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Birds Are Vanishing from North America

nytimes.com

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Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#301

Post by [deleted] »

ip26 wrote: post #61
wins32767 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. The alternatives are either less people on the planet, lower standard of living, or resources from off the planet.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#302

Post by [deleted] »

ip26 wrote: post #61
wins32767 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. The alternatives are either less people on the planet, lower standard of living, or resources from off the planet.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#303

Post by randomdata »

ip26 wrote: post #61
wins32767 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. The alternatives are either less people on the planet, lower standard of living, or resources from off the planet.

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…

> 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.

The US produces 14 billion bushels of corn, but only 36% of that, 5 billion bushels, is fed to animals. Your numbers suggest we could reduce those 5 billion bushels to half a billion bushels, but that only reduces the corn crop to 68% of the current size, not the 10% your comment might lead one to believe.

And if we're talking about carrying capacity, acres start to become relevant. Not all corn acres are created equal. While individual fields can easily push 300 bushels per acre, the US average yield is only 170 bushels per acre. When the pressure is on due to less need for corn, it is is the lowest yielding acres that will give up first. Instead of only needing 68% of the acres, you might need more like 75% of the current acres.

Having said that, corn is fed to more than cattle. In a post-beef world, it is likely that people will still want to eat pork, chicken, etc. I was not able to find any hard information about how much of that 5 billion bushels is directed to cattle, but we might be looking at needing more than 80% of the current corn acres in a post-beef world to feed the animals that don't result in beef.

> what happens to all the corn & soy farmers

Probably the same as usual. These cash crops are typically planted before the market need is understood, so even if the market cratered due to artificial meat, they would be planted anyway. Then, with so much surplus product in the ground, the price will crater. Once the price craters, opportunists (possibly with help from the government) will start to take a hard look at what they can do with this corn and soy being practically given away for free. New markets will emerge, and eventually the price will recover. There will no doubt be some casualties along the way, but at the end of the day, not much.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#304

Post by Ma8ee »

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.

> Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

I disagree. I think nature has a value in itself, in all its complexity and beauty.

I think few people would argue that if the Louvre was destroyed it wouldn't be considered a loss for the world and for humankind, or that we don't still lament the loss of the library in Alexandria.

Of course, nothing of this matters from the perspective of the heath death of the universe. But that is a cynism that I consider juvenile.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#305

Post by anonymou2 »

refurb wrote: post #182
amatecha wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a rhetorical question? There's quite some difference between a 200m tall concrete dam that holds 1m+ cubic decameters of water[0][1], and a bunch of twigs and logs jumbled in a creek that might be 2 meters high on average and actually house life like beavers, frogs, birds etc.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bullards_Bar_Dam [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reserv... [2] http…

So whether something is natural is a matter of scale? If we cut down 1,000 acres of trees for wood, is that natural? What about if a beetle infestation destroys a million acres? Still natural?

Actually yeah, it's all a matter of scale. Of course we are animals and what we do is perfectly natural, like a volcano blowing up, any other species that had been so successful evolutionary speaking as ourselves would be doing the same thing. But that does not mean it is good for us or that can keep going on forever. It is probably what made us successful that will destroy us.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#306

Post by randomdata »

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

Ignoring that Monsanto no longer exists, what particular relevance do they bring to the conversation that makes it worth singling them out? There are many companies that produce herbicides. There are companies, not including the former Monsanto company, that produce insecticides that are strongly linked to insect population decline. Wouldn't they be equally interesting, if not more interesting, to name here? It is not clear why one would bring up Monsanto, and only Monsanto, which explains why such comments would be downvoted as spam.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#308

Post by kiliantics »

Yhippa wrote: post #156

This is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time. Birds are amazing. It's amazing to me that they are the descendants of dinosaurs and they're all around us. Their songs and plumage are beautiful to me. > Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development. This one I'm not totally sure is…

We could have a better life for ourselves without following the status quo and participating in the exponential economic growth that destroys ecosystems. We could just take back the majority of the world's wealth which has been concentrated in the hands of a few that are pitching us against each other in this economic rat race.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#309

Post by akvadrako »

amatecha wrote: post #159
refurb wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A beaver dams a river, flooding the shores and killing off the ecosystem. That’s natural. A group of humans do it and it’s unnatural?

Beaver dams don't kill off the ecosystem. Tons of other life forms make use of the newly-flooded area. I've personally watched herons perch upon the dam to catch the fish that are now swimming through the now-deeper waterway, for example.

Actually beaver dams can be terrible for the ecosystem if you measure them the same way as human dams. They certainly can cause lots of death and flooding.

Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America

#310

Post by [deleted] »

frutiger wrote: post #275
__jal wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get back to me when beavers are causing the extinction of thousands of other species and arguing about how to warn their descendants about radioactive waste.

Many species have caused widespread extinction on a level humans have barely approached. Cyanobacteria, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event .

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