Photo: Images of Change
There are 299 side-by-side comparisons to varying effect, so this isn’t so much an argument one way or another (in the larger conversation surrounding climate change and human impact), but rather an simple, straight-forward exhibition that the earth is indeed changing. And not all of them are even “bad” — in fact, a handful of them present us with evidence that we might occasionally be doing something right, such as forrest regrowth and decreased air pollution, albeit in isolated circumstances. The most surprising factor about this gallery of sorts are the shorter time frames; while a lot occurred over decades, a handful happened in as little as a year.
Air pollution reduction in the northeastern United States, from 2005 to 2011. Photo: Images of Change
Images of Change is a collection of before-after images collected by NASA, which began curating the comparisons back in 2009. Their team sits downs each week to look through images from the agencies many, many satellites, and then compile the demonstrative ones on the site. The site focuses on climate change offers groupings that allow users to drill down the causes to Cities, Extreme Events, Ice, Human Impact, Water, and Land Cover, as well as a Top Picks section.
The most dramatic would have to be the glacier melts, including the particularly telltale Muir Glaciers in Alaska.
Muir Glacier, in 1882 (left) and 2005. Photo: Images of Change
But right behind it would be the extensive altering to lakes, from degradation and diversion to shrinkage. Then there is the coastal changes and flooding and deforestation and… you get the point.
These studies are especially enlightening as there is a thing called “climate lag” which estimates that that there is 40 years between cause and effect. So much of what we’re dealing with today is a result of the 1960s.
Anyway, whatever you believe for the reasons as to why earth is changing, here is even more undeniable evidence that it is, as stated above, indeed changing.
