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

theguardian.com

311–320 of 380 posts

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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At those levels of scarcity, the economics of farming will likely change enough that hydroponics could (would?) become far more commonplace. That drastically cuts down on the amount of land needed, as you're no longer limited to ground surface area for growing crops. In fact, there's a growing trend of combining fish farming with hydroponic vegetable farming; circulating water between the plants and fish tanks, monit…

Have you had the fish from well run systems like this? I think it is fantastic. Data point of one.

I'm not normally a picky eater, but seafood in general is one thing I have a really hard time bringing myself to enjoy. Also, from my very limited understanding, tilapia is fairly delicate to begin with, so it's more about making sure your cut doesn't include much of the grey fat.

With all of that said, I'm sure that for people who do enjoy seafood, it'd be quite tasty. The business near me was put together with eco-conscious people in mind, so the care they put into farming- nutrients, food for the fish, etc. I'm sure the difference between their fish and wild fish is a good deal smaller than stereotypical farm-vs-wild-caught salmon or what have you.

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

#312
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not sustainable. This is a longstanding concern going back to at least the 70s [1]. The argument is essentially twofold: 1. Population growth will continue at or near present rates indefinitely; and 2. We will exceed population N where N is the number of people the planet can support. For (1) the rate of growth has slowed and is projected to continue slowing over the next century [2] such that many of these…

>But the notion that this planet can only support 5, 7 or 10 or 15B people is patently false. It is also a strawman. People don't say that, they say that the world can only support X many people with our current lifestyle. I do not want to make my life, and the life of every other person on the planet worse, simply to increase the population of humans. We are not endangered. We have more than enough humans. There is…

I pondered raising this issue in my above comment but decided not to since the comment was already long enough but the issue has been raised nonetheless.

I agree that "the planet can't support X" is code for "I don't want to change my lifestyle" or, by extension, "I want my children to have the same lifestyle".

Lots of animals return to the point where they were born to breed. Some cross vast distances. The human version of this is a mix of normalcy and nostalgia.

By normalcy I mean however the world was when we were in our formative years we view as "normal". I really wonder what life was like 500 or 1000 years ago when politics may well have changed but largely there were few if any substantial everyday technological and societal differences from one generation to the next.

The problem with this is that ew can easily start seeing everything through this lens such that things that diverge from our view of normal are (more likely) "bad" and those that don't are (more likely) "good". This I feel is a big part of conservativism/traditionalism.

The nostalgia is obvious. The time when we were young is often romanticized, even fetishized.

So as to maintaining lifestyle, let me put it this way: assume you're fo middle or upper class in the US. Could everyone in the world live as you do now? No. So by some measures we're already living beyond our (collective) means. And as hard as you may have worked, as smart as you are the biggest difference between you and a resident of some far less well off country is just plain old dumb luck that you were (probably?) born "here" (wherever here is).

Granted some people from more disadvantaged backgrounds do better their lot in life but the odds are stacked against them in a way that just isn't true for someone born in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Western Europe and a handful of other places.

Fun fact: the population density of Tennessee is 160/mi2. The land area of the US is 3.8m mi2. If you populated the entire US at the same density as TN you'd fit 6 billion people there.

Would you consider TN overly dense?

You may not have ever been there but it doesn't matter. No one is piled on top of each other (like, say, Hong Kong at ~7000/mi2). People live on large lots in big houses and there's still wilderness.

We only live on a tiny fraction of available land. The vast majority of it is farmland but if farmland can produce 10 times as much per unit area then we need an awful lot less of it to support a much bigger population.

Unfortunately preserving one's way of life is so often just code for NIMBYism, excluding certain groups (eg segregation in the US) and maintaining the status quo just because you were lucky enough to be born in the right place.

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

#313
post #9

When I was a child about 20 years ago, I remember going snorkelling near my home in the North Adriatic Sea quite often. I could see crabs, starfish, sea urchins, sea horses, octopuses under rocks and loads of fish. I went back there recently and was shocked to find the water looked clear but there were no animals left inside except for a few fish and a crab here and there. This makes me really sad and pessimistic abo…

For those who grew up in the Pacific Northwest: Seagulls.

30 years ago if you went to the coast you would have hundreds of seagulls on every beach. If you go there today you are lucky to see more than 5 in an entire day.

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

#314
post #9

When I was a child about 20 years ago, I remember going snorkelling near my home in the North Adriatic Sea quite often. I could see crabs, starfish, sea urchins, sea horses, octopuses under rocks and loads of fish. I went back there recently and was shocked to find the water looked clear but there were no animals left inside except for a few fish and a crab here and there. This makes me really sad and pessimistic abo…

For those who grew up in the Pacific Northwest: Seagulls. 30 years ago if you went to the coast you would have hundreds of seagulls on every beach. If you go there today you are lucky to see more than 5 in an entire day.

Remarkably, the same in Los Angeles

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

#315
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about most people stop using their mobile phones, or all the other electronics they carry that require charging? I am not going vegetarian on any day. Why? Vegetables don't satisfy my tastes nor do I get enough calories from them for my activity output. You aren't going to change people's wants and needs because they are different from yours.

Vegetables don't satisfy my tastes nor do I get enough calories from them for my activity output. One can't argue taste, but I can argue caloric intake for high intensity activities. If a guy can win Western States 100 seven times on a vegan diet (Scott Jurek), I'm not going to worry about getting enough calories. But as a vegetarian endurance athlete I'll be the first to admit that taste (for some folks) and conveni…

When I did ultra-marathons, never hit the 100 miler maker, my body could tolerate less meat, filling it up with carbs. Switching to powerlifting 4 - 5 years ago, my body demands more meat. Demanding in the sense that I can feel a difference when I go without meat i.e., it is stronger when I consume meat. Granted I also went from 160lbs ultra-running to 230lbs powerlifting, so I am sure there is difference in caloric intake due to weight and muscle mass.

Do I need to do either? No, but I feel better eating meat and lifting compared to when I don't.

-- When I did run ultras, I picked up Scott's book with recipes and tried following it, I felt quite hungry.

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

#316
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetables don't satisfy my tastes nor do I get enough calories from them for my activity output. One can't argue taste, but I can argue caloric intake for high intensity activities. If a guy can win Western States 100 seven times on a vegan diet (Scott Jurek), I'm not going to worry about getting enough calories. But as a vegetarian endurance athlete I'll be the first to admit that taste (for some folks) and conveni…

When I did ultra-marathons, never hit the 100 miler maker, my body could tolerate less meat, filling it up with carbs. Switching to powerlifting 4 - 5 years ago, my body demands more meat. Demanding in the sense that I can feel a difference when I go without meat i.e., it is stronger when I consume meat. Granted I also went from 160lbs ultra-running to 230lbs powerlifting, so I am sure there is difference in caloric…

Switching to powerlifting 4 - 5 years ago

Aha, as I suspected! ("Eh? Plenty of runners get by on a vegan diet. Now, power lifters or some such...") I can't speak to that, I'm still a scrawny runner. I mean, I suspect one could still get results with a proper (read: PITA) diet, but then I'd be talking out my arse. Enjoy your steak.

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

#317
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I did ultra-marathons, never hit the 100 miler maker, my body could tolerate less meat, filling it up with carbs. Switching to powerlifting 4 - 5 years ago, my body demands more meat. Demanding in the sense that I can feel a difference when I go without meat i.e., it is stronger when I consume meat. Granted I also went from 160lbs ultra-running to 230lbs powerlifting, so I am sure there is difference in caloric…

Switching to powerlifting 4 - 5 years ago Aha, as I suspected! ("Eh? Plenty of runners get by on a vegan diet. Now, power lifters or some such...") I can't speak to that, I'm still a scrawny runner. I mean, I suspect one could still get results with a proper (read: PITA) diet, but then I'd be talking out my arse. Enjoy your steak.

I suspect you are correct though it would be a lot of eating/chewing. At 4,500 calories a day, I am tired of eating as it is.

I looked up the PITA diet as I was unfamiliar, it recommends to eat less spicy foods which is tough as a Cajun, but then states to add more chicory which we add to our coffee. Maybe there is a balance!

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't remember making an argument, I simply stated that the parent might enjoy this video based on the napkin math they did above...

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science fiction is not a good argument here.

Not only is it not a good argument. It is a dangerous argument. We need innovation and maybe it will come in the form of “whacky” ideas, but please don’t replace the work that climate scientists have been doing for decades with a few “back of the napkin” calculations.

Please tell me who and how I put anyone in danger by suggesting the parent to my comment might enjoy a video?

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

#320
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what does that have to do with anything I said?

Because again, there is a difference between stating a fact and wrongly inferring from it.

This is not a productive method of communication. You need to clearly state what you mean instead of expecting me to spend 5 comments asking questions to try to extract an actual meaning from your post. I have no idea what you think I inferred. I did not confuse correlation with causation, so you need to explain clearly what you think I mean, since it is not what I said.
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