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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#21

Post by montenegrohugo »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #13
montenegrohugo wrote: post #10

Human Population has more than doubled in the same timespan (from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion today). This is not sustainable. We only have one small planet to live on, and we are destroying it. We are overfishing the oceans, cutting down entire forests to make way for pastures, warming up the planet and acidifying the plastic-filled ocean. Even insect populations are plummeting. The consequences of this will not be f…

What’s not sustainable? The human population doubling again? Or maintaining the current population? Clearly we have to address climate change but it’s not a growing population that is unsustainable, if anything the progress over the past 50 years has indicated the exact opposite.

Human population by itself is not the measure we should worry about. With enough technological progress, the earth could reasonably sustain 100+ billion people.

The problem lies in the doubling of human population in little more than a generation. The problem lies in that we are not being sustainable with this. We are depleting resources whilst polluting and rapidly changing our environment.

For the moment, we only have one small rock in which to live and breathe. If we have to shit where we eat, then let's at least try to shit cleanly.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#22

Post by lawlessone »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #13
montenegrohugo wrote: post #10

Human Population has more than doubled in the same timespan (from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion today). This is not sustainable. We only have one small planet to live on, and we are destroying it. We are overfishing the oceans, cutting down entire forests to make way for pastures, warming up the planet and acidifying the plastic-filled ocean. Even insect populations are plummeting. The consequences of this will not be f…

What’s not sustainable? The human population doubling again? Or maintaining the current population? Clearly we have to address climate change but it’s not a growing population that is unsustainable, if anything the progress over the past 50 years has indicated the exact opposite.

> The human population doubling again? Or maintaining the current population?

Both

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#23

Post by casefields »

lawlessone wrote: post #22
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s not sustainable? The human population doubling again? Or maintaining the current population? Clearly we have to address climate change but it’s not a growing population that is unsustainable, if anything the progress over the past 50 years has indicated the exact opposite.

> The human population doubling again? Or maintaining the current population? Both

Oh jeez. I thought we moved on from the Population Bomb hysteria.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#24

Post by arkh »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #10

Human Population has more than doubled in the same timespan (from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion today). This is not sustainable. We only have one small planet to live on, and we are destroying it. We are overfishing the oceans, cutting down entire forests to make way for pastures, warming up the planet and acidifying the plastic-filled ocean. Even insect populations are plummeting. The consequences of this will not be f…

> What can we do to change this?

Let's cull the population. A little plague to remove 80%. Or if you want to stay almost humane: make 90% of the population sterile.

It would be extreme but that's what you get when your postulates are that all those species were useful, we can't adapt to climate change and we won't ever get out of here.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#26

Post by maxerickson »

seren wrote: post #7
betageek wrote: post #3

Is this true? It is hard to believe that killing off 60% of animals on the planet would leave us with a functioning ecosystem. It's also very hard to work out what the facts are here without finding yourself in climate change denial land, a place I do not want to visit.

How do we know with still have a functioning ecosystem ? For example, there is a massive extinction of bees going on, the only reason we don't see a massive impact is that we have industrialized bee productions. https://theconversation.com/a-bee-economist-explains-honey-b... > In 2017, beekeepers in North Dakota, Idaho, Florida and other states shipped 1.7 million colonies to California to pollinate almond trees, or…

US honeybees are livestock, they aren't a native species.

They travel in semi-truck loads of 400 to 500 colonies each!

The apparent decline in native insects is very concerning.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#27

Post by rootsudo »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #11
montenegrohugo wrote: post #10

Human Population has more than doubled in the same timespan (from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion today). This is not sustainable. We only have one small planet to live on, and we are destroying it. We are overfishing the oceans, cutting down entire forests to make way for pastures, warming up the planet and acidifying the plastic-filled ocean. Even insect populations are plummeting. The consequences of this will not be f…

I'm afraid the problem will fix itself soon enough. WW3 could be around the corner according to the people behind the Doomsday Clock. Climate change will cause famine, natural disasters and mass migrations. Poverty, overpriced health care and a lack of common social structure (every man for himself) will lower the life expectancy again after decades of increase.

To be fair, the Doomsday Clock is updated once a year in January. With recent political affairs in NK, we may have just bought ourselves another minute.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#28

Post by betageek »

cbkeller wrote: post #15
betageek wrote: post #3

Is this true? It is hard to believe that killing off 60% of animals on the planet would leave us with a functioning ecosystem. It's also very hard to work out what the facts are here without finding yourself in climate change denial land, a place I do not want to visit.

Geologist here! The report in question [1] and supplement [2] seem pretty think-tank-y, but I would say they pass the sniff test to first order (if we have a biologist or ecologist around, they could probably say better). The focus on animals makes it relatively plausible -- these are charismatic and easy to observe, but a lot of the ecological heavy lifting / biogeochemical nutrient cycling is really carried out by…

Thanks for at least trying to answer the question, just to be clear, I'm 100% convinced in climate change and some kind of extinction happening, just querying the '60% of all animals' headline.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#29

Post by TeMPOraL »

casefields wrote: post #23
lawlessone wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The human population doubling again? Or maintaining the current population? Both

Oh jeez. I thought we moved on from the Population Bomb hysteria.

Was it ever proven wrong? Or just delayed by a bunch of last-minute technological breakthroughs?

Also, the problem is still here even if we maintain current population levels. It's here even if we do nothing, and in reality, we have 2/3 of the world desperately trying to grow their quality of life, which involves growing their energy use.

Re: Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

#30

Post by quickthrower2 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #11
montenegrohugo wrote: post #10

Human Population has more than doubled in the same timespan (from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion today). This is not sustainable. We only have one small planet to live on, and we are destroying it. We are overfishing the oceans, cutting down entire forests to make way for pastures, warming up the planet and acidifying the plastic-filled ocean. Even insect populations are plummeting. The consequences of this will not be f…

I'm afraid the problem will fix itself soon enough. WW3 could be around the corner according to the people behind the Doomsday Clock. Climate change will cause famine, natural disasters and mass migrations. Poverty, overpriced health care and a lack of common social structure (every man for himself) will lower the life expectancy again after decades of increase.

But does that fix it? Isn't it a vicious cycle once methane is released from the melting ice. And a collapsed civilisation won't have the budget to fix it.
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