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

bloomberg.com

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

#71

Post by nemo44x »

tw04 wrote: post #32
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…

But we also don't even take the most basic actions to prevent that fertilizer from making it into our waterways. Farmers insist on putting in thousands of miles of drain tile and running it straight into creeks and streams. They plow their fields right up to the very edge of marshes and streams instead of leaving grass strips to act as a barrier to runoff. It's shocking how little people seem to realize or care about…

Ahhh thanks, didn’t know that elude and allude has different spellings. TIL.

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

#72

Post by hdjdbtbgwjsn »

macspoofing wrote: post #64
hdjdbtbgwjsn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You should speak to some more Geologists then. We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them. Many of us are more concerned than we can publish - precisely because we don't want to scaremonger.

Will the Earth definitely turn into an out of control hothouse with a Venus - like climate? Very probably not there are many differences between Earth and Venus.

Can we be sure than some positive feedback mechanism might make life as we know it untenable on Earth? I'm not sure myself and I don't think anyone can know.

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

#73

Post by ludocode »

wiredfool wrote: post #8
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…

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.

I read the book first and was deeply disappointed in the movie. They could have done so much more. Instead they spent like half an hour on dumb fight scenes which are only a couple pages in the book. I can't enjoy it just because of how much they cut out. For those that haven't read the book, here's an example:

When Deckard Cain meets Rachael for the first time, she has an owl, and she claims it's real. He says "I thought they were extinct." She says no, you just can't buy them on the open market. He then tests his humanity detector on her, which she fails. They explain that she grew isolated on a spaceship leaving Earth which turned around and came home after the war, so she grew up without a sense of empathy. He is horrified to learn his detector may be flawed, and he may have killed real humans thinking they were androids. They then offer him the owl to cover it up. He finally realizes that they're lying and she's an android after all. He then says "And the owl?" "It's robotic, of course. Owls are extinct."

In the movie? He shows up and says "Nice owl, is it robotic?" Rachael goes "Yup, and so am I". Welp, there goes like 50 of the best pages of the book.

Another example, which really shows just how unnecessarily shallow the movie is: in the book, Rachael and Pris are identical model androids, and sex with androids is forbidden. The whole conflict Deckard experiences is based on the fact that he becomes infatuated with Rachael: not only is it extremely taboo, but his feelings start to interfere with his mission of killing her identical twin Pris. In the movie? Completely different replicants, and Pris is a standard-issue sex-bot. There's just no internal conflict at all.

Seriously people, read this book. It is fantastic.

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

#74

Post by Loughla »

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.

>It is not a happy-go-lucky franchise isolated from the troubles of the world.

It is if you consume it on a surface level, as (I would argue) most people do.

Folks who are into Pokemon Go have no idea of the ecological messages in the other games/media.

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

#75

Post by rmah »

alangibson wrote: post #41

Does anyone else > 40 years old remember there just being lots more animals around when you were a kid? I don't know if it's just age blinders or paranoia, but in particular I remember there being way more birds pretty much everywhere.

I'm in my 50's... and I remember filthy air you could barely breath and horribly polluted rivers that caught on fire. I remember people tossing trash on the side of the road without regard. I remember trash floating in our lakes, which were so filthy you were scared to let the water touch you, much less eat the fish (if any) in them. I remember when all cars belched clouds of black smoke. I remember national parks with no wolves and no bears.

Today, the skies and rivers are noticeably cleaner. There seem to be more large wild animals (wolves, bears, buffalo, cougars, elk) in national parks and forests now than when I was a kid. And you can eat the fish in the Great Lakes now. Wild deer are, seemingly, everywhere around here and rise to nuisance levels. On the other hand, there seem to be less earthworms in suburban areas, somewhat less bugs and less birds. But that may just be related to where I now live (a much more urbanized area than that of my youth). Or it may be a harbinger of doom. I don't know.

Of course, my perspective on this is rather limited since I can only say what I've seen. Larger wild animal populations in Western Europe, for example, are essentially non-existent in comparison North America. I suspect that most or all of the decline described in the report happened in what were pretty poor regions of the world 50 years ago. But now that some of those nations are approaching the levels of wealth where they can start to care, I'm confident they'll start to clean things up over the next half century like most of the developed world did over the last half century.

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

#76

Post by kortex »

imtringued wrote: post #47
oulu2006 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, my guess is the reference to COVID. The earth is currently overpopulated for the system we have in-place to feed it. We are very inefficient in resource usage and waste over 1/2 the food we produce each year. COVID isn't the answer to this problem, but your point is valid.

It's definitively the reference to COVID. Telling people to die from a preventable cause is conflicting with the rest of the message.

I mean if your message is "too many humans are bad for the planet, so if I die of Covid, so be it" at least it's mostly consistent.

The part I object to is the lack of masks leading to spreading CoV2 to those who haven't volunteered to get out of the gene pool.

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

#77

Post by Loughla »

alangibson wrote: post #41

Does anyone else > 40 years old remember there just being lots more animals around when you were a kid? I don't know if it's just age blinders or paranoia, but in particular I remember there being way more birds pretty much everywhere.

I think this is dependent on where you live. If you're near a city-center or urban area at all, I believe you're right. With development being what it is, I believe you absolutely would see fewer animals in that setting.

In my rural area, though, there are much more animals, of a much varied type than ever before. I saw a badger this year for the first time, ever. I think this is partially because of conservation efforts actually working, and partially because animals are being displaced by humans/climate change now.

We have armadillos now, too. Midwest Illinois/Iowa area. We should not have armadillos.

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

#78

Post by macspoofing »

hdjdbtbgwjsn wrote: post #72
macspoofing wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You should speak to some more Geologists then. We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them. Many of us are more concerned than we can publish - precisely because we don't want to scaremonger. Will the Earth definitely turn into an out of control hothouse with a Venus - like climate? Very probably not there are many differences between Earth and Venus. Can…

>Many of us are more concerned than we can publish.

Maybe you should be a little braver? As in, let your work be actually scrutinized by your peers (isn't that what tenure is for?) instead of scaremongering anonymously and accosting others for not understanding the science you are not willing publish? Seriously, what is the public supposed to take away from that kind of statement? Especially given that the public cannot ascertain the truth value of your Earth-will-turn-to-Venus theory. Are you trying to convince the public (on this forum no less) that this is a reasonable hypothetical situation to worry about? Come on. Put it to your peers and if they agree, then sure, let's talk policy.

>Will the Earth definitely turn into an out of control hothouse with a Venus - like climate? Very probably not there are many differences between Earth and Venus.

Didn't OP say that? Didn't I say that? What is it that you're arguing? Saying that we don't understand fully how our climate works and how many of the systems that drive it works is reasonable and nobody will dispute that. But you can't just use a lack of knowledge around an low probability event to drive global policy that could potentially be disastrous in all kinds of other ways. That's all I'm saying. We have a well-defined problem of ecosystem collapse and climate change, such as it is, don't muddle the water by coming up with new hypothetical problems.

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

#79

Post by Johnjonjoan »

derwiki wrote: post #52
perfunctory wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What we are facing now is a person whose crime dwarfs all of the crimes ever committed in human history. We were unable to find a single law applicable to his crime. So we recommend that the crime of Extinction of Life on Earth be added to international law ...” — Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest

They weren’t talking about animals per se though? This was the “cursed” planet?

Not animals in particular but it was Earth. They were charging the guy who liked American action movies and getting stoned.

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

#80

Post by kortex »

x87678r wrote: post #57
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.

There were always problems. Would you rather be living through the World Wars? Or even Vietnam/Korean wars. Slavery. Nuclear Cold war. Acid Rain. Crippling economy and crime in the 70s. 80s crack crime epidemic. Covid sucks but otherwise things are pretty good right now.

This is dismissive in the form of "Other people suffered, why are you complaining?"

Nuclear war is still possible. Acid rain is still bleaching forests and marshes near me. Our economy is kinda hosed at the moment. Endless conflict in the Middle East/SW Asia. Uiyghurs are enslaved. And of course resource depletion and climate change.

It's not sunshine and lolipops.

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