Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says • Hacker News Board

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#421

Post by return1 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

Alarming articles like this raise more questions than answers. The number of species on earth apparently ranges from 2 million to 1 trillion (??). One question is whether this biodiversity is needed. Life on earth has survived significantly larger extinction events and in the grand scheme of things "preservation" is not an optimal condition for anything. It just feels good for humans to preserve the planet.

More importantly however, evolution has found a clear winner in its path towards (whatever she was trying to do): humans. We are already beginning to alter evolutionary trends and this will only keep accelerating. It's worth considering whether evolution is now obsolete and whether indeed most species serve a purpose. With brains taking over, life is on transformative path which will lead to it becoming extraterrestial and generally way more transformative than evolution has ever been.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#422

Post by Balgair » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

albemuth wrote: post #406

Balgair wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the late Dr. Hans Rosling's Factfullness . By many measures, the world is getting much much better. Try testing yourself to see what you know, are you smarter than a chimp?: http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018

Maybe it's the feeling that we feel a plateau coming?

If anything, I think we all feel that there is a cliff coming.

Though not like a Kurzweilian Singularity, we all see a climate change cliff out there in (most of) our lifetimes. We all know that the future is not going to resemble the present, and that's anxiety producing.

I'd argue that from Dr. Rosling's data, it will be a much better world. But even his stats and monte-carlo show us that it'll be different. Pax Americana is ending, clearly, but what comes next with all those missles we have chained up in those silos, that's reasonably terrifying.

The world has never been more 'up for grabs'. It's exciting to me, but it can reasonably be very anxious to others whose livlihoods depend on stability.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#423

Post by _Microft » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

eMSF wrote: post #283

_Microft wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason is biology/physics. You need ten times the biomass to create an equivalent biomass at a trophic level that is one higher. It HAS to be more inefficient to eat meat instead of crops because it raises your trophic level by 1. (Worst case is eating what were apex predators like e.g. tuna fish) About trophic levels: Level 1 are producers like plants. Herbivores are level 2 , carnivores eating herbivores are level…

Well... except for the fact that I don't have a gut to make use of any of the biomass that grazing cattle can harvest from a field. And eaten or not, that biomass is part of active carbon cycle, and if left on the field, will decompose back into the atmosphere.

About 36% of all crops were used to feed lifestock in 2017. [0], table on page 7 (PDF page numbers).

So - no need to graze.

[0] http://www.fao.org/3/ca0239en/CA0239EN.pdf

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#424

Post by fsloth » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

fifnir wrote: post #195

fsloth wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, none of the things what you suggest would make any impact. For me, personally - but those were kind of personal suggestions. I haven't flown anywhere in three years, and certainly don't visit conferences. "- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. " Uh, what? I commute by bike and with the bus in the winter. I don't really see how stopping that would contribute. "- If…

"Doesn't apply to me, thus it doesn't apply to anyone"

No, I'm quite sure it applies to some, but since it does not apply to all (as per my counterexample) it's hard to predict what percentage of the audience is primed to react in any beneficial way.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#425

Post by jlokier » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #236

jlokier wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to some theory it takes about 3.5% of the population to take part in active resistance to cause change If that's true, it should be made more widely known. I think that would be cause for hope for many people who despair at democracy and collective idiocy, and it would change their behaviour because of hope and belief in the effect of personal actions. If the 3.5% is actually true, that change of behaviou…

Consider the very foreseeable 'unforeseen consequences' of suggestions such as this. Think of all the views you may find undesirable. Now how many of them do you think could round up 3.5% of people to engage in disruptive behavior if they believed it would let them 'win'? You end up in a situation where you want people you agree with to engage in disruptive behavior, but not people you disagree with. Yet messaging li…

With regard to "telling people about the 3.5% theory", I think that decision depends on how much you believe that "hopelessness" is playing a psychological part in our collective problems, or inability to deal with the largest threats.

I agree when it comes to "getting your way by misbehaviour", that democracy is designed to improve on that.

But if we generalise to "change caused by individuals' actions", which may not be the change each direct actioner demands, so much as the consequence of their applied lives, that covers more things.

For example, climate change activists who don't fly and tell others not to, are not causing a democratic catastrophe, yet they are having an effect and it's probably disproportionate and probably good.

I don't think that's chaos, I think it's a form of distributed intelligence and attention process. Albeit a messy one, without monotonic improvements.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#426

Post by jlokier » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

perfunctory wrote: post #385

jlokier wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure your comment is making a point, but to be honest I can't be sure what it is. My point was that switching to part-time seems unachievable to me for the majority of people, without changing other factors at the same time, and so we should simultaneously enquire how you recommend to deal with those other factors, for the advice to be most effective. I don't wish to dismiss the advice; I wish to understand how t…

Well, so my thinking is along these lines. What we now call "full-time" - 40 hours a week - is not a law of nature. It's a social construct. In the beginning of the industrial revolution everybody worked 12 hours a day without the weekend. Labor movement (or was it Henry Ford? I don't know) pushed for shorter working week. It didn't seem to destroy the economy. So I don't see why we can't make it even shorter. And HN…

Thanks. I completely agree with this.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#427

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #146

uptown wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecosystems are all interconnected. As an example, see "How Wolves Changed Rivers": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448929 Now, imagine the impact of a million species being wiped from the earth.

There would be impact but if anything human are good with adapting and with technology. Is it impossible to image that these million species roles can be replaced with technology ?

[deleted]

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#428

Post by gdubs » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

dkarbayev wrote: post #279

One thing that I fail to wrap my mind around: aren’t all those corporations executives, politicians, and poachers living on the same planet Earth as all of us? Don’t they ever think that they’re actually destroying our planet and there’s no other place to live? I can imagine that they don’t believe pro-climate change people, but they could simply hire an independent group of researchers, don’t they? And I mean actual…

A lot of people live pretty disconnected from nature. In cities and suburbs it can feel like we’ve conquered nature; so it can be hard for people to grasp how dependent we still are on biodiversity. We’re also poorly wired for prioritizing long term plans over short term rewards. Even when, rationally, we know a crisis is looming. Then there’s plain old cognitive dissonance — our inability to accept facts that conflict with our worldview. And lastly: being wealthy and powerful doesn’t always equate with being intelligent.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#429

Post by lorenzorhoades » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

I'm confused on why people actually care about global warming. That planet is in whats called a 'glacial age' on the historic time table of the earth. Yeah, we are rapidly depleting the ice caps (So what?) Yeah, we are slowly warming the earth. (So what?) yeah places like south florida are going to be underwater, and will potentially cost hundreds of billions (So what?). The point is, growth sacraficed now will have tremendous impacts on the future, as the law of compounding returns rings true here. It's pretty obvious that electric cars are much better than internal combustion, oil is a finite resource with tremendous political turmoil and complications sourounding it, and not to mention the costs of logistics while renewables are getting cheaper and more efficient by the year. People in the future will laugh at what we debated as a non-issue. Also, to be honest who cares about all the other animals? The same people who complain about climate change killing the polar bears are the same people who eat other animals. It's all rather laughable.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#430

Post by EB66 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

lorenzorhoades wrote: post #429

I'm confused on why people actually care about global warming. That planet is in whats called a 'glacial age' on the historic time table of the earth. Yeah, we are rapidly depleting the ice caps (So what?) Yeah, we are slowly warming the earth. (So what?) yeah places like south florida are going to be underwater, and will potentially cost hundreds of billions (So what?). The point is, growth sacraficed now will have…

> I'm confused on why people actually care about global warming.

If you accept the premise that biodiversity on Earth is intrinsically valuable, then one ought to care about global warming.

> Also, to be honest who cares about all the other animals? The same people who complain about climate change killing the polar bears are the same people who eat other animals.

If someone eats, for example, farm-raised chicken, it does not logically follow that they ought not to care for the well-being and survival of other animals.