Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse • Hacker News Board

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#61

Post by the_af » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

LandR wrote: post #39

keiferski wrote: post #4

In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet's surface had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it. First, strangely, the owls had died. At the time it had seemed almost funny, the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets; coming out no earlier than twil…

I've had this book on my shelf for a couple of years. I was put off it because I finally saw the film (and the remake) and didn't like them. Especially the remake, fell asleep trying to get through that film on three seperate occasions before giving up on it. But I need to give the book a chance if it's quite different to the film.

I think instead of "remake" you meant sequel, because there is no remake.

If it's any consolation: I'm an absolute fan of Blade Runner but hated the sequel. In my opinion, it fails to capture the neo-noir feel of the original, has no interesting characters, Jared Leto's acting is distracting, and the villains/antiheroes... compare Roy Batty's "tears in rain" dying speech with Luv's "I'm the best!". It makes me cringe.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#62

Post by bpicolo » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

thatguy0900 wrote: post #13

Really sucks being young 20s. Between climate and the looming covid recession, is there even a point to planning for the future? Seems like the world will be trashed before I'm anywhere close to retirement anyway, almost like I might as well enjoy my money while I can do things with it.

Cue "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#63

Post by spodek » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

The Hacker News and geek community is weird. Ask them about reaching Mars or fusion and they say it's inevitable. They're unqualified good results.

Suggest we have fewer children for a few generations and consume less and it's absolutely impossible, against human nature. The One Child policy proves it.

We idolize people who change the world as entrepreneurs but say one person can't make a difference in changing culture.

Yet many cultures have chosen to lower birthrates through peaceful, voluntary means resulting in prosperity and stability. On a personal level, I've lowered my footprint by about 90 percent in a few years according to online calculators and every change improved my life. I figure most westerners could drop 75 - 80 percent with just the low-hanging fruit, improving their lives -- buying less junk, wasting less food, living closer to family, camping instead of visiting Timbuktu.

Changing course is a matter of belief and choice far more than technology. While it's not monolithic, this community seems to choose to believe living sustainably is harder than space travel. I'd argue space travel is more attainable when we aren't pushing the Earth's limits to sustain life and human society.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#64

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

hdjdbtbgwjsn wrote: post #55

Aunche wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that all of the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere right? The earth spits out a little bit of CO2 naturally, and the sun is a bit hotter than it was 100 million years ago, but we aren't turning into Venus anytime soon.

Back then the continents were configured rather differently. That has a huge effect on hothouse vs icehouse regime. Right now we are in a continental configuration that should be icehouse (circumpolar currents with cold deep water). If we force the climate into hothouse against its natural state what will happen? It's very much not settled how balanced the mantle vs surface carbon cycle is. How much carbon is in MORB…

>Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive.

I'm skeptical of you being a working geologist because I haven't seen any credible claims that there is any reason to believe Earth could turn into Venus. But even outside of that, scaremongering with incredibly unlikely scenarios is also dangerous and detrimental to fighting climate change, because somebody is going to call bullshit on you and will result in your and even the general credibility of climate scientists, to be diminished.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#65

Post by claudeganon » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

foxdev wrote: post #51

claudeganon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this aspect of the book all the time when I see kids (and increasingly adults) invested in games like Pokémon during our ongoing mass extinctions. The book doesn’t cover the intermediary steps between its barren world and our own, but it’s a pretty easy to draw a through line between the digital ecosystems we’ve built in the past 40 or so years and the synthetic life of Blade Runner.

You sound like someone who's never played or watched Pokemon. It regularly hits on these themes. One Pokemon's whole shtick is wearing its dead parent's skull. It evolves by growing past that trauma. Ecology is a huge theme through the whole thing. It is not a happy-go-lucky franchise isolated from the troubles of the world.

I grew up playing Pokémon. It was the second Gameboy game I ever owned. I think I played every one through the DS era.

What I think you miss is that individual works can be contrary to certain negative trends or values, without posing any real opposition to them. A Pokémon game can embrace a pro-environmental narrative, while the material reality of the franchise in the context of Capitalist exchange involves all kinds of ecological destruction. Just think of all of the Pokémon tchotchkes, bought and discarded, since the series began.

I’m not trying to single out Pokémon as some especially bad actor, but indicative of how the widespread fetishization of these imagined ecosystems might result in a future not dissimilar from the one described in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? PKD wrote that book in the 70s, contemplating trends in the world he inhabited. It makes sense that we do the same in engaging with it.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#66

Post by thatguy0900 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #31

thatguy0900 wrote: post #13

Really sucks being young 20s. Between climate and the looming covid recession, is there even a point to planning for the future? Seems like the world will be trashed before I'm anywhere close to retirement anyway, almost like I might as well enjoy my money while I can do things with it.

This might be instructive reading re: the plan you alluded to lower in your comments: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lotus_Eater Can’t find text online but it’s a good story. Most humans want to live when older, even if circumstances bad. As for the future, you may consider a few things: 1. What will happen of everyone sensible to problems lives a life of empty hedonism? Rather than trying to improve them. 2. Wi…

I'll read the book, thanks for the reccomendation. 1. Maybe I'm just being a doomer, but I don't think it makes a difference, all of the money is on being a hedonist staying the course and that seems to be the only relevant thing. 2. 68% of life in 50 years is pretty fast, it will only really take 1 global war between powers over resources for things to slip it seems to me 3. That's a sensible plan. I enjoy the field I'm currently in, for the most part. But it feels pointless.

I had to wake up early for work today and didn't get enough sleep, I'm sure I'll care less about this situation after I take a nap and keep ignoring it like the rest of the world, I guess. I'll have to look into changing careers to something a little more noble, though, I guess.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#67

Post by the_af » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #9

wiredfool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much was removed -- The movie is clearly based on the book, but only a quarter of the books themes end up in the movie. Isidore. Religion vs TV. Shared experiences. The movie is cut down, probably so it didn't turn a Novella into a trilogy. Dial 800, the desire to watch TV, no matter what's on.

It's an interesting case of literature-movie adaptation. The film is one of my favorites, but mostly for the atmosphere and cinematography, not the story itself. Yet, after recently re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I came away thinking that the movie could have been so much better. They left a lot of the interesting details and Phillip K. Dick weirdness out.

> It's an interesting case of literature-movie adaptation.

Indeed. It's one of my favorite films as well, and consider that I'm a PKD fan: I don't think it's even a companion piece to the book. It hits some of the same themes, but Blade Runner is more neo-noir with smoke-filled rooms, and Do Androids is more PKD exploration of ideas, religion, anxieties, etc. PKD loved what he managed to see of the movie before dying, mind you.

I think what makes Blade Runner engaging is that it's not trying to be a direct translation of the book. It even reverses some of the book's characterizations: "Rachael" is in the book manipulative and a liar, but in the movie she's naive and the one being lied to. The androids from the book are cold and callous, almost completely unempathetic even for their own kind. The replicants from the movie are way more empathic -- Roy Batty is arguably an antihero rather than a villain. I've watched Blade Runner many times, being one of my favorites, and there are times I consider Roy the true protagonist of the movie.

It does hit some of the same themes of PKD's works: what is real and what is fake? What is human, and what deserves to live?

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#68

Post by jamil7 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #56

One of the issues of plunging headlong into solar and wind (and bio-fuels) is that those sources require huge land-areas around mining of rare metals, deployment, and finally waste. As our global population and energy needs grow, this problem gets bigger and bigger and therefore place stress on existing, and already stressed, ecosystems. On the other end, nuclear is energy dense, and requires tiny amount of land for…

Modern solar panels and their batteries do not require any "rare" metals. A lot of wind turbines use neodymium however it accounts for a very small amount of total usage.

Edit: clarified.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#69

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

ecmascript wrote: post #14

When the effects of global warming and extinction finally will hit us hard, people will die of in billions and life will begin to come back. Of course a lot of species will be extinct forever, but so is the natural cycle of life. Almost all species that ever existed has already gone extinct and it's foolish to think that we won't have the same destiny, especially how we're treating our food chain.

Even in the worst case projections I’m aware of, global warming won’t kill people in the billions. This kind of frankly fearmongering is a large part of why it’s so hard to get consensus on environmental issues in the first place.

Re: Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

#70

Post by nemo44x » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #23

nemo44x wrote: post #18

I guess it was alluded to in the article but my main concern is the amount of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides we use. As we clear more land for Ag we are of course limiting habitat for animals but also zapping them constantly with these chemicals. Fertilizers get into water and decimate the life in there. Herbicides coupled with pesticides decimate insect ecosystems. The development of land gives larger anima…

It's not a new problem, either. Growing up in a rural, agricultural zone we learned thoroughly about run-off and the potential for harm, and the harm that had happened in the past. DDT was nearly a curseword. It's etched into my mind that way. (And then the Ramones didn't help that) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s

Yeah it’s crazy to think that a chemical can be developed that can effectively destroy organic life and we just decide to spray it everywhere.

I’ve read things about people that live near certain farms have higher rates of birth defects and diseases like cancer. I can only imagine being exposed to chemicals over and over for years is not only devastating to the local ecosystem but to the people nearby.