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Insect collapse

theguardian.com

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Re: Insect collapse

#31

Post by yardie »

pfisch wrote: post #27
11235813213455 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I believe we can act about it. My environmental fingerprint is probably At a single person level, these actions looks insignificant, but if everyone does it, it won't be since the major source of pollution is residential pollution, i.e. people, and the other sources of pollution (industry, large-scale transports...) are also driven by consumption. So if people stop over-consuming, this saves dramatically…

[flagged]

So your solution is to simply do nothing. It might offend some voters’ sense of entitlement. That things aren’t the same as they were 30 years ago.

We could do it the hard way. When ocean levels rise the coastal house market will collapse. Water will become scarce as aquifers get spoiled by salt. And climate patterns are certainly changing. Places that used to get an abundance of rain are already facing a drought. But some douchebag in a bro-dozer is certainly sticking it to the rich.

Re: Insect collapse

#32

Post by rebuilder »

pfisch wrote: post #27
11235813213455 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I believe we can act about it. My environmental fingerprint is probably At a single person level, these actions looks insignificant, but if everyone does it, it won't be since the major source of pollution is residential pollution, i.e. people, and the other sources of pollution (industry, large-scale transports...) are also driven by consumption. So if people stop over-consuming, this saves dramatically…

[flagged]

That's a big problem for sure. Unfortunately, the collapse we'll get if we do not rapidly transition to a sustainable economy is likely to be much, much worse. But your point is a good one - how do we manage an orderly transition to a sustainable steady-state* economy when the changes needed to do so in the time we have are likely to be so drastic, they will cause a collapse of any social system that tries to make them?

*We can probably eke out some more economic growth while cutting resource consumption, but sooner or later continued growth and finite resources become an impossibility. If nothing else, we'll eventually generate too much waste heat from energy production.

Re: Insect collapse

#33

Post by lixtra »

mikeash wrote: post #23
bamboozled wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's an alarmist piece which aren't too difficult to find in The Guardian. They do sell papers after all. I'm by no means claiming there is no problem and the situation is fabricated; However, using terms like “ecological Armageddon” really makes your amygdala go into overdrive and for what? To shock people into action or something?

That term is a quote from one of the scientists. It also seems quite appropriate. What would you use to describe this event?

Anthropocene extinction. I'm sure the ecosystem will finally stabilize with a fraction of current amount of species. It so far always did in the past.

EDIT: I did not make up the term. The term Holocene seems to be more current (but also more obscure). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Re: Insect collapse

#34

Post by empath75 »

pfisch wrote: post #27
11235813213455 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I believe we can act about it. My environmental fingerprint is probably At a single person level, these actions looks insignificant, but if everyone does it, it won't be since the major source of pollution is residential pollution, i.e. people, and the other sources of pollution (industry, large-scale transports...) are also driven by consumption. So if people stop over-consuming, this saves dramatically…

[flagged]

If we all suffocate because the phytoplankton died off, I’m sure the history books will note that we freely voted for mass suicide.

Re: Insect collapse

#35

Post by mikeash »

lixtra wrote: post #33
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That term is a quote from one of the scientists. It also seems quite appropriate. What would you use to describe this event?

Anthropocene extinction. I'm sure the ecosystem will finally stabilize with a fraction of current amount of species. It so far always did in the past. EDIT: I did not make up the term. The term Holocene seems to be more current (but also more obscure). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

That seems highly obfuscatory for describing a catastrophic event to a nonscientific audience. Might as well call it an “unplanned existence deficit” or something.

Re: Insect collapse

#36

Post by empath75 »

brazzy wrote: post #12
thebradbain wrote: post #6

And here I was recently musing to myself that if something embedded into our societal imagination, like the giraffe, went nearly extinct due to climate change, that would wake people up before it's too late. Little did I know that's already essentially happened here according to this article, and the powers that be neither seem to be aware nor care. And because I was curious: Giraffes are now on the endangered specie…

> When do we do something? When it significantly impacts the daily lives of a majority of people, and not a second earlier.

By then it will be too late.

Re: Insect collapse

#37

Post by bufferoverflow »

lawlessone wrote: post #19
titzer wrote: post #14

This planet will not support 7 billion humans. Certainly not 7 billion stupid-ass humans who swing massive sledgehammers into the pillars of the biosphere that support them in their hedonistic blunder in search of more "wealth". When I hear the words "economic growth", and then weigh it against the destruction of this magnitude, I often want to vomit. And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in compu…

We're essentially gobbling up all possible biomass at this stage...

The insects are dying off not because we're eating them or taking their habitats. It's because of the insecticides.

We need better ways, and technology is the only way to save us and the biosphere at the moment. No way we will choose to starve 7 billion people to death.

Re: Insect collapse

#38

Post by open-source-ux »

xg15 wrote: post #18
amelius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how do I square the fact that I work on flipping bits in computers somewhere that represent some fiction of our collective imagination, all the while burning more energy and fuel and contributing to the massive side show that distracts us from our self-destruction? Not well. Well at least the mass consumption of virtual goods (software) seems to produce less waste than the mass consumption of physical goods. Yo…

I'm not sure about that. Sure, the software itself won't, but the hardware needed to run the software absolutely has environmental impact: It drives habitat destruction due to mining the raw materials, pollution from waste by the mining and production processes and than more pollution when the hardware is decommissioned and ends up on landfills. Then there is the enormous energy demand of IT systems, which in turn re…

...the hardware needed to run the software absolutely has environmental impact

I agree. When I look at other industries I see efforts to reduce energy consumption. Most programmers, in contrast, couldn't care less. The most popular languages are the least energy efficient. But they make life easier for developers, or as devs love to say 'more productive'. Who cares if you need to add more and more server boxes to your setup, after all 'hardware is cheap' - the default response of countless programmers everywhere. This industry is absolutely rife with hypocrisy.

Re: Insect collapse

#39

Post by mrob »

EGreg wrote: post #25
thebradbain wrote: post #6

And here I was recently musing to myself that if something embedded into our societal imagination, like the giraffe, went nearly extinct due to climate change, that would wake people up before it's too late. Little did I know that's already essentially happened here according to this article, and the powers that be neither seem to be aware nor care. And because I was curious: Giraffes are now on the endangered specie…

Tigers are nearly extinct. People don’t care.

I wouldn't have any problem with tigers going extinct in the wild.

From Wikipedia: "The most comprehensive study of deaths due to tiger attacks estimates that at least 373,000 people died due to tiger attacks between 1800 and 2009, the majority of these attacks occurring in South and Southeast Asia.[1] Over the last five centuries, an estimated 1 million people have been eaten by tigers.[2]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack

Re: Insect collapse

#40

Post by nopriorarrests »

open-source-ux wrote: post #38
xg15 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that. Sure, the software itself won't, but the hardware needed to run the software absolutely has environmental impact: It drives habitat destruction due to mining the raw materials, pollution from waste by the mining and production processes and than more pollution when the hardware is decommissioned and ends up on landfills. Then there is the enormous energy demand of IT systems, which in turn re…

...the hardware needed to run the software absolutely has environmental impact I agree. When I look at other industries I see efforts to reduce energy consumption. Most programmers, in contrast, couldn't care less. The most popular languages are the least energy efficient. But they make life easier for developers, or as devs love to say 'more productive'. Who cares if you need to add more and more server boxes to you…

>The most popular languages are the least energy efficient.

What does it mean?

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