[HN Gopher] Our Changing Planet, as Seen from Space
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Our Changing Planet, as Seen from Space
Author : YaleE360
Score : 58 points
Date : 2026-01-08 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| willparks wrote:
| > "Humans are altering the planet on an unthinkable scale"
|
| Mesmerizing photos, but hard to draw causal conclusions. Drought
| in Iraq is pictured directly above flooding in Australia. Maybe
| this is just the natural cycle of the planet. We don't have data
| to compare for more than just the last couple generations.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Paleogeologists beg to differ.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?lo...
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes we do. Please read the IPCC reports if you're curious about
| where the data comes from, there is a huge amount of climate
| data beyond the direct weather measurements you're referring
| to.
| not_wyoming wrote:
| The "natural cycle" argument is one of the most common points
| around climate change denial. It's also one of the most
| commonly debunked. See the following:
|
| UN - https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/debunking-
| eight-...
|
| MIT - https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/todays-climate-change-
| simila...
|
| Columbia University -
| https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/04/04/how-we-know-cli...
|
| It's also unclear to me how scientists might not have enough
| data to validate climate change in the last several hundred
| years, but they _do_ have enough data to validate the natural
| cycle hypothesis spanning thousands of years.
|
| I'm not going to engage more deeply here because this post has
| the smell of trolling to it, but if you're engaging in good
| faith, there are hundreds of reputable reports refuting the
| natural cycle hypothesis:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=natural+cycle+arguments+on+c...
| dfee wrote:
| California is, for the first time in 25 years, drought free:
| https://www.drought.gov/states/california#current-conditions
|
| In commentary on the article, a photo gallery of nine images, I
| didn't get much out of it. Maybe because it didn't show much
| actual change (aside from one side by side 5 years apart, and
| another one days or weeks apart?).
|
| Pretty pictures, not compelling. But, seeing the shipmap post
| from yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46527161)
| and the inframap today
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46536866) were more so.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| It is a common myth about these California "droughts." Like
| anywhere, water fluctuates, but CA is not abnormal in this
| regard.
|
| And really CA has plenty of water, but the people fight for the
| farmers for it, and the farmers win. Agriculture is about
| 80-90% of total use. All of residential, commercial,
| industrial, baseball fields, golf courses, residential lawns -
| all make up 10-20% of water use.
|
| So why the constant "drought"-alerts and admonitions to take
| shorter showers and flush less often? Because every gallon used
| in your home takes money out of a farmer's pocket. 1 flush ~=
| two almonds. A shower is ~5-10 almonds. 5 showers is an
| avocado. If you don't use it, they will - and if you use it,
| they can't.
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(page generated 2026-01-08 23:01 UTC)