61–70 of 380 posts
Also learn about these very efficient viruses which are wiping themselves out by killing all its hosts too quickly. From the point of view of the Rest Of Nature humanity is a virus.
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…
What really worries me is what is going to happen when all those millions of tons of microplastics become nanoplastics and are spread far enough to become part of the foodchain, even down at the microbial level. The dark end of that space is pretty terrifying for life on Earth, IMHO.
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.
Ecosystems are mostly local - what this represents is the erasure of the rainforests and their conversion to largely animal-free cropland. The impact of that is yet another large CO2 emission.
I think this is a misconception. Everything is interconnected. Did you know that some species of bird migrate up to 8700mi every year? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_migration) So do many insect species (butterflies!), fish, whales, sharks. And, as apex predators with wide ranges, sharks have a huge impact on ecosystems across the globe (and losing them is very, very bad: https://www.livescience.com/9716-loss-top-predators-causing-...).
We're royally fucking up the entire planet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It has to be wrong in perpetuity, because even if it is correct just once, it results in a wasted/depleted planet.
And honestly, considering how much non-renewable resources we are using and the rate of warming, worrying about the population bomb is sort of like trying to get enough cardio exercise while you have acute appendicitis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
There is no scientific basis for the claim that the earth could sustain 100+ billion people. These types of unsubstantiated claims are not just false but dangerous, as they suggest there is no need for significant action and change.
Does that mean we've fixed the problems? Far from it.
The number of people is only a really small factor in the damage that people do. One jet-setting westerner does many orders of magnitude more damage than the typical subsistence farmer; and the damage done by subsistence farmers varies quite widely. (Some are causing desertification and chopping down trees)
And of course there are some people doing more good than harm, reducing the population reduces those people too.
No matter what the population is, we have a lot of work to do. Greenhouse gases are the most visible problem; there are lots of others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
There is no scientific basis for the claim that the earth could sustain 100+ billion people. These types of unsubstantiated claims are not just false but dangerous, as they suggest there is no need for significant action and change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is not all that impressive to note that more consumers than producers creates a scarcity problem. That’s the entire driver behind Malthusian fear-mongering. But over and over and over those that stoke the fears of overpopulation (and it’s been going on for thousands of years) are especially terrible at estimating the capacity for supply. As you call it, “last-minute technological breakthroughs”, dismissing centuries of human progress as some sort of accidental stroke of luck.
You say we “do nothing” but every something I see proposed has to, by necessity, damage the quality of life of lots of people. The majority of people. If we are honest with ourselves, that’s effectively what is being proposed when we pontificate over how the wizards of smart will dole out resources according to their flawed definition of sustainability.
That will, inevitably, result in war.
The fact is, if you want to improve the state of humanity on the Earth, your only effective means of doing so is technology.
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.
Nah, I doubt it. War is bad for business, and the global economy needs peace in order to extract maximum profit. Best to keep those wars to little backwater countries so we can keep spending trillions on mega-high-tech weapons without really disrupting the flow of money to bigcorp.
60% of animals or 60% of animal species?
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…
At the moment I see no other option to restore wildlife on this planet.