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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

#111

Post by iExploder »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #104
itsoktocry wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Between climate and the looming covid recession, is there even a point to planning for the future? For real? Imagine having lived through a global depression, fighting a world war on the other side of the planet and watching an entire society vapourized by nuclear weapons, all in the span of a decade. > I might as well enjoy my money while I can do things with it. You should always enjoy your money, because you can…

> watching an entire society vapourized by nuclear weapons What society was that?

hiroshima nagasaki

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

#112

Post by misja111 »

SamBam wrote: post #94
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 interested in the fact that almost every comment replied to your anecdotal comment with anecdotes of their own about how, in fact, there are so many more animals and the world is so much cleaner. Yet, clearly, the statistics in this article and elsewhere show that this is plainly not the case. We are killing off wildlife at an unprecedented speed. Why the disconnect? Are all our efforts really directed towards fe…

I guess it's a 1st World vs 3rd World thing. Also although larger animals seem to be doing better nowadays, insects are not. But those are much less visible.

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

#113

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

hdjdbtbgwjsn wrote: post #89
macspoofing wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 can…

Did you ever read this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ? I think I get what you are saying but maybe you could reformat it in a civil way rather than berating me. I listed some very simple examples of places where we don't understand the Earth's carbon cycle fully. No one will publish a study saying, 'Hey guys we don't understand this yet'. We know we don't! That's why we do research to chip away at…

I don't want to defend the original commenter's tone, but you must understand how frustrating it is to ask for evidence and get only a confident declaration that there's secret evidence hidden where it can't be checked. We can't drive global policy based on unverifiable insinuations about what the worst case is.

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

#114

Post by jacquesm »

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…

There is actually an android owl in the movie.

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

#115

Post by samvher »

Someone wrote: post #82
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…

The rich “we” typically don’t clear land for agriculture anymore ( https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?end=2016... ) Also, forestation is going up in many rich countries ( https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS?end=2016... ) That doesn’t imply we aren’t killing the world, though. Agriculture in rich countries often needs fertilizer to get the higher yields it gets, newer forests aren’t as…

We import tons of meat and feed though which does basically the same thing in poorer countries.

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

#116

Post by foxdev »

kortex wrote: post #76
imtringued wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I adapted an old saying for the new reality: "Your right to risk your life stops at my respiratory system."

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

#117

Post by krapp »

iExploder wrote: post #111
tartuffe78 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> watching an entire society vapourized by nuclear weapons What society was that?

hiroshima nagasaki

Presumably by that you mean to imply the entirety of Japanese society was vaporized by nuclear weapons?

It wasn't. Japan and its society are still there, even the cities those bombs were dropped on weren't vaporized in their entirety, nor were their societies.

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

#118

Post by christiansakai »

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…

I was surprised that ESGV (Vanguard Index for responsible environmental friendly investing) does not include nuclear power there. I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear?

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

#119

Post by hdjdbtbgwjsn »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #113
hdjdbtbgwjsn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever read this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ? I think I get what you are saying but maybe you could reformat it in a civil way rather than berating me. I listed some very simple examples of places where we don't understand the Earth's carbon cycle fully. No one will publish a study saying, 'Hey guys we don't understand this yet'. We know we don't! That's why we do research to chip away at…

I don't want to defend the original commenter's tone, but you must understand how frustrating it is to ask for evidence and get only a confident declaration that there's secret evidence hidden where it can't be checked. We can't drive global policy based on unverifiable insinuations about what the worst case is.

Sorry I must be communicating really badly.

I'll try to put it more clearly.

1. We don't really understand how these systems work. (The evidence for that is basically a lack of evidence and the type of thing we are still working on...) 2. Certain outcomes in the system could be very very very bad. 3. We are changing part of the system massively. 4. Because of (1) we don't know what (3) will do.

I'm not alluding to any hiden knowledge here. I'm not a climate scientist. My published work is related to other parts of the Earth's carbon cycle.

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

#120

Post by foxdev »

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…

>> "Or you can make a lot of money and fund these causes directly."

Doing this and finding the most fulfilling path through it is the premise of 80,000 Hours.

https://80000hours.org/

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