Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by deialtrous » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

strainer wrote: post #97

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…

Human behavior is vastly more impactful on the planet than human numerosity. We are not feeling the consequences of simply people - it is our gross behavior. impact = people * behavior To make people reduction the target in this situation would be systematically misanthropic. Behavior can improve by orders of magnitude and even reverse polarity amicably and rapidly, through culture, inspiration, technological potenti…

There is no evidence that any acceptable behavioral alteration will help. The kind of behavioral modification needed is horrifying dystopian nightmare stuff, people naturally resist things like that. The population is going to be reduced no matter what. The question is purely "are we going to do it by lowering birth rates, or are we going to wait until India or Africa unleashes an antibiotic resistant super plague on the world that kills a few billion people?"

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

#162

Post by yters » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #151

I got as far as "WWF" and stopped reading. The WWF has been doomsaying for decades, because that's its business model. It is an organisation specifically designed to raise funds from the general public in order to promote green causes. It does this by creating scares like this. The WWF is as much "big business" as any energy company. I don't trust "science" funded by it, because there's not a chance in hell that it w…

It wasn't exactly clear what was being reduced. Is the 60% across all mammals, etc., or is it a weighted reduction, such that eliminating all freshwater crocodiles is equivalent to eliminating all cows, even though there are many more cows than freshwater crocodiles? It seems likely the amount of livestock has dramatically increased since the 1970s. How is that reflected in their graphs? I also do not know how they could accurately measure such things.

That being said, it is pretty plausible that humans are dramatically messing up the ecosystem, at least in the areas where people live. It's also pretty plausible the destruction is irreversible. I have no idea how we could ever recover extinct species, or repopulate species that have had their natural ecosystems dramatically changed.

Our future is going to be a globe mostly populated by humans, cows, chickens and tuna, with a smaller population of dogs and cats, all subsisting on an agriculture of corn. The next stage of evolution will consist of genetically engineered variants of these 7 species.

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

#163

Post by deialtrous » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #135

redleggedfrog wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with this is plausibility. I have much more faith in humanity culling itself, by whatever misanthropic means, than behaving "amicably and rapidly." The possible solution might not be the pleasant one.

Basically stop eating beef and using internal-combustion cars, and the situation is vastly improved. Not impossible. A bunch of tax law changes would do it. And that's a lot more passable than killing a bunch of people.

Except that my diet and car have absolutely nothing to do with the problem. You're fixating on CO2 when the problem the article talks about is clearly environmental destruction. Canada and the US produce all of our own beef. There is no environmental destruction happening here for beef production. We can in fact produce much more beef using the existing idle grasslands we have now. And the only relevant problem from cars here is the mining, which is worse with an electric vehicle. Nothing you suggested even attempts to address the issue at all.

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

#164

Post by shodan666 » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

We should eradicate China and USA.

Typical US citizen is using 6x more resources (from meat to oil) than any other citizen of the world.

Chinese citizens on another hand - are greedy and "dumb", as they managed to get from having no water and toiled 2 generations ago, to the extremely rich middle class - consing and wanting EVERYTHING, in order to show off and emulate the rich Europeans/Americans...

Nuke China, Nuke US - and suddenly we all gonna have 10x more resources and 10x less pollution.

US people are not aware of how greedy and evil they are.

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

#165

Post by fredoliveira » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

mlcrypto wrote: post #55

Those animals weren't suited to reproduce in the modern era and were thus eliminated. End of story

Wow, won't the modern era be a ton of fun without a functioning ecosystem, huh. Why care about all the "unsuitable" animals we're wiping. Our bitcoin and iphones sure are worth not having a world for our kids.

Sigh.

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

#166

Post by tonyedgecombe » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

trentnix wrote: post #138

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970" isn't an ecological disaster?

It simply isn’t true. That would have catastrophic effects on food supply and observed wildlife, and that hasn’t been the case at all. You’d see a drastic reduction in the population of game such as deer and bear and sport fish, but those populations thrive. I should see fewer snakes and birds and rabbits in my yard yet that hasn’t happened. So that tells me it’s nonsense.

So your anecdote trumps is better than some actual data?

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

#167

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

bootlooped wrote: post #99

jonsen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The size of the worlds livestock is around 100 billion. If all humans turned vegetarian, the human population could easily be of the that size.

I think that's making the assumption that having 100 billion livestock + the current human population is sustainable. Even if that were the case, humans consume a lot more resources than animals living on factory farms.

I think the point was that if humans were vegetarians we wouldn't need 100B livestock. And since a cow needs quite a lot more food than humans do, if we could transition 1:1 to a human-edible crop then we have plenty of food to support humans.

Other resources are a separate issue, of course.

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

#168

Post by ajross » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

deialtrous wrote: post #159

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…

>to consider support for candidates that at least acknowledge that there is a problem There are none. Every candidate for every major party in almost all western nations is openly pro-growth. Saying "we'll tax CO2 emissions while importing millions of people and destroying ever more of the little remaining natural ecosystems on the planet" is not acknowledging the problem: overpopulation. >Consider a carbon tax. That…

> CO2 is not the problem, too many people is.

Proximate vs. root cause nitpickery isn't a solution either.

It's entirely possible to get carbon output down to sustainable levels without genocide. You're simply wrong here.

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

#169

Post by deialtrous » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #143

redleggedfrog wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with this is plausibility. I have much more faith in humanity culling itself, by whatever misanthropic means, than behaving "amicably and rapidly." The possible solution might not be the pleasant one.

We have a much better record of cleaning up the environment than we do have in human culling. Compare the US of today with that of 50 - 100 years ago. The tree cover is almost back to pre-contact levels, lakes & rivers are potable, smog doesn't kill 10's of thousands of people per year, et cetera. IOW, local environmental problems have been solved. And we know how to solve them elsewhere in the world: economic growth…

>The tree cover is almost back to pre-contact levels

The number of trees is not the issue. The ecosystem is. Huge plantations of SPF in rows that are all the same age and size does not make a natural ecosystem, and biodiversity is very low.

>lakes & rivers are potable

Public drinking water isn't even potable in many places, nevermind lakes and rivers. This is pure fantasy talk.

>IOW, local environmental problems have been solved

No, they have been relocated overseas so they are out of sight and out of mind.

>The challenge is global problems; climate change is a fairly classic tragedy of the commons.

Yes, I am sure the animals going extinct really just wish we could come together and tax people for breathing. Of course they don't care about their ecosystem being destroyed to grow corn for 5 years before exhausting the land and burning down another 1000 acres of forest for another 5 years of corn.

>Our track record in culling is much worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot only managed to kill about 1% of the population

None of them were trying to lower the population. Funny how you want to equate "lowering global population" with "mass murder" even though you clearly are aware that limiting births is the actual strategy, which actually works.

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

#170

Post by coldtea » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

iN7h33nD wrote: post #158

coldtea wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically stop eating beef and using internal-combustion cars, and the situation is vastly improved. Not impossible. For one, beef's not that much of a problem: https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi... But second, all kinds of systems we have have been premised on economic growth year after year. When we hit some harder limits, we'll hit them hard.

Many sources would beg to differ about meat not being a problem. https://youtu.be/NxvQPzrg2Wg (Sources: https://sites.google.com/view/kgssourcesmeat/startseite ) So even if FAO got it wrong, I just don't see beef not being a problem.

>Many sources would beg to differ about meat not being a problem.

The "sources" in the link either reference to mistaken FAO stats, or give some numbers out of context and with no argument (e.g. "One kilogram of steak needs up to 25 kilos of grain and 15,000 liters of water" -- ok, but what's that compared to other consumers of such resources? Or "Meat just makes up 18% of our calories humans eat", ok so?)