Insect collapse • Hacker News Board

Re: Insect collapse

#111

Post by otikik » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

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.

Your comment arrives a bit too late. I already have one child. What else?

Re: Insect collapse

#112

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

linguistbreaker wrote: post #99

skh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've thought this too but then you are leaving the future to those who breed more irresponsibly. Another way to look at it would be that we have a responsibility to raise more responsible people.

I suppose the question is whether the future is a gift or a curse.

Though I agree. It's odd - I've known people who seemed offended by Idiocracy, but couldn't really come up with any flaws in its basic premise (in short, well-educated highly-productive people (for traditional values of productive which is its own debate) tend to have fewer kids, and people are usually like their parents, so over time we'll have fewer people like that).

Re: Insect collapse

#113

Post by otikik » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

astazangasta wrote: post #108

skh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry but your comment doesn't help me. I can not "transition my society to a carbon neutral economy". I don't know how I can "create political will". Can you be more concrete?

Re: Insect collapse

#114

Post by mrob » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

0xcafecafe wrote: post #105

mrob wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To suggest that tigers can own land is a valid argument, but it's a minority opinion. Most people limit animal rights to avoidance of unnecessary cruelty. Vegans are a tiny minority of the world population, and if it's morally acceptable to enslave and kill animals for food (which is unnecessary for human survival), why can't we kill them for safety reasons?

Re: Insect collapse

#115

Post by peacetreefrog » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

It's interesting to me how often this story shows up on HN:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=insect&sort=byPopularity&prefi...

Edit: a lot of down votes, I'm not saying it's bad that it's frequently posted or isn't a very serious or alarming problem, or that it's showing up here so often due to some conspiracy or something.

It's just interesting, given the non-technical nature of the topic. I wonder if environmental Armageddon is of particular interest to engineers/hackers, or whether it's just an alarming story to humans generally, or what.

Re: Insect collapse

#116

Post by Nasrudith » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

dharma1 wrote: post #90

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…

It feels like humans lack the capacity to optimise for success beyond reproduction and acquiring power, especially at large scales and timelines. Maybe there is a non-technological solution to this - new ways of organising that enforces better choices for the planet and our long term survival - but it's hard to see that. Perhaps the bit flipping will be the way out of this mess - using machine intelligence to underst…

I think nothing has that capacity from incomplete information alone.

One would think primitive lifestyles would produce less pollution. They would surprisingly be wrong - biomass cooking fires scale worse than petroleum ironically. Similarly the reason hunter gathers were nomadic was because they were like a plague of locusts stripping food capacity - it is no wonder humans caused so many mass extinctions with spear and arrows alone.

Given the sheer difficulty of predicting technology I don't think it is very possible beyond "Don't put lead in gasoline you morons!".

Re: Insect collapse

#117

Post by opwieurposiu » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

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…

Well considering the problems caused by human overpopulation, I think we need to release enough tigers to eat about 100million humans a year.

Re: Insect collapse

#118

Post by shusson » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #72

shusson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If life started on the Earth, then we are just part of a process of a particular rock floating in space. There is no 'our' world and it is not dying.

Are you objecting to “our” on the grounds that we didn’t build it? Because most people use “our house” to mean the one they occupy, not limiting it to only what they built.

> Are you objecting to “our” on the grounds that we didn’t build it

I'm objecting that we own the Earth and that somehow we can kill it.

> people use “our house” to mean the one they occupy, not limiting it to only what they built

The Earth isn't being occupied by us, we are simply part of the Earth. So I don't mind the use of "our", but implying that we are killing the planet is the bit I think people should take a step back from and think about.

Re: Insect collapse

#119

Post by porpoisely » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #11

It's funny we think we are an "advanced" civilization, yet we have no real time diagnostics of the status of our biosphere. It's really creepy how little basic research apparently is going on into "boring" ecological factors. This insect apocalypse is like you suddenly notice you are missing an arm and a leg and have no idea what happened to them. Any professionals in um... ecological metrics here? To an outsider it…

Using the kardashev scale, we aren't even a level 1 civilization and nowhere close to be an advanced one.

We might destroy the ecosystem and ourselves because we reach the first level of the kardashev scale.

It's simply human hubris to think we are an advanced civilization and our pride may be our downfall.

Re: Insect collapse

#120

Post by Eric_WVGG » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

tatami wrote: post #66

ryanmercer wrote: post #49

Somewhat related... The other day I was annoyed at my allergies, in winter, with snow coming down and reflecting on how I never had allergies until around 30 a few years back. Bees. Bees dying. Bees eat pollen. It seems many of my friends have far worse allergies than previously... What if we are already seeing consequences of insects dying off, like bees for example. I need to find time to try and see if there is go…

I heard that pollen are more aggressive in areas with high emissions - on a reputable German radio show. This could be one reason for worse allergies, especially when you add in lifestyle changes such as moving to a city. Personally, I could not remember a situation where I felt this could be true.

Urban planning is a factor too. Someone decided that trees dropping fruit everywhere was messy, so urban planners made a blanket recommendation to only plant male trees. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/botanical-se...