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Birds Are Vanishing from North America

nytimes.com

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Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#91

Post by jobigoud »

monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

> this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous.

Here is an attempt at a framework to think about this: we have no proof that life exists anywhere else in the Universe. There is a possibility that life itself arose only once and that we are the only intelligent beings around. We have a sort of grand astronomical duty to not fuck it up and expand to the stars and keep the fire going.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#92

Post by hanniabu »

pvaldes wrote: post #47
fjabre wrote: post #4

Anytime someone brings up Monsanto they are downvoted because without pesticides humans cannot feed themselves apparently. And herbicides are for plants only so of course they have no effect on insects. /s

> herbicides are for plants only so of course they have no effect on insects Is pretty obvious that herbicides kill insects indirectly. They are killing its sources of food (wildflowers and weeds). They have a deep impact over insects.

Hence the "/s", aka "end sarcasm"

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#93

Post by dfischer »

monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

The solution to this is a culture that regularly participated in mushrooms or DMT.

I mean that seriously. It’s a profound awakening to love and beauty we are surrounded by.

Ayahuasca is almost an alien-like technology.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#94

Post by yifanl »

commandlinefan wrote: post #80
technothrasher wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard. Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

> Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves I wonder, though... we know, for example, that bees pollinate plants, and that we need plants to be pollinated for our survival. But if the bees die out, we can figure out another technical way to pollinate plants - it might be a pain to carry out, and we might be kicking ourselves for not saving the bees before it got to that point, but it can be done. If it comes…

We haven't come close to solving the environment, whatever that means. If we had that solution on any scale, then almost by tautology, climate change wouldn't be a problem.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#95

Post by GuiA »

monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

I really liked this essay:

http://paulkingsnorth.net/2013/01/17/dark-ecology/

And the author gets to a similar point:

” And so I come to this point, and I ask myself: what, at this moment in history, would not be a waste of my time? And I arrive at five tentative answers.

[...]

Four: Insisting that nature has a value beyond utility. And telling everyone. Remember that you are one lifeform among many and understand that everything has intrinsic value. If you want to call this ‘ecocentrism’ or ‘deep ecology’, do it. If you want to call it something else, do that. If you want to look to tribal societies for your inspiration, do it. If that seems too gooey, just look up into the sky. Sit on the grass, and touch a tree trunk, walk into the hills, dig the garden, look at what you find in the soil, marvel at what the hell this thing called life could possibly be. Value it for what it is, try to understand what it is, and have nothing but pity or contempt for people who tell you that its only value is in what they can extract from it.”

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#96

Post by soulofmischief »

jobigoud wrote: post #91
monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

> this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous. Here is an attempt at a framework to think about this: we have no proof that life exists anywhere else in the Universe. There is a possibility that life itself arose only once and that we are the only intelligent beings around. We have a sort of grand astronomical duty to not fuck it up and expand to the stars and keep the fire going.

That's what I'm saying man this behavior is just beyond selfish. And we are leaving nothing for the next generations to use in terms of raw materials in order to help us become a space-faring species. Society is perverted to the core.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#97

Post by djsumdog »

bsmitty5000 wrote: post #2

This article doesn't mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it's clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. I wonder if there's a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats. Although, interestingly, the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population. It's hard to imagine humans taking the…

Pesticides are necessary for current crop productions .. crops that go to growing fuel (ethanol), food starch and other things we have mass use of, but that are not going to be sustainable.

Bee populations are suffering greatly and we needs those bees to grow a lot of our food. It doesn't help that bees are shipped in to places like the Almond farms in California, putting them in a lot of stress and hurting their colonies. Even though worker bees only live 2 ~ 4 weeks, the stress of transport does affect these pollinators.

It would make sense the decline in insect populations affecting birds for sure. Pesticides aren't limited to areas around farms and most likely find their way far out into the environment.

So if pesticides are the problem the question is, how do deal with the agricultural industry that depends on them? Is it possible to get our population to stop consuming as much crop based product and prevent more of the pesticides from entering the environment? Or is there a way to limit their effects?

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#98

Post by hanniabu »

ip26 wrote: post #11
tylerpachal wrote: post #7

(serious) Is there any hope? Its just one problem after another (probably because everything is linked). What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?

The fact that wetland bird populations are actually growing is a strong sign that we can fix this, if we try. Bird conservation efforts in the last few decades mainly focused on wetlands. See DDT, national wildlife refuges, and the duck stamp. So, it's not like the decline is inexorable. But it's not going to fix itself.

All those wetlands are filled with water, which we are polluting. Trump removing the Clean Water Act last week also doesn't help the situation. Eventually this water will get contaminated, insects and species will die. There's no doubt in my mind of that if we keep putting money first.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#99

Post by mirimir »

phkahler wrote: post #17
spodek wrote: post #5

We're swimming in environmental problems. We can come up with makeshift solutions to many, but for solving them all, and not to suggest it's the only solution, but a part of anything comprehensive, is there any environmental problem that a smaller human population doesn't alleviate?

>> is there any environmental problem that a smaller human population doesn't alleviate? Shhhhh. Nobody is willing to talk about that for a number of reasons. Most of those reasons are nothing more than burying ones head in the sand.

Population has been a red flag topic in the environmental community, for decades at least. One issue is the typical inverse relationship between population growth rate and per capita resource usage. Plus the fact that population growth rate tends to drop with increasing economic development, particularly increased educational opportunities for women. So it tends to self correct, over time.

Still, the overshoot is problematic.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#100

Post by Feuilles_Mortes »

RoutinePlayer wrote: post #78
monktastic1 wrote: post #36

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…

I'm not sure I fully know your stances on all of this, but Religion is not really a prerequisite for fully appreciating how beautiful yet precarious our biosphere truly is. Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward. But first we need to get a critical mass of our American citizenry to be convinced we have an actual problem. Especially, in fact, a large segment of the elector…

> Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward.

I think that this perspective ignores the environmental problems inherent in a capitalist mode of production, and in fact plays into them.

I think that a political revolution could be imminent, and I would urge those concerned about the future of life on this planet to consider alternative modes of economics.

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