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Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

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281–290 of 394 posts

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to realize over the course of 20 years pursuing a career in tech, that work itself is the primary impediment standing in the way of ever working on my dreams. Sure, someone can moonlight and try to change the world. But 99 people of out 100 will never even come close. There's nothing more pathetic than a visionary with no access to resources. Right now I am working with a guy in the solar industry, doing ha…

Soooo you still live in our society? Including using bottled water? Cloth from overseas? Consuming highly processed food? You are very much dependent. Whats the difference between me, working in tech, having a good job, great money and being able to put everything i earn in my own land and become independent with something between 40 and 50 versus you? Stoped working, doing small jobs barely making it, not having any…

I agree with you 1000%. Now let me ask you, are you willing and able to put your life savings towards saving the planet? Will you make a $10,000 or $100,000 donation to groups like 350.org?

I do regret not following my instincts and going all-in on the stock market and Bitcoin, etc though. I had $20,000 in the bank after a lucrative contract when Bitcoin was $10. I've been following AAPL since it was $12 per share after the dot bomb. Conservatively, I'd have at least a bazillion dollars had I simply not listened to everyone who talked me out of investing.

For anyone reading this, if you want to change the world, it's time to pull your money out of your investments and make large anonymous donations to groups with a good track record on the environment (or human rights, or whatever floats your boat). This pump and dump scam that the global elite are doing to inflate the stock market is about to pop. Don't give them your winnings. Pull out now and do something positive with your money.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#282

I'm shocked that the article didn't mention this, but the mass die-offs we're seeing are because the world's coral reefs will be dead by 2050: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/environment-90-per... https://www.businessinsider.com/great-barrier-reef-could-dis... https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2020/02/24/70-90-per... The effect of this is that 500 million pacific islanders will be forced to flee to So…

> All due to runaway global warming acidifying the ocean with CO2 Err, what? My understanding is ocean acidification is a contributing factor, but that the primary cause of coral bleaching is the warming directly, not acidification [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_Bleaching.jpg

Warming is the primary cause of coral die offs right now, but acidification will hit a tipping point pretty soon where it becomes nigh on impossible to get calcium ions out of solution. Pretty much anything that lives in the ocean and has a skeleton is in for a rough time - as well as everything that depends on them.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#283
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of seafood is farmed. The majority of shrimp for instance comes from farms.

Ocean fish farming is more a conversion process than a production process. Most of the feed is wild catch fish.

but does this apply blanket-like to all farmed seafood, or is it mostly about fish?

E.g. I would expect shrimp, mussels, clams to not be fed processed wild catch, unlike salmon.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#284
post #189

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> I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this. I sure wish VOTERS would "do something" about this, where "something" = vote for the party/parties that actually champion or at least acknowledge the importance of dealing with AGW/CO2 increasing vs actively denying and supporting continuing the current anti-free market policies destroying so much future beauty and potential. This should have been so str…

Eh, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but have you talked to some of the voters? Last pre-covid party I was to I had a conversation with a global warming "skeptic". In an attempt to understand better, I listened more than I talked and it is .. illuminating, scary, annoying and a whole lot of other emotions that are difficult to put into words here. Point is, voting relies heavily on educated populace. I a…

When you have a bad president you're going to be put through four years of hell - when you have a bad king you're going to be put through four decades of hell. Additionally kingship, no matter how well designed before hand, degenerates into nepotism since part of the assumption with kings is near absolute power. The dreamt of "Philosopher King" will never happen.

Putting the power into few hands is extremely dangerous. I think the ideal situation is pretty close to what we've got now - trust most people to choose the smartest people in the room, then ignore most people and listen to those people. We just need to work on flushing out decades of corruption that seeped into the system.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#285
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a resident of a first world country I stopped eating all seafood about 15 years ago. It seems unethical to support over-fishing if I have plenty of other good food to eat.

I've been wondering lately if cutting out a product is less ethical than buying the ethical version and supporting that market. Relatedly, people often don't eat meat because they oppose unethical treatment of animals. But I imagine farmers who treat animals well are disadvantaged by that strategy- people who care enough to buy their more expensive product opt out of the market entirely.

> I imagine farmers who treat animals well

This is a cherry picked argument, at least in the US, where "factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle" [1].

Besides, even in this ideal farm where the farmer treats the animals perfectly and lets them live long, fulfilling lives, they're still killing the animal at the end of the day. Hard to see how that is "treating [it] well".

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1...

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#286
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this. I sure wish VOTERS would "do something" about this, where "something" = vote for the party/parties that actually champion or at least acknowledge the importance of dealing with AGW/CO2 increasing vs actively denying and supporting continuing the current anti-free market policies destroying so much future beauty and potential. This should have been so str…

I sympathize with what you're saying, because I also agree that voters should make informed choices, and never vote for any politician representing the status quo. Unfortunately, the US and rest of the world have to move through a process. Think of it like addiction: we are still in the denial stage. We haven't hit rock bottom yet, but unfortunately when we do, it will be too late. Most species will be extinct and we…

>This was all planned

I generally agree with you on a lot of points, but I felt that this unsubstantiated portion took a lot away from the other parts.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#287
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle [Citation needed] I'll assume you're arguing in good faith, but this argument is a common straw man made by people who are against plant-based diets. In fact, the only case where you have a point is that the worst case for chocolate produces more emissions than the best case for beef [1]. Odds are that if you're eating beef in North America it comes fro…

There are vast areas that are very, very poor for growing anything other than some grasses. These lands will not support growing plant based foods for people. However! They do produce plant based food for cattle. You end up with 0.5-2 acres of this land to feed a cow.

Sure, everybody reducing their meat consumption to their share of what is produced on marginal land would be the optimum, even better than everybody going 100% meatless. How much of the typical meat consumption of a current-day nonvegetarian would that be? 5% perhaps?

And it wouldn't be the same 5% that we see with "almost vegans" today who argue "less but better" to only eat premium cuts while proudly announcing that they avoid all grinder meat. If you want to eat the steak, don't scoff at the sausage.

Back to grazing marginal lands, yeah, I'd also hate to see the animal species that have accompanied us throughout human history go extinct. But we're very far from that.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#288
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are vast areas that are very, very poor for growing anything other than some grasses. These lands will not support growing plant based foods for people. However! They do produce plant based food for cattle. You end up with 0.5-2 acres of this land to feed a cow.

The vast majority of beef is not grazed on lands incapable of naturally supporting more intensive forms of agriculture.

>The vast majority of beef is not grazed on lands incapable of naturally supporting more intensive forms of agriculture.

The vast majority of beef is grazed on lands incapable of supporting at a sustainable price point more value dense forms of agriculture. If those ranchers could sell you boutique sustainable tomatoes they would do so in a heartbeat (or as fast as they can given the fact that it's basically a career switch).

You get crops like soybeans and corn where the land will support that and less value dense crops (like beef and timber) in places it won't. You can grow other products on cattle grazing land but you won't be price competitive with the farmers on better land. The fact that this land is used for beef instead of some other crop is a reflection of how efficiently we use the better land. As vegetable product fillers make their way into lower and lower end beef products (as price, technology and consumer preference allows) the land used to farm beef will likely shrink from the least viable areas (the areas least suited for beef) with demand and/or be pushed out of the most viable areas (the areas most easily suited to other crops) by more value dense plant crops. Obviously there's some serious switching friction otherwise you'd see this play out with every little change in commodities prices.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#289
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle [Citation needed] I'll assume you're arguing in good faith, but this argument is a common straw man made by people who are against plant-based diets. In fact, the only case where you have a point is that the worst case for chocolate produces more emissions than the best case for beef [1]. Odds are that if you're eating beef in North America it comes fro…

> [Citation needed] pvaldes, 2020 Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it. For example: "Some crops are more productive than other. Point". We, humans know it since 10.000 years ago. Anybody can see it with their eyes. Not need to repeat what Aristotle would say about it. Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook. Any Plant physiology…

> Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it.

So, your statement is true because you say that it's common knowledge that it's true?

> Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook

OK, then kindly provide one of these ecology handbooks that proves your point

> If nobody is trying to produce a natural sized cow sculpture made of vanille beans, there must be a reason

What do you even mean by this?

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#290
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society will never overcome this tragedy of the commons. Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good. Only a market-driven solution will be viable. We need to find sustainable alternatives that are better than the foods they replace. Just like we need electric cars that are better than internal combustion engines.

>Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good. Are you vegetarian? I chose to, only because I want mankind to live on this planet for a long time. That's not a sacrifice, that's a basic choice. I'm not sacrificing stuff when I chose to behave responsibly (e.g driving safely, not stealing my neighbors, paying taxes, etc). Do you think people only pay taxes because they fear the police? Or they don't kil…

Yeah, like the GP said.. only a few. And I think you have pretty rosy glasses if you think people pay taxes cause they care about their fellow human...

Try explaining this to BILLIONS of people across India and China who are now for the first time in their family's generations being able to afford and access a diversity of protein-based and vegetarian cuisine (available all the time, in and out of what they used to know as the season of availability).

The point is it will take a regulated solution or some sort of new product that creates a serious incentive to adjust mass behavior.

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