Birds Are Vanishing from North America • Hacker News Board

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#241

Post by coliveira » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

lacampbell wrote: post #172

the_af wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That explains the sparkling environmental record of the USSR and China! If you assume that capitalism requires unchecked growth harmful to the environment, it doesn't follow that some specific alternatives to capitalism are automatically healthy for the environment. The only conclusion you can draw (if the initial proposition is true) is that if there is a healthy alternative, it's not capitalism. By the way, some…

Whenever people talk about 'capitalism' like this it's usually a communist dog whistle. Otherwise they would talk about specific issues, not "the system is making us do it maaan".

So you are the one assuming that after the end of capitalism only communism is possible...

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#242

Post by healsjnr1 » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #228

gerbilly wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. If you want to know what the natural state for an area is, ask a native person from a population that has un uninterrupted culture, that is if you can find one. A native person I know often describes a discorded ecosystem by saying: "The land is sick." To equivocate and to claim all states are equally natural, is to de…

Chinese are "native people from a population that has un-uninterrupted culture". Not too great at preserving environment (reportedly improving lately I think). Idea of a "noble savage" is a myth that is about as racist as it's opposite.

This is a long way from my expertise but I think that what you are referring to ('Chinese') is actually a large group of varying cultural and ethnic people that has seen a huge amount of change over millennia. I think this is significantly different to what the parent was referring to.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#243

Post by ip26 » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 3:06 AM UTC

chadcmulligan wrote: post #184

ip26 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artificial meat seems like a pretty exciting workaround. Beef has a feed conversion of something like 10:1. So, if you imagine a post-beef world, we will need only 10% of the field corn & soy to produce similar amounts of artificial meat. Corn, by the way, is the US's largest crop. This has a lot of open questions around, e.g. what happens to all the corn & soy farmers. But if we're just talking about the planet's ca…

Headlines I'm expecting in 10 years - "problems caused by artificial meat are as bad as the obesity epidemic caused by processed food." There is no need for artificial meat, just eat less meat, and eat more veggies, nuts and beans. They are way better for you and provide a lot of micro nutrients (anti - oxidants, phytochemical etc) that may or may not exist in artificial meat. Artificial meat is a processed food, and…

I eat very little meat, but I'm not optimistic about convincing everyone else.

Also, we already know regular red meat causes cancer and other issues, so the health bar is not high.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#244

Post by phyzome » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #228

gerbilly wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. If you want to know what the natural state for an area is, ask a native person from a population that has un uninterrupted culture, that is if you can find one. A native person I know often describes a discorded ecosystem by saying: "The land is sick." To equivocate and to claim all states are equally natural, is to de…

Chinese are "native people from a population that has un-uninterrupted culture". Not too great at preserving environment (reportedly improving lately I think). Idea of a "noble savage" is a myth that is about as racist as it's opposite.

Traditional Knowledge is a real thing, separate from the "noble savage" stereotype.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#245

Post by monktastic1 » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 3:11 AM UTC

vpmpaul wrote: post #122

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…

>psychedelics Every "epiphany" that someone has told me they had while on psychedelics has been something that easily could have been come up with a bit of quite time and thought. I have never heard a single story that blew me away or offered anything but mundane "insights" that easily could be gotten other ways. Its time for the "psychedelics" people to come clean and just admit they are simply getting high.

Have you seen any of the studies where psychedelics are able to resolve conditions like anxiety and depression that are resistant to other treatments? When a person goes through that kind of epiphany, it may sound insipid in words -- and thus not blow you away or sound like mundane "insights" -- but insights don't always have to be verbalizable. "Life is miraculous" sounds pretty obvious, but there are certainly times where it's more "in your face" than others.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#246

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #243

chadcmulligan wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headlines I'm expecting in 10 years - "problems caused by artificial meat are as bad as the obesity epidemic caused by processed food." There is no need for artificial meat, just eat less meat, and eat more veggies, nuts and beans. They are way better for you and provide a lot of micro nutrients (anti - oxidants, phytochemical etc) that may or may not exist in artificial meat. Artificial meat is a processed food, and…

I eat very little meat, but I'm not optimistic about convincing everyone else. Also, we already know regular red meat causes cancer and other issues, so the health bar is not high.

[deleted]

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#247

Post by matt_j » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 3:32 AM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #140

soulofmischief wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a fun catch here though. Earth is going to face a natural destruction sooner or later. Be it by a gamma ray burst, a super-volcanic eruption, an asteroid impact, or any of other other practically infinite number of ways it can happen, has happened (multiple times), and will happen again soon or later. So we're all effectively living on borrowed time. You can't create a permanently sustainable Earth in a beaut…

Cataclysmic events occur on geological timescales. Historically no species survives more than some thousands or perhaps millions of years, timescales short enough to fit between unavoidable extinction events.

Humanity is currently on a path to destroy the earth's capability to sustain us, on a timescale that is laughably small compared to geological timescales.

If we behaved better, humanity could conceivably exist for hundreds of thousands, or millions of years without being obliterated by an asteroid or colossal volcanic eruption(s).

At the rate we're going, we won't last another few hundred years before we create an environment so toxic and unlivable that we extinguish ourselves.

Luckily a few rich crap heads will get even richer before that happens, bless their cotton socks, so it will all have been worth it.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#248

Post by corey_moncure » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #102

ff317 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 - I think the kind of marketing and messaging that makes environmentalism all about saving "the planet" and "the animals" and "the natural environment" really doesn't serve us well. A better strategic approach would be to highlight (with the right crafty messaging) that a very tiny statistical slice of earth's historical states and potential future states are any good at supporting large human populations comforta…

Your approach will fail for the same reason than an ethical environmental appeal does. Enough humans who feel and fear their impending mortality are selfish and vindictive enough to obstruct change because they want to conserve whatever material comforts they have now and do not care about what happens to other people after they're dead. I would go so far as to say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the id…

>say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled 'skeptics'.

We don't even have to look at arguments and rhetoric. Simply go outside and observe. You can immediately see people driving conspicuously huge vehicles, and some of them have modified their vehicles to increase dangerous and undesirable emissions (noise emissions, combustion emissions e.g. coal rolling) for no other purpose but than to antagonize the people around them and intentionally degrade the natural environment.

Nearly every street you drive down in residential America is lined from one end to the other with lawns that have chemicals pumped in to increase growth unnaturally, and simultaneously chemicals pumped in to control undesired weeds and insects. None of this serves any practical purpose at all.

Look carefully at the ground and you'll find it's full of fragments of the discarded plastic and metal containers of quick junk food and the so-called "energy drinks". Not only is it bad enough we have to produce these items to satisfy a temporary need at the cost of creating permanent* garbage, we have to go and toss them by the side of the road just to illustrate how utterly callous and thoughtless we are.

Hopeless. Sometimes it feels very hopeless.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#249

Post by tengbretson » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

bt848 wrote: post #54

hyperion2010 wrote: post #35

Since I almost never see it mentioned in any threads related to this subject, am I thrilled that the main article actually references Silent Spring. I remember growing up that people thought that we had somehow managed to avoid the future it portrayed, but no, we have not. Another generation and the purveyors of death are back selling the cure for other species some people haven't learned to live in balance with.

People also think we avoided the future predicted by “The Population Bomb” but we didn’t.

We obviously did.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#250

Post by RangerScience » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

technothrasher wrote: post #16

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…

> 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.

It's not so much that I completely agree with your sentiment, than that I think this is an incredible way to phrase the issue. Likely more effective, and I think I'll try switching to it.