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Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

bbc.com

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Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#61

Post by thatoneuser »

melling wrote: post #14
smallnamespace wrote: post #6

The number of mass animal deaths seems to be greatly increasing in over the last two decades: - Half of all Saiga antelopes (120k) died over a month, 2015 [1] - Recent unexplained dog deaths in Norway, 2019 [2] - The ongoing white nose syndrome epidemic that's ravaging bat populations in North America [3] - Gray whales beaching themselves all along US West Coast, 2019 [4] - Ongoing, mass die-off of about 30% of frog…

We look for villains but the real problem is simply humans in general. We do so much damage to the world. Plastic, greenhouse gases, overfishing, etc. to support our way of life. Lots of other examples...We kill millions of birds with our pets, buildings, and green energy We need to find a way to reduce our impact on the planet.

Um... Really? The problem is humans?

I guess all the mass extinction events before us were our fault too.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#62

Post by racl101 »

smallnamespace wrote: post #6

The number of mass animal deaths seems to be greatly increasing in over the last two decades: - Half of all Saiga antelopes (120k) died over a month, 2015 [1] - Recent unexplained dog deaths in Norway, 2019 [2] - The ongoing white nose syndrome epidemic that's ravaging bat populations in North America [3] - Gray whales beaching themselves all along US West Coast, 2019 [4] - Ongoing, mass die-off of about 30% of frog…

There's gotta be some Biblical passage about this.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#63

Post by racl101 »

refurb wrote: post #34
melling wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We look for villains but the real problem is simply humans in general. We do so much damage to the world. Plastic, greenhouse gases, overfishing, etc. to support our way of life. Lots of other examples...We kill millions of birds with our pets, buildings, and green energy We need to find a way to reduce our impact on the planet.

Wait, you’re blaming humans when animals get diseases? I mean sure, we could have an impact, but animals are no different than humans, they get ravaged by epidemics. Think about human life before current medical care. A million different things trying to kill you. No different for an animal.

Don't you know? Trump's responsible for the asteroid that killed the Dinosaurs.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#64

Post by kortilla »

j-pb wrote: post #55
arcticbull wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear energy doesn't kill any birds, though, and is the safest form of energy in terms of (human) deaths per terawatt hour. This kind of data should inform our decision making.

Yet... I'm all in for nuclear, once we know how to get rid of the waste products. It's never been about reactor safety, we have a storage problem, that hasn't been solved yet. Without that we're just slithering into the next "waste product that we don't know how to get rid of" cycle. Also even if we had solved it, it's too late to go nuclear now. The next 20 years will be crucial when it comes to stopping climate cha…

“It’s never been about reactor safety” - except that was the excuse during the 90s and 00s when we should have been building.

Storage is still an imaginary pile of what-if “issues” while the world fucking burns. The scale of the issue of nuclear waste storage orders of magnitude smaller than climate change. Yet we still talk about it while burning nat gas and goal.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#65

Post by brailsafe »

j-pb wrote: post #59
pvaldes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even in the same league. A cat will not kill bald eagles or herons, a turbine will.

Yeah but cars will. But whenever we talk about wind turbines, the amount of birds killed by highways are conveniently ignored.

As an aside, apparently some birds have evolved to be less killed by highways

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#66

Post by arcticbull »

kortilla wrote: post #64
j-pb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet... I'm all in for nuclear, once we know how to get rid of the waste products. It's never been about reactor safety, we have a storage problem, that hasn't been solved yet. Without that we're just slithering into the next "waste product that we don't know how to get rid of" cycle. Also even if we had solved it, it's too late to go nuclear now. The next 20 years will be crucial when it comes to stopping climate cha…

“It’s never been about reactor safety” - except that was the excuse during the 90s and 00s when we should have been building. Storage is still an imaginary pile of what-if “issues” while the world fucking burns. The scale of the issue of nuclear waste storage orders of magnitude smaller than climate change. Yet we still talk about it while burning nat gas and goal.

Not to mention we can just drop it all into Yucca Mountain and never think about it again.

I'm surprised given this project was abandoned by the Obama administration, Trump hasn't reversed it on principle.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#67

Post by 420basteit »

lowdose wrote: post #54

Why aren't we putting elephants in the wild on other continents?

I've wondered this too. It seems like there is a solid argument that they could act as a harmful invasive species and damage or destroy ecosystems which they are introduced to. There is precedent for this in hippos which were introduced to South America.

However, these rare and unique megafauna are so valuable (imo), that the potential damage they could cause ecosystems we introduce them to may be outweighed by their increased resilience. The death of all wild elephant populations would be a massive blow to biology, animal psychology, and natural beauty; I wonder if we should think more about prioritizing their survival over other ecological considerations.

I'm absolutely not an expert in this area at all, just thoughts of a layman.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#68

Post by blablabla123 »

sitkack wrote: post #37
coolspot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most logical and somehow most controversial way is to stop human population growth. All big problems - pollution, deforestation, climate change are caused by having too many people on this planet.

Impact per person is still high. We could have a million people on the planet, but if they consume the same as 5 thousand people each, there is no difference. The farmer in Bangladesh isn't the problem.

There's definitely the need for some 10x change here. Reducing CO2 output or plastic trash by 30% might of course help a lot but to actually solve things, these numbers need to be reduced by 99% or so. People manage to hyperoptimize everything when it comes to production lines, logistics or finance. I think this is also the ultimate reason why the environment must become strongly coupled with the finance system.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#69

Post by chrisco255 »

ianai wrote: post #21
chrisco255 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environment has not changed much at all in the past two decades. You spuriously quote a few random cases of sudden death and claim it has been on the uptick but lack the holistic data of the past few hundred years to determine whether that's a true statement or not. The beached whale could be caused by shifts in Earth's geomagnetic field, which whales use to navigate: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/weakening-earths-ma…

We really need to be careful with dismissals such as yours. Compared to the time the grandfather post took to research, process, and write compared to how long it takes you to write a discarding message is trivial but the potential damage is great. Joe Rogan had a great interview with Barbara Freese yesterday on her forthcoming book “industrial strength denial(...)”. She discussed it at length in her interview. Basic…

We need to be careful about the narrative that human beings are responsible for all that is wrong with the world.

Let's talk about cancel culture. The PhD Susan Crockford, one of the world's renown experts on polar bears, was fired from her position at the University of Victoria for going against the narrative that polar bear populations are collapsing. The reality is they are thriving:

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/20/susan-crockfo...

Either we care about truth or everything we're doing is for naught. It is very easy to fool yourself, even if you're an expert on a subject. The scientific method demands skepticism and careful control of variables to determine the cause of something.

So, we should debate arguments on merit, and leave it at that. If elephants are dying suddenly in large groups, it's unlikely that climate is the cause. Temperatures change more in a day than they do from year to year. It is highly likely that disease is a culprit if there is no evidence of physical impalement.

I'm well aware of the overhunting of elephants, and that's always something to be mindful of, but this does not look to be the case here. Deadly outbreaks will still occur in nature as a natural part of life and there is not always something we can do about it.

Re: Botswana: Lab tests to solve mystery of hundreds of dead elephants

#70

Post by isodude »

j-pb wrote: post #56
melling wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about the aggregate number. Buildings, cats, ... Our total footprint. I’m not sure of the exact wind turbine impact. It’s a rapidly growing form of energy. But that really is my point, people brush aside all the small impacts and we damage the environment in many small ways that really add up As for birds, the Audubon has some information. “ Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each ye…

Yeah but a cat doesn't power 400-4000 households. Yeah we are ruining the planet, but the "wind turbines kill birds" thing is FUD spread by the fossil lobby. The alternative to wind turbines is more climate change which kills an insane amount of birds in comparison.

They do though. They also create an enormous sound, not where they are located but three kilometers away.

The design might be the best from a effeciency perspective, but it's very ugly, doesn't "adapt" to the sorrounding environment and from what I've gather quite hard to service.

We must be able to do something better.

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