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Insect collapse

theguardian.com

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Re: Insect collapse

#101

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

skh wrote: post #94
otikik wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still on the "affected by negativity" phase. May I ask what concrete actions are you taking (besides being optimistic). I spent one morning with a group which plants and looks after trees in a reserve near my place. We were putting protections around young saplings so cows wouldn't eat them. It took my team of three the whole morning to put protections around a single sapling. The whole thing made me sad. There i…

It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. There are too many people on the planet.

While I'm very happy having chosen the path you suggest, I never suggest it to anyone because I think it is not realistic. What do you think the odds are, that the average person can win against one of the strongest primal drives with which every living being is born. Also, people (on average) do need to procreate if society has to continue its existence.

Re: Insect collapse

#102

Post by insertcredit »

EGreg wrote: post #26
brazzy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Majority of which people? Honduras is being impacted. Our reaction in the USA is to block the refugees fleeing famine and drought from reaching us and “invading”. Similarly with Europe and African refugees.

The average IQ in Honduras is around 80 and the average of IQ in sub-saharan Africa is below 70 [1]. Why would any technologically advanced country want hordes of refugees with low IQs?

[1] https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html

Re: Insect collapse

#103

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

yardie wrote: post #31
pfisch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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. Bu…

My apologies for going off track, but your last statement reminds me of how "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" begins.

Re: Insect collapse

#104

Post by cs702 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #91
cs702 wrote: post #80

The growing body of anecdotal evidence, including the disappearance of insects at the bottom of the food pyramid in more than one area, suggests that it is now too late to reverse these dramatic changes to the earth's biosphere and humankind's ability to extract food from it. Let us hope that as these dramatic changes start affecting more and more people in concrete ways, we, human beings, will search for and develop…

It's an interesting position we've put ourselves into, at least in the US. Half the population in denial that anything is wrong, the other half convinced the only solution is conservation. Eventually we're going to have to engineer our way out of it, or die trying. But I expect it will get pretty dire before enough people across the spectrum get on board.

> Eventually we're going to have to engineer our way out of it, or die trying.

Exactly. That's a much better way of putting it.

Re: Insect collapse

#105

Post by 0xcafecafe »

mrob wrote: post #76
vixen99 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem at all! So put tigers at the top of your list and work slowly but surely down the the list of 'nasty' animals and plants. Doubtless we can eliminate the whole damn lot if we really try. You'll be a hero! Or maybe not.

I'd put malaria carrying mosquitoes at the top of the list, not tigers. The concept of a tiger is an important part of human culture, and it would be a pity if nobody could see a real one, but they breed in captivity, so people can see them in zoos. It's easy to romanticize the idea of "wild tigers" when they live far from you, and you're at no risk of one eating you or your livestock. Humans killed most wild tigers…

A lot of deaths can be attributed to humans encroaching upon the tiger's territory. If you condone tiger killing due to that then we can extrapolate that to any carnivore capable of killing humans because eventually we do like to take over their land.

Re: Insect collapse

#106

Post by 0xcafecafe »

mrob wrote: post #76
vixen99 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem at all! So put tigers at the top of your list and work slowly but surely down the the list of 'nasty' animals and plants. Doubtless we can eliminate the whole damn lot if we really try. You'll be a hero! Or maybe not.

I'd put malaria carrying mosquitoes at the top of the list, not tigers. The concept of a tiger is an important part of human culture, and it would be a pity if nobody could see a real one, but they breed in captivity, so people can see them in zoos. It's easy to romanticize the idea of "wild tigers" when they live far from you, and you're at no risk of one eating you or your livestock. Humans killed most wild tigers…

Most wild tigers in India were killed for sport under the colonial rule not a good enough reason if you ask me (Thats how the Indian cheetah went extinct as well).

Re: Insect collapse

#108

Post by astazangasta »

skh wrote: post #94
otikik wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still on the "affected by negativity" phase. May I ask what concrete actions are you taking (besides being optimistic). I spent one morning with a group which plants and looks after trees in a reserve near my place. We were putting protections around young saplings so cows wouldn't eat them. It took my team of three the whole morning to put protections around a single sapling. The whole thing made me sad. There i…

It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. There are too many people on the planet.

This line of reasoning is spurious. The people who consume the most resources also have the lowest fertility rates.

What we can do other than despair and contemplate genocide is transition to a carbon neutral economy. It really only requires political will.

Re: Insect collapse

#109

Post by Retra »

mrob wrote: post #96
Tushon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say the same thing about wolves, re the wolves returning to Yellowstone? https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduc...

I oppose the reintroduction of any large predator. The ecosystem benefits can be met by human hunters instead, and if they are skilled they can kill more humanely than wild predators. That said, wolves are much less dangerous than tigers, so I'm not too concerned by that specific case. To all the downvoters, what is the maximum number of humans eaten by tigers per year you'd be willing to accept in exchange for allow…

Tigers don't eat humans because tigers roam free, they eat humans because humans roam free. Build a fence around your town and tigers won't eat you.

Don't try to build such a general argument on such marginal premises. Humans kill far more humans that Tigers ever have. Tigers are simply not a serious threat to us.

Re: Insect collapse

#110

Post by dmichulke »

drankula3 wrote: post #87
dmichulke wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying it logically follows that killing yourself is likely even better than not having children. I consider it a failure of the study if it says "don't have kids" if (and only if) its original aim was to show how that can be done without drastic measures (such as "kill all humans", "don't have kids", ...). It's like suggesting to not have kids in order to fight cancer. Yes, absolute cancer occurrences will…

Fighting cancer involves lowering cancer rates in each individual person. Individual likelihood of cancer is unaffected by the global population. Fighting climate change involves lowering CO2 rates for the globe, and is heavily influenced by the global population and the population of rich countries.

> Fighting climate change involves lowering CO2 rates

Exactly, and not having kids doesn't lower CO2 rates per capita, it just reduces absolute CO2 emissions.

Hence the equivalence that the article's statistics implicitly suggest killing humans reduces CO2 emissions and my claim that this type of info doesn't help at all.

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