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

#361

Post by deialtrous2 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 12:57 PM UTC

arbitrary_name wrote: post #326

deialtrous wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand the relevance of that tabloid article. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I live in Canada. All my beef comes from Canada. The fact that people in other countries burn forests to graze cattle does not mean that Canadians consuming Canadian beef cause those other countries to burn forests. My beef consumption is 100% irrelevant, they will burn the same amount of forest regardless of…

If you stop eating beef, others can eat Canadian beef and not brazilian beef. Your consumption has an effect.

That assumes that Canadian beef production is at or near its limit. It is not even close. We could produce far more, but there is no market for it. So if Canadian beef consumption goes down, all that happens is Canadian beef production goes down. No impact is had on the amazon. We can be very confident of this because Canadian beef consumption has gone down, and Canadian beef production went down with it, not Brazilian beef production.

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

#362

Post by deialtrous2 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

curiousity wrote: post #288

deialtrous wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those things have anything to do with the discussion though, which is developing nations torching natural ecosystems. Neither my beef nor my car is in any way a factor in this. Also, your comparison is disingenuous. A pound of beef or chicken contains far more calories and protein than a pound of any vegetable. And grass fed beef actually requires less energy to produce than vegetables.

Beef is a product made from cows. Cows require land, food, water, and infrastructure. Producing beef leads to the destruction of ecosystems, like the Amazon Rainforest [1]. By consuming beef, you are contributing to this phenomenon the article discusses. The emissions from your car, similarly, contribute to climate change and the destruction that goes with it as well. The lifestyle one chooses to lead, the products o…

>Beef is a product made from cows.

Cows are not globally fungible. Beef production in the US has absolutely nothing to do with the amazon being destroyed. There is no part of the amazon in the US, no US cattle are raised in the amazon, no feed fed to US cattle comes from the amazon. US beef production is not related at all.

>I'm starting to believe that you aren't arguing in good faith, in part because your statements are just thrown out there without any evidence or citation. Sure, a pound of beef or chicken contains more protein or calories than a pound of vegetables. But that's a nonsensical and misleading claim

I did not make that claim. I responded to someone else making a misleading claim. Assuming bad faith makes it more likely to misread things.

>many more pounds of vegetables went into producing that pound of beef and chicken.

No vegetables go into producing it. Grain might, but vegetables do not. Lettuce is far more wasteful of land than beef is, but we do not see campaigns against lettuce consumption, only against beef consumption. This is not logical.

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

#363

Post by deialtrous2 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #294

deialtrous wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's true in East Asia as well. No it isn't. >In fact, where is it not true? Everywhere? Nothing in your link contradicts what I said already. You can only make the correlation if you cherry pick start and end dates, and cherry pick western nations or nations that had coincidental birth rate declines like China. If the correlation is real and not spurious, then why doesn't it hold now? Why didn't it hold before the…

How is it not true in East Asia? The rich countries (Japan, South Korea) have super low fertility rates; the poor ones have higher (North Korea). Can you point out some clear violators? The inverse relationship is obvious in South Korea: https://tradingeconomics.com/south-korea/gdp-per-capita https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINKOR Before the 1930s, every country was "developing" my modern definitions. (US…

You can't just take two data points, see that they moved in the right direction and assume causation. That doesn't even get you to correlation. You need multiple data points, and the changes have to be consistent between those points. They are not. Right now 50% of US workers earn less than $30k per year. If birth rates were correlated to income then they should be having more children, but they are not. Graph GDP per capita and graph birth rates. They both move in opposite directions, but they do not follow each other like they should if one caused the other. On the other hand, sperm counts have fallen 50% since the 50s. 1 in 7 couples has trouble conceiving. These are not social changes, they are physiological changes, almost certainly caused by the massive amount of xenoestrogens we've put into our environments. We didn't lower our birth rates as a response to wealth, we were poisoned. This makes things far more ethically questionable, as now the "we'll fix developing nation's birth rates the way we did in developed nations" idea means intentionally poisoning a few billion people to reduce their fertility.

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

#364

Post by jlawson » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #286

jlawson wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carrying capacity is related to quality of life and technology. With very poor quality of life, Earth could probably carry quite a large number of people. But why build such a world? Why is 100 billion people packed in tenements, living off hydroponic slop better than 2 billion experiencing nature, breathing free and having the option of traditional or modern lifestyles?

Looking back at human history, QoL is correlated with increased hands and minds available to do useful work. QoL is not generally highest during population crashes. I'd rather live now than during the black death, or in ancient times when 90% of humanity had to devote their entire lives to food production. In contrast, 90% of the phds who have ever lived are alive right now. We have freed people to do great things. I…

I hate to say it, but you've got it exactly backwards. QoL is much better after population crashes. I'll give two examples and explain the simple reasons.

For example, life in the early 1300s in Europe was awful. Life in the middle 1400s was much better. Reason: The Black Death killed a huge number of people, opening up quality land for people to live a bit more easily.

You don't want to live during the black death, you want to live after the black death. Because the black death can only happen above a certain population density.

Micro-example: Pitcairn island. A handful of men and women shipwrecked there in the 1700s. Life was good - go where you want, lots of space, pick wild fruit as desired. Then they multiplied. Soon the population is 10x as much, and they hit the carrying capacity of the island. Now you MUST use every awful marginal source of food.

The simple reason is: People exploit the best resources first. The first person in an ecosystem lives in the best spot, eating the best food from the easiest tree, pulling fish casually out of packed rivers. Paradise. Increase the population, and now most people MUST live on marginal land, eating marginal food sources, scraping every bit of sustenance out of the environment. QoL falls until it is just barely above what's necessary not to die - and then you're at carrying capacity and the population stabilizes because it can't grow because people die as fast as they multiply. This is how human life worked for almost all of history; it's how animal life works too.

It explains why QoL was the same in 1800 for most people as in 2000BC, despite great increases in technology. The technology increased QoL, but that gets consumes in one generation as the population increases to hit the subsistence limit again. So you get more people, but not better life.

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

#365

Post by jlawson » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

mempko wrote: post #261

jlawson wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extant hyper-fertile populations haven't caused the existing problem in the past . That's not what people are saying so there's no such blaming going on. The point is that they'll cause the impossible-to-solve exponentially-growing problem in the future . USA population of 350m can cut down usage. It is at least possible without mass death. When there are 7 billion+ Africans at the end of this century, it'll be rathe…

I like how you think they won't follow the same growth curve as USA or Europe. It's insanely stupid. Also we don't have until end of century for the brutal challenge. We have it now and it's ridiculous to ploace the burden on the developing world. We have to act now, in USA, Europe and SE Asia NOW. It's not even worth entertaining the population issue of Africa in 2100 when we have more urgent problems at home RIGHT…

It's well-acknowledged that they're not following the same curve as USA or Europe. This isn't a matter of the future; it's already happened.

That's why the UN has increased it's estimate for peak African population 5 years in a row.

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

#366

Post by yesenadam » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #352

yesenadam wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat is not inherently bad I'm not sure in what sense you mean this. It sure seems 'inherently bad' in just about every sense you could mean, to me. I think often it doesn't seem 'bad' to humans, mainly because we're humans and animals aren't. As if only human life has any value whatever. The very word meat sounds grotesque to me - imagine if some other species had a nondescript word for human meat.

> I'm not sure in what sense you mean this. It sure seems 'inherently bad' in just about every sense you could mean, to me. I mean it in the most fundamental sense: there are sustainable levels of meat consumption that do not negatively impact the diversity and longevity of our biome. > I think often it doesn't seem 'bad' to humans, mainly because we're humans and animals aren't. As if only human life has any value w…

Hi. I don't see how that's 'the most fundamental sense' at all, to say the least.

"Fooling myself" meaning not agreeing with your opinions? That's not a nice or useful way to talk to people. "We're all just organisms" - I hear that and I think "ah, next comes the faulty argument that was a premise of".

What's wrong with men eating fish. Ah, good question. I don't think you're really asking it, it's rhetorical. But there's a serious vegan/vegetarian literature (I mean, in ethics, written by philosophers) if you really want to learn about the subject. I don't think me talking about that here will be any use to anyone, human or fish.

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

#367

Post by deialtrous2 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #353

deialtrous wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you direct me to the organization responsible for selecting which facts go on the list of "you are racist for stating these facts"? I would really like a list so I know how to censor myself. It is very concerning to me that I am now a thought criminal and therefore anything I say is incorrect.

We've banned this account for turning two unrelated threads into massive racial flamewars in the last 24 hours.

jahaja makes a completely unprovoked personal attack on me, linking to a totally unrelated thread and slandering me, but I am the problem for responding politely and without personal attacks? That seems odd. Are there some unwritten rules that maybe should be written? If I'm not allowed to discuss certain topics that's fine, but it helps if I know in advance what those are. It doesn't need to be an exhaustive list, even a "all posts must conform to current progressive ideology" or something would at least give us a good idea of what mustn't be spoken.

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

#368

Post by andai » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #232

marcus_holmes wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a demonstration against an oil processing plant in Perth, Australia, that thousands of people drove to take part in. Parking in the town was a nightmare for the whole day. No-one seemed to notice the irony.

Short term pain for long term pain.

* gain.

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

#369

Post by tomp » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 6:52 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…

> elevator conundrum

Interesting, I've never heard about this before! But isn't it basically just the question of private vs public transport (cars vs underground), but in vertical dimension?

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

#370

Post by tomp » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #142

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…

> 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…

> Commercial fusion power with deuterium would solve a whole bunch of problems at once

Would it? You're still using "fossil fuel" which means that you're heating up the planet... The only sustainable solution is solar, either on Earth, or in space in front of Earth (so that you're not introducing extra energy to Earth).