs") http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/earth-from-space.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/earth-from-space.html
- hkmurakami 13y agoThe Amazon deforestation one and the Glacier retreat are pretty shocking and terrifying for me. Wish a scale was provided for the deforestation one though, since it's difficult to grasp the scope of its effects without one. That being said I found the Dubai and Las Vegas ones fascinating.
- rosser 13y agoWatch the Vegas time-lapse again, but look at Lake Mead, not Las Vegas. EDIT: As for the scale of the Amazon deforestation, by zooming and scrolling the time-lapse map at the bottom of the article, I watched what looks like very nearly the entire Brazilian state of Rondônia go from rainforest to grassland in the 30-ish year period depicted. (Wikipedia says that 70k km² of its 200k km² of rainforest was cleared by 2003, while the map goes to to 2012.) [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rond%C3%B4nia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rond%C3%B4nia
- dylangs1030 13y agoI noticed that as well when I watched the Vegas timelapse. I wish there was an overlaying scale showing how much of the water receded, it looked like a significant amount.
- hkmurakami 13y agoAh great point. This will be really interesting to observe the changes in the water level over the next few years, since Las Vegas is now very efficient with its water usage and has some pretty hard limits on water usage, if I remember correctly.
- akavi 13y agoYou don't even need to zoom in that far to see it. Focus on Brazil and hit play, and you'll see the lower margin of the Amazon just dissolve upwards over 30 years.
- Zimahl 13y agoLake Mead is artificial. It will 'ebb and tide' as those who control it see fit. Therefore, it's not a great indicator of environmental collapse.
- MichaelApproved 13y agoToo late to edit my comment but I should have emphasized "all". Meaning, yes, some are terrifying how natural resources are being lost but others are just amazing and impressive without being terrifying at all.
- rfatnabayeff 13y agoThe Earth is fine, people. One herd of farting cows diminishes all the human effort in CO emission decrease in nearby town. One volcano eruption diminishes it worldwide. One major earthquake contributes to Earth landscape change more than all the humanity did. Claiming that human can change the Earth is like claiming that the single flea drives the whole elephant. Earth is fine, people.
- NamTaf 13y ago[citation needed]. Seriously, because there's a body of evidence [1] completely disagreeing with your assertions. You're directly going against the overwhelming majority [2] of scientific consensus with those statements. [1]: http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/volcanoes-co2-people-emissions-climate-110627.htm http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/volca... [2]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/05/17/97-percent-of-scientific-studies-agree-on-manmade-global-warming-so-what-now/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/...
- vixen99 13y agoHow many times does it need to be stated that science does not advance by consensus. Science is not an exercise in democracy. Evidence, yes, but please don't talk about consensus. I suggest you don't get your science from Discovery magazine or from the Washington Post. This link (from a sceptical website) cites innumerable original peer-reviewed papers showing that even the IPCC now retract on their earlier claims about an increase in extreme weather. You can find many more links to <evidence supported> data on the site. That said, we should all bemoan the cutting down of forest and the pollution of the oceans to mention only two aspects of man's disastrous activities on our planet. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/13/ipcc-ar5-draft-leaked-contains-game-changing-admission-of-enhanced-solar-forcing/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/13/ipcc-ar5-draft-leaked-...
- guelo 13y ago"Rawls has completely misrepresented the IPCC report." http://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-draft-leak-global-warming-not-solar.html http://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-draft-leak-global-warming-n...
- binarysolo 13y agoDoes anyone have an authoritative, scientific resource that can quantify human impact on Earth in our presumably negative ways? I want to understand more about the issues as a whole but from a macro standpoint, ideally backed with numbers and science from a trusted third party.
- dylangs1030 13y agoThe EPA's Memo of "Endangerment Finding": http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/endangerment/EndangermentFinding_ClimateChangeFacts.pdf http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/endangerment/Enda... The National Academy of Sciences: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10139&page=1 http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10139&page=1 The InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-... ^ About as scientific as it gets, attributing global climate change trends since the beginning of the 20th century to human beings with over 90% certainty.
- brc 13y agoYou will never get an authoritative unbiased scientific resource. There is no agreed measure on what 'impact' means, and whether that is positive or negative. One persons fantastic city is anothers urban blight on pristine wilderness. All published data are biased in some direction. You can measure conversion of wilderness to farmland, farmland to cities, displacement of wildlife, and many other factors. Much of the data is modelled. All of it is produced to prove one point of the other. Even when people agree on the data, they will disagree on the positive or negative impacts. The trusted third party is a mirage. All you can do is interpret the supplied data and arguments and make up your own mind.
- toast76 13y agoAmazing. This is the area where I grew up (in Australia). The area features 3 "open cut" coal mines. One of which has been going through a reforestation process over the past decade or so. http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/v=-38.2235574,146.46468559999996,11.614889860260392 http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/v=-38.2235574,146.46468...
- merah 13y agoThanks for this, really quite amazing sequence of images. Some extra detail on the past decade would be quite telling I'm sure.
- rfatnabayeff 13y agoThis is my native city (more than 1M of people): http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/v=54.739011,55.95804350000003,9.179454532197578 http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/v=54.739011,55.95804350... Everything seems fine so far. :)
- dwd 13y agoAlso of note is the 2009 bushfires that show up as a very distinct colour change in the Strzelecki ranges. If it went back further you could watch them relocate the town of Churchill.
- hkmurakami 13y agoWish this went back to the 60's. I have heard about how much of SV was farmland (orchards) when my parents first arrived, and would love to see a timelapse that visualizes the change over time here.
- eclipxe 13y agoSan Jose - pre Highway 85 & 87. I've always wanted to see maps of the area before they were built. This is great!
- enigmo 13y agoGoogle Earth lets you view old aerial and satellite images... they have portions of the peninsula back to the 1940's.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI find it interesting how many roofs turn white.
- tectonic 13y agoZoom out as far as possible. Drag the slider. Watch the snow-line retreat in the north of Canada and Russia.
- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoThese gifs are pretty much useless in showing the real destruction because they're only looking back 30 years and showing the changes of little plots of land here and there. If you compare North America today with what it was before Europeans landed. You'd see a truly horrifying picture. Something like 70% of the forests of North America are gone. Just load up google maps in satellite mode and look at the USA. Farms and settlements are literally everywhere. Brazil too has lost a massive chunk. Entire forests along the ocean are gone. So has europe. And in Australia Koalas are becoming endangered because of the loss of their habitat. In Asia, rain forests are being cut down for palm oil plantations. And don't even get me started on the "Great African Land Grab" in which rich countries bought prime fertile African land for pennies per hectare. This continues to this day: 6 percent of [the US lost it's] forest cover in just five years time, a total of 120,000 square kilometers (46,332 square miles) ( http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0427-hance_forestloss.html#PuEszYs3LDm28uWC.99 http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0427-hance_forestloss.html#PuE... ) Let's not forget the enormous swaths of plastic swimming around in all the major oceans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch The fact that more than half of all the streams in the USA are too polluted to support normal life: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300022/More-HALF-U-S-rivers-polluted-support-life-shocking-report-reveals-scale-water-contamination.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300022/More-HALF-U-... And don't get me started on particles from the pollution in China crossing the Pacific Ocean and entering the US Eastern Coast. As well as residents living near highways have a 27% increase in Asthema. And the list goes on and on.
- Zimahl 13y agoI can't speak to the forest practices of S. America or other continents but regarding US and Canadian forest practices that article is complete FUD. First, it equates 'forest loss' to legitimate forest management - grow, cut, replant. Second, there is more forests now than there were in 1930 (I'll find the source in the morning). Now that's a slightly dubious stat since post-railroad logging there was only natural regrowth but we manage our forests very, very well these days. The last place for environmental concern in the US and Canada should be to the forests. It's in everyone's interest to have healthy forests - from the logger to the landowner to the mill worker to the multinational.
- hfsktr 13y agoI am still amazed at how small the UK is (I think I read it was roughly the size of Florida). Even though I knew the general area I had to zoom farther than I thought to see it. On second look I think it's the type of map. It seems lower than I would recognize from other maps. The area around Cairo expanded like crazy. Definitely bookmarking this for later.
- jballanc 13y agoPictures are certainly worth a certain number of words, but sometimes all you really need is the hook of an idea to really grasp a much larger concept. In this case, I've always been caught by something Jared Diamond wrote in "Germs, Guns, and Steel". (What do you mean you haven't read it? Drop everything and go read it now!) I'm paraphrasing, but the gist was this: You know that war that the US has been fighting in Iraq? You know all the images of desert warfare from over there? That's the "Fertile Crescent". If it doesn't seem so fertile any longer, that's almost entirely due to human activity.
- WalterBright 13y agoFrom what I've read about the ancient history of Egypt, the area has gone through major cycles of fertility and desertification.
- brazzy 13y ago> If it doesn't seem so fertile any longer, that's almost entirely due to human activity. Bullshit. The area was never fertile in the way it's understood by people used to temperate climates. There were never (during the course of human history) lush green forests covering everything. The fertile areas were (and continue to be) only along rivers (Euphrat, Tigris, Jordan, Nile) and greatly extended through irrigation (i.e. human activity).
- fla 13y agoWatch the Aral sea dissapear : http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=45.03875,59.72822,5.58,latLng&t=2.24 http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=45.03875,59.72822...
- Nux 13y ago"The planet is fine, the people are fucked!" - George Carlin
- vegasbrianc 13y agoWow. It is quite scary these pictures. I lived in Vegas for 10 years and personally saw Lake Mead slowly going away every year. I hope more people will take notice and help anyway they can.
- moheeb 13y agoI'll be sure to urinate directly in Lake Mead.
- EarthLaunch 13y agoThe ignorance and fear-mongering in this thread is far more terrifying to me. The environmental movement is intellectually disgusting.
- aidenn0 13y agoTake a look at the area just west of Dulles Airport. The 80s is when that all started turning from farm land to suburbs at an astonishing rate.
- tomohawk 13y agoMaybe more horrifying would be time lapse of Washington DC area
- tomohawk 13y agoI've been looking at the aftermath of the deforestation of Ireland for the past couple of weeks. The country was down to about .1% forest in 1900 due to: clearing forests to put down insurgency, building British navy, burning wood for fuel, clearing marginal land for potatoes (then abandoning it after a couple of years), sheep. After the wood was gone, people started burning the soil (peat) for heating. Now, much of Ireland is a denuded landscape that may never recover. The scary thing is that this is now what people are used to and think is normal. Reforestation has brought back the forest cover to 10%, but most of it seems to be non-native species and not the Oaks, Elms, etc that used to be here.