quote:

---

The United Nations has unveiled a new world atlas that uses satellite imagery to show the often damaging environmental changes sweeping the planet.

---

quote:

---

...Peduzzi underlined that the images also showed humanity's capacity to repair environmental damage.

The industrial city of Copsa Mica -- regarded by UNEP as "one of the sickliest in the world" -- and surrounding hills showed up as a black stain on the Romanian countryside in 1986.

Last year the countryside was green again and city buildings could be distinguished from outer space...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by skdadl:
kurichina and Contrarian: Please correct my vision for me if I'm wrong, but I have been studying the PDF of London from that atlas (I took it up to 50 per cent so that I could read it), and I gotta say, the satellite photo of London from 2004 looks better than the one of 1976.

???

---

I don't think you're wrong. I interpreted those photomontages the same way.

If that's right, I can think of two possible explanations (not mutually exclusive). The first is they burn a whole lot less coal in the UK now than thirty years ago. Less coal, less acid rain, more chance for undeveloped areas to revegetate.

The second is that a lot of industrial sites have been abandoned. Initially, such places ("brownfield sites" they're generally called) sprout a lot of weeds, scrubby trees, etc., and I imagine many of them are still in such a state. But at the same time, probably some have been redeveloped as residential areas, on the leafy-estate model, or at least as the kind of commercial/light-industrial areas which feature modern, low-slung, smokestack-free buildings surrounded by acres of grass.

Anyone who has an old computer to get rid of could do worse than donate it to Computers for Schools. Of course they won't take certain things, but as long as it's a Pentium II or better, or Power Mac or better, no problem.

How heartless are you, 'lance?

quote:

---

Get rid?!? Of Young Ironsides?!? Or Old Ironsides, for that matter, who must now qualify for some sort of museum?!?

---

Oh well, if you put it that way -- I mean, I've always had a soft spot for obsolete technology. It must go back to my childhood, when the first stereo we had (actually not a stereo, but a monaural system -- insert "mono" jokes to taste) was something my dad had built himself from a kit around 1960. It had a reel-to-reel tape deck and all.

Otherwise, though, it helps to develop a certain sense of non-attachment, lest one end up thigh-deep in clutter. When my vintage 1991 Mac Classic II died a few years back, I thought about trying to resurrect it by buying the equivalent on Ebay and swapping in the motherboard, but eventually decided that all things must pass. Or, to put it another way...

< bad Yorkshire >

Noothin's pairmanent in this flippin' life, noothin' laahsts.

< /bad Yorkshire >

So, with a "well done, thou good and faithful servant," I took it to a City of Calgary e-recycling day, and bade a reluctant farewell.

quote:

---

How heartless are you, 'lance?

---

Come come, skdadl -- faithless != heartless.

quote:

---

But it's easy to keep the old lappies, so I do, and besides, Young Ironsides has all your self-incriminating PMs on him, 'lance.

---

quote:

---

the satellite photo of London from 2004 looks better than the one of 1976.

---

... a satellite photo taken of eastern North America today would look vastly more green than a hypothetical one taken in Thoreau's time, around 1840, when deforestation was the rule, given all the small farmers and logging operations throughout New England the mid-Atlantic states, as this cover story in The Atlantic points out (cannot access archive right now; to post later if I can):

"An explosion of green"
McKibben, Bill. The Atlantic Monthly.
Boston: Apr 1995.
Vol. 275, Iss. 4; pg. 61, 15 pgs

Subjects: Forests, Environmental protection, Conservation
Locations: Eastern states
Document types: Feature
ISSN/ISBN: 10727825
Document URL:

Abstract (Document Summary)
The reforestation of the eastern part of the US can show the developing world how to make room for farming, industry, people, and endangered species. However, the fortunate eastern region of the US still faces problems.

......

according to this article, a dozen US states have surged from 30-40 per cent forest coverage to over 70 per cent today, the opposite of popular perceptions

a similar situation has developed in my part of the world, alpine France, where there has been a sustained return of forest cover to former marginal farmlands, with the auxiliary result of a return of wildlife not seen in any numbers for decades, and even a century or more, esp. the wolf (ask sheep herders! ) and elsewhere in Europe, the Pyrenees to some small extent, of the bear

nature is fragile; it is also resilient

[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Geneva ]