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

#171

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

uxcolumbo wrote: post #41

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm afraid the problem will fix itself soon enough. WW3 could be around the corner according to the people behind the Doomsday Clock[...] I wouldn't call WW3 a fix (short term anyway). Even a small nuclear exchange would have devastating ecological consequences [0] [0] "Radioactive fallout from these weapons’ debris clouds would reach the stratosphere, where it would travel worldwide, potentially contaminating crop…

The fallout myth isn't true. And chernobyl is a perfect example. It caused the accidental creation of a huge nature preserve where species thought to be locally extinct are now thriving. Most wild animals don't live long enough for the slightly increased cancer rates to matter. The lack of humans destroying everything makes a huge difference on the other hand.

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

#172

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #77

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…

At least in the U.S., politics is a football game complete with cheerleaders and game stats. It's my side vs their side. Even the most intelligent people get locked up in this battle. They don't bother looking at the candidates themselves, they just vote for their team. I mean, I look around and so many people who voted for certain people to get rid of certain programs are the one's who would actually benefit from th…

Given that the candidates tend to hew pretty closely to their party platform, it is perfectly sensible to vote for a team instead of an individual. It is a completely valid choice.

The people voting against their own self-interest clearly disagree, there must be some overriding element of their ideology that is more important.

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

#173

Post by deialtrous » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

krisroadruck wrote: post #127

Majestic121 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick calculus : TLDR : 100+ billions is a hard reach today, but 50+ billions might not impossible There is approximately 63,824,448 km² or liveable land on earth today.[1] Let's cut that in half to account for farms/land lost due to global warming/industries/etc... We get 31,912,224km² of land usable for habitation. Let's assume we cover the remaining with a huge city with the density of Hong Kong (6,690 people/km²)…

Since you nerded out on this enough to do the math, you might actually be interested in this video. The only real bottlenecks to getting to these numbers are first, power and second the elevator conundrum. Solve for those and you can have quite a substantial population. Go big enough and the only bottleneck, if you want to stay a single planet species, becomes black body radiation. Check it out Archologies - Isaac Ar…

Science fiction is not a good argument here.

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

#174

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

Rotareti wrote: post #47

nervousvarun wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My equivalent of this is frogs. Frogs and the rhythmic noises they made at night were the "white noise" of my childhood.

My equivalent of this is insects. My family and I made a lot of trips with our car in the 90th. The front of the car was full of squashed insects when we arrived. There was a constant knocking on the windshield. The amount of insects that I find on my car today is far less. I think it's about 10-20% of what it was in the 90th. I'm worried.

You guys can come take some of our frogs and insects :)

My car (sports car, low to the ground) doesn't really get many bugs these days. My pickup, on the other hand, is a hot mess every couple days.

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

#175

Post by thousandautumns » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

philipps wrote: post #59

casefields wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s neither hysteria nor something you can “move on” from. Please either provide facts or other evidence for your opinion or don’t comment. There is no basis for the suggestion that we can sustain a growing population on this planet, even with technology and science continuing to progress.

What evidence is there that we can't? The issue again isn't the number of people on the planet, its the number of people combined with our current usage of planetary resources. But between the fact that the vast majority of those resources are being used by a small amount of the population, and the fact that people have been claiming the "population bomb" will be going off imminently for hundreds of years and it not actually happening, seems to imply that the issue isn't the number of people on the planet, and way in which those people use planetary resources.

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

#176

Post by deialtrous » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

trentnix wrote: post #67

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Proven wrong? Yes! ehrlich said the human lifespan in 1981 would be 42. He assured us that, if we didn’t do something , there would be mass famine and billions dead and all manner of horror that never came to pass. 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 t…

A single prediction being wrong does not mean the concept is wrong. Especially a single prediction that was not based on evidence and that the scientific community said was nonsense. Al Gore said there would be no snow on any mountains by 2012. Since that was wrong, climate change is debunked right? Science is all wrong because one guy said something dumb one time!

Technology can not magic you up some more land. The earth is finite. When people say "technology will save us" they actually mean one of two things. Either "I don't want to think about this so star trek will come true!" or "we can develop the technology to completely eliminate all non-human life on earth and live in pods being fed an industrial slurry that has the highest % return of solar energy to chemical energy so stop worrying!". Both are dumb. Our standard of living is already going down. It does not make sense to choose to have more people living worse lives rather than fewer people living better lives. There is no benefit to increasing our population.

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

#177

Post by apazzolini » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:27 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…

> That won't do anything. CO2 is not the problem, too many people is.

CO2 is a problem.

This year's Nobel prize in economics was awarded to Bill Nordhaus [1] for figuring out the economic impact of carbon based emissions. He, along with many climate scientists and economists, think that this is the most market-aligned way to reduce the impact of climate change.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Nordhaus#Nobel_Memoria...

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

#178

Post by deialtrous » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

ixtli wrote: post #79

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.

Thank you! “Overpopulation” is a canard. Humans didn’t eradicate these animals: a specific group of rich people who’re able to deploy capital without the consent of the people did that.

What? This was done overwhelmingly by very poor people in an effort to make themselves slightly less poor. How do you figure they didn't consent?

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

#179

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

jonsen wrote: post #66

philipps wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Where is the logic in your statement? That makes absolutely no sense. You honestly think the world can support the same number of humans as it can chickens? And even if it did, do you want to live the way those chickens live?

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

#180

Post by philipps » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #65

philipps wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMO, the claims that population is the problem is far more dangerous. Population growth is mostly a solved problem. All population growth models have the growth being much slower over the next 50 years than it was over the past 50. Most viable models actually show the growth reversing, and some even show it peaking near current levels. Does that mean we've fixed the problems? Far from it. The number of people is only…

I didn’t make the claim that population is the biggest problem. I responded to the incorrect suggestion that population size is not a problem (which you repeat without offering any evidence that we could sustain ourselves). Growth is by no means a “solved” problem. Growth is expected to slow, but even at our current population size we are consuming an unsustainable amount of resources. And growth will slow as a result of increased wealth > higher consumption. Given that we live within the finite ecosystem of of our planet, this means we need to make significant changes and we need to make them now.