Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual • Hacker News Board

Re: Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

#21

Post by msbmsb » Fri, Jan 07, 2011, 5:29 PM UTC

The google map linked in the article[1] contains many entries that don't quite fit the oddness of some of the die-offs people are talking about. For example, [2] refers to 150 tons of tilapia that died because of being farmed too densely. [3] refers to fish that died when a small city lake froze over with a bunch of decaying leaves trapped under the ice releasing methane. And others.

[1]: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=20... [2]: http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Story/A1Story20101... [3]: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/201...

Re: Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

#22

Post by runjake » Fri, Jan 07, 2011, 6:09 PM UTC

shawndumas wrote: post #16

runjake wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's panicking? I've only seen reports of alarm.

maybe not you and me but lots of people: Technology to blame for animal die-off panic [1]. Mass Animal Deaths Leading To End Times Panic [2]. Dead Bird Panic [3]. ---- [1]: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40961721/ns/us_news-environment/ [2]: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1974746/mass_animal_dea... [3]: http://metabunk.org/content/137-Dead-Bird-Panic-How-Media-Fo...

Yeesh, the media really likes to stir stuff up. Those articles read like self-fulfilling prophecies.

Re: Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

#23

Post by roc » Fri, Jan 07, 2011, 6:41 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #20

roc wrote: post #14

The deaths aren't worthy of concern and investigation only if they're linked. They're worthy of concern and investigation in each instance because history has shown they tend to happen for one of two reasons: severe weather shock or human activity. Thus we need to carefully consider and investigate each occurrence, lest we ignore the metaphoric canary in the coalmine on the grounds that 'canaries die all the time'. T…

The canary in the coal mine is only useful because there's only one plausible explanation for it keeling over. If they died all the time for no good reason they'd be useless. It might be really cool if we could extract signal against a noisy background but there's mathematical limits on our ability to do that even in theory, and we're generally better off looking at the less noisy signals. Plus chasing noise turns ou…

Except that when it comes to mass animal deaths, the rate of it being caused by human activity isn't anywhere near as low as noise. And mass die offs simply don't happen "all the time". Canaries die of non-gas-related causes far more often than entire flocks of birds and schools of fish die within feet and seconds of one another.

Essentially, if a mass die off doesn't correlate with a particularly sudden weather event, or known human activity (fireworks displays) it's safe to assume it is us, from something we (tautologically) didn't know was happening or didn't expect to cause these problems.

And at that point, it's just straight-up good science to investigate the remaining cases to better understand our environment and how our activity is affecting it.

Re: Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

#24

Post by Rubyred » Fri, Jan 07, 2011, 6:49 PM UTC

I love the wording here: "not unusual". So what does it make it? Usual?

Re: Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

#25

Post by Rubyred » Fri, Jan 07, 2011, 6:54 PM UTC

I can see it now: the moon spirals off into the sun, and some "expert" is going to say that it's "not unusual".

Re: Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

#26

Post by Rubyred » Fri, Jan 07, 2011, 7:00 PM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #17

Why is this article on ReadWriteWeb, an online zine for web-design? Come to think of it, how would one classify RWW? "All the news that's currently popular"?

ReadWriteWeb are linkbait whores. I'm totally serious. I stopped taking them seriously a long time ago.