OrbitRock

6 ms·

1.
by OrbitRock 5y ago
Well, the increased variability itself may be a part of the climate change. I’ll give an anecdote. I’m working on a project that tracks the length of the rainy season over time in a certain region. There is no clear trend one way or another
2.
by OrbitRock 5y ago
> Of course, from a short-term timeline (say 100 years), the rate of species extinction from global warming will surely outpace the rate of species creation, since evolution has no time to act. Which is really the only factor that matter
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Same here. I was a heavy smoker who struggled terribly to quit. But once I quit, well, your “pay me to drink petrol” analogy is accurate. Its been this way for about 10 years now. I just don’t smoke, it’s now repulsive to me, and there’s al
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Shifting baselines syndrome
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
> That “cow pasture/range” chunk is largely extremely low productivity scrub land owned by the federal government and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could convert all of it to national parks without much more than a bl
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Well, there’s a tipping point of deforestation beyond which the Amazon rainforest might collapse.
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
I agree that we should ideally minimize our agricultural footprint and turn everything else into a nature reserve. But we’ve got to work from the realities of where we are today. Consider this image: https://www.bloomberg.com&#x2
8.
by OrbitRock 5y ago
I disagree on the first note. The human footprint already covers nearly the entirety of the planet. Conservation of systems that are within or directly adjacent to that footprint is actually very important. Extraordinary amounts of biodiver
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Woah, your shade map is awesome! I was playing around with it for a long time there, lol.
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
There’s a tool called landtrendr that sort of does this, but it’s less for visualization than for analysis of trends https://emapr.github.io/LT-GEE/index.html
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Yep, but now it’s on Google Earth instead of Google Earth Engine
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
There’s a conservation goal that’s going around. 30 by 30. Or, 30% of the planet’s surface as protected areas by 2030. The Biden administration adopted it, but it’d be cool to see it as a global goal as well.
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Yup, to me it’s fascinating. We’re another level of the fractal of life, replicating patterns seen in bacterial biofilms, slime molds, circulatory systems, nervous systems, leaves, all manner of multicellular architectures. It’s certainly a
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
A problem like a traffic jam needs systemic coordinated action though to be able to solve. Complaining about the lack of perceived ability to get everyone acting is legitimate.
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
We understand it but humans are composed of a variety of minds and what the rational one wants isn’t necessarily what we do. Although conservation probably has more to do with reality looking different depending on your own local observatio
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Pretty sure it’s just Landsat data, which is freely available. As is Sentinel, MODIS, and a number of other satellite platforms. Google has been a pretty great pioneer on geospatial data science and visualization platforms, especially with
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
I’m into geospatial science, and I get so much aesthetic appreciation out of it. It is super artistic. The earth is beautiful!
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
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 his
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Great, now everybody will laugh when you try to name a variable “year”.
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
We really need an ñ operator
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
2030 is going to be a dystopia
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
Unless rising vapor pressure deficit undoes your gains from CO2 fertilization: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/8/eaax1396
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by OrbitRock 5y ago
There’s also a phenomenon that hotter conditions cause water to evaporate faster. The term here is vapor pressure deficit (VPD). VPD is the relationship between the amount of water in the atmosphere, temperature, and the rate of evaporation
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mRNA technology can change the world(theatlantic.com)
2 points by OrbitRock 6y ago|0 comments
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by OrbitRock 6y ago
I’m pretty sure the oxygen comes from CO2. Plant carbohydrates are made directly from CO2 in the Calvin Cycle. The Calvin Cycle is the source of all of the carbohydrate building blocks in the plant, and I’m pretty sure that oxygen from H2O
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by OrbitRock 6y ago
Lake Baikal is so large and ancient that it’s a major global hotspot for freshwater diversity, hosting entire families found nowhere else.
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by OrbitRock 6y ago
Well the stamp collecting is where the action is. If you wanna cure cancer, resolve chronic diseases, conserve ecosystems under climate change, etc. It’s cool to know that DNA exists and that life evolves by natural selection, but getting i
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by OrbitRock 6y ago
I once followed that thread of starting to observe nature around me so far that I ended up switching careers and became an ecologist, lol. It’s definitely good for the mind!
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by OrbitRock 6y ago
My top language learning advice: Get on an app to talk with natives. Plenty such apps exist, HelloTalk and iTalki being the main ones. In the spirit of this post, this has probably radically increased my own happiness, because I’ve 1) met f
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by OrbitRock 6y ago
> Main line of work (web) stalled but I picked up a solid amount of drone photography/videography work Do you mind me prying into what field you’re doing drone photo/videography in? I’ve done drone surveys before and always tho

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