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Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

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Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#61

Post by makerofspoons »

nnq wrote: post #39
ericdykstra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think our only options going forward are a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated, or an eco-fascist regime enforces pollution (and thus effectively population) control on the whole planet.

> a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated That's probably the way we'll have it, but there will be artificial-natural habitat , eg. "reservations", that could grow to even be country-sized or half-continent-sized if we manage resources right. (Though probably they'll be smaller since we're going to have to some pretty large scale heavily-engineered-and-very-unnatural-agriculture to prevent fam…

There is reason to believe we may have already hit peak farmland or may in the near future: http://freakonomics.com/2012/12/21/why-peak-farmland-is-good... https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2015/05/26/peak-far...

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#62

Post by mattkrause »

darkpuma wrote: post #13
erikpukinskis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My general understanding about bioremediation is the material has to be removed and put in a landfill.

> "Billion Oyster Project partners with more than 70 restaurants in New York City. The businesses save up their oyster shells rather than tossing them, and a collection partner for the Billion Oyster Project rounds them up and carts them off to Governors Island, a small island due east of the Statue of Liberty." It seems unclear to me whether their deal with restaurants is limited to collecting shells from restaurant…

I think works the other way round.

They collect the shells of edible oysters grown in less polluted areas. These are cleaned and used to jumpstart the NYC oyster colony, which are not yet edible.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#63

Post by janlaureys »

yursky wrote: post #18

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/oyster-tecture/ is an excellent podcast about this project. It summarizes the history of the ecosystem and the intent behind the project very well. It's amazing how much of an oyster mecca new york used to be...

I'm a simple man: I see 99pi, I upvote.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#64

Post by ericdykstra »

Nasrudith wrote: post #60
ericdykstra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think our only options going forward are a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated, or an eco-fascist regime enforces pollution (and thus effectively population) control on the whole planet.

Really totallitaranism for "a good cause" is an incredibly dangerous fiction. Communism was essentially that fiction "for the workers" all they got out of that was torture and death. The object of power is power and any claims of a cause are illusions and deceptions. React accordingly.

I used "eco-fascism" just because it's really the only somewhat mainstream movement that argues for ecological diversity preservation at all.

There are potential forms of alternative or third position government structures that allow for just as much or more personal freedom than current democracies, and yet can preserve our natural ecology. It just requires an accounting of destruction of commons, where untouched biodiversity is valued by the people of the state.

If we have the power to absolutely destroy the natural environment, we also have the power to protect its beauty for future generations rather than selfishly destroy the earth.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#65

Post by [deleted] »

Nasrudith wrote: post #60
ericdykstra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think our only options going forward are a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated, or an eco-fascist regime enforces pollution (and thus effectively population) control on the whole planet.

Really totallitaranism for "a good cause" is an incredibly dangerous fiction. Communism was essentially that fiction "for the workers" all they got out of that was torture and death. The object of power is power and any claims of a cause are illusions and deceptions. React accordingly.

[deleted]

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#66

Post by _memes »

janlaureys wrote: post #63
yursky wrote: post #18

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/oyster-tecture/ is an excellent podcast about this project. It summarizes the history of the ecosystem and the intent behind the project very well. It's amazing how much of an oyster mecca new york used to be...

I'm a simple man: I see 99pi, I upvote.

Nice meme.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#67

Post by jerf »

faitswulff wrote: post #43
erikpukinskis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freaking out doesn’t seem to be helping? A lot of people have been freaking out for a long time. If anything, it seems to lead to a combination of despondency in allies and stubbornness in enemies. I’d advise working on solutions to specific problems, calmly and deliberately.

I think op means we should have zero enemies in fixing our environment. If we were truly all on the same page and freaking out, taking meaningful action would be a lot easier.

"I think op means we should have zero enemies in fixing our environment."

You do. Everybody wants clean air, clean water, etc. The Captain-Planet-Villain model of somebody literally cackling about how much pollution they're going to release into the world today is nonsense.

The problem is people who see a short-term gain of their own, standing against the environmental problems they cause. They may not even believe the environmental problems exist.

Sometimes they're even right; just because someone labeling themselves an "environmentalist" claims some environmental problem exists doesn't mean they are correct. These people are probably as dangerous to the environment as the actual polluters. We don't actually have complete and correct information about the effect of things, and if we did, there's a lot of people who wouldn't want to hear it, on both "sides".

But you gotta solve the right problems. Probably a non-trivial component of the environmental movement's semi-effectiveness is how much of the movement wants to fight alongside Captain Planet against essentially non-existent threats, rather than working out how to address the mismatched incentive issue. But I say "semi-effective" because they're far from ineffective, and there are certainly people directly addressing the mismatched incentive issue. For instance, people discussing "carbon taxes" are definitely on a more effective path.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#68

Post by oyster »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #47
erikpukinskis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My general understanding about bioremediation is the material has to be removed and put in a landfill.

The "natural" process is that e.g. oysters grab the co2 and bad stuff from the water, die, sink to the bottom and get covered in sediment. That's where major carbon sinks ended up anyway, to be turned into oil/coal/gas over millions of years.

Somehow, I think the pollutants originating from human activity will really be very much quite different from what used to become sequestered in sedimentary rock.

Smoke detector radiological sources, teflon pans, noble gases and refridgerants, cadmium paints and pigments, dioxins, kepone, BPA, hydrazine, sulfur mustards, medication, depleted uranium. The list goes on.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#69

Post by gdubs »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #26

Question: Do oysters clean the water by "eating" the pollutants ? If so, after oysters die, wont that pollutant still be in the water? Or is it in a stable form and does not harm us.

There was a TED talk on this idea a while back, and the answer to when can the oysters be eaten was “around 2050”.

https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_orff_oysters_as_architecture/...

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#70

Post by Spellchamp »

adrianN wrote: post #33
exitcode00 wrote: post #2

Imagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million... This is why the environments a disaster - not because you decide to buy an SUV

No, the environment is a disaster because we all consume way more than the planet can support.

I don't.
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