51–58 of 58 posts
It would continue even if we disappeared today. We have spread invasive species all over the place. Many of them haven't even been noticed yet. This includes stuff like soil fungus. Even when we do notice, we do nothing. Cats are a huge problem, but obsessed cat lovers are well-organized politically. They show up in force at every town council and country commissioner meeting where a cat issue comes up, defending stu…
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I just meant that my reduced negative externalities will be produced instead by an opportunistic actor. If half of Americans said "burning carbon is bad, I'll ride a bike instead" it would largely be making gas cheaper for the other half, who would then just buy bigger, heavier SUV's. This doesn't apply to all things, just cost-limited goods where the negative externalities aren't priced in. Plastic is basically free…
Pretty much this. If you want to reduce the consumption of some thing, make it more expensive. Paradoxically: increased efficiency reduces costs and so increases total consumption. This was noted by economist and engineer William Stanley Jevons, in the 19th century. There are different ways of increasing costs, and not all necessarily involve prices (or taxes), though those tend to be the most effective and easiest w…
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Pretty much this. If you want to reduce the consumption of some thing, make it more expensive. Paradoxically: increased efficiency reduces costs and so increases total consumption. This was noted by economist and engineer William Stanley Jevons, in the 19th century. There are different ways of increasing costs, and not all necessarily involve prices (or taxes), though those tend to be the most effective and easiest w…
Smaller scale of production usually decreases efficiency, increases costs, and thereby decreases consumption.
If increased capabilities allow more parties to engage in an activity, you'll increase total consumption.
If increased costs reduce the effective maximum scale of operations, you'll tend to have reduced consumption.
One formulation I've come up with is that "bad hygiene leads to decentralisation", where hygiene is meant in the general sense of systemic health and efficiency. Anything that reduces the capability of scaling up operations will lead to more and smaller rather than fewer and larger units of operation. This is something that proponents of decentralised systems might want to consider.
https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/36518392
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7h8sqk/open_th...
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Get used to it. Everything comes to an end. All your favorite animals will, and humans will, and whatever comes after them. I highly doubt consuming meat today affects lifestyle of most humans in 50 years noticeably.
On the counter. What if it does. What if after 50 years, humans really hate their predecessors and carry shame like the Germans do for Hitler. Just sayin!
Seriously, you want to make real impact, learn yourself a high energy physics degree and do research. Not eating meat is a joke. We as humanity will make not eating meat much sooner if we'd focus on uploading and fusion.
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Why wouldn't it? Certainly better, than attempts to artificially limit population.
I’d highly recommend visiting Serengeti or the Masai Mara. 100’s of kilometers of wilderness where animals freely roam about and do their thing without human competition is a very surreal sight. If the mara+Serengeti or the barrier reef disappear from the planet, I wouldn’t want to live with joy anymore.
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My personal favorite version of this experience: Seven years ago I was working at trader joes and trying out vegetarianism for environmental reasons. A lady would come in every few weeks and buy just massive quantities of ground beef, like 30-40lbs in one trip. I finally asked her what all that beef was for and she replied "I feed it to my dogs". What can you even do? Thats probably the no-meat diet of 10 people bein…
If you want to change your diet for environmental reasons, I would recommend going for net positive rather than vegetarianism. It cost a bit extra, but products like honey (bee farming is generally seen as a net positive on the environment), fishing from overpopulated lakes, and meat/plants from invasive species are examples where additional commercial pressure would do wonders. Invasive species in general often carr…
This article is from 2014. The fact that it is 2018 and we still have to convince people this is a bad thing is alarming.
Why is it bad though? Unless it affects human population, I don't see why should I care. Do you consider it immoral? Well, morality is personal, and most don't agree.
People don't think there's inherent value in biodiversity, but in reality there are certain ecological functions carried out by many species that we take for granted. These ecological functions are critical for the environments we live in. E.g. Water Filtration [2]
Okay still don't buy it? Well let's talk about efficiency.
There are a couple of startups who are working on carbon scrubbers. [3] They see it as a potential market as the amount of carbon increases. I think this is ridiculous... grasses are extremely efficient at sequestering carbon, specifically bamboo. The entire attitude of science being able to combat climate change smells of engineer's disease[4]. Bamboo has been evolving for millions of years to efficiently remove carbon from the atmosphere. A couple of engineers are not going to be able to compete with that in a realistic time frame.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11148
[2] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120925-natures-water-purif...
[3] http://shanghaiist.com/2016/08/04/smog_diamonds.php
[4] https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee...
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Why is it bad though? Unless it affects human population, I don't see why should I care. Do you consider it immoral? Well, morality is personal, and most don't agree.
It does affect human populations [1] and morality is irrelevant . People don't think there's inherent value in biodiversity, but in reality there are certain ecological functions carried out by many species that we take for granted. These ecological functions are critical for the environments we live in. E.g. Water Filtration [2] Okay still don't buy it? Well let's talk about efficiency. There are a couple of startup…
I mean, I admit I have what you call 'The Engineer Desease'. I believe in scientists more, than in plants.