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

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

#181

Post by Cthulhu_ »

macspoofing wrote: post #97
jamil7 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Modern solar panels and their batteries do not require any really "rare" metals. The salient point was that manufacturing millions (billions?) of panels and turbines has a huge toll on the ecosystem - regardless if rare metals are used - and they are used in components of solar panels and wind turbines.

A thing often stated years ago was that it costs more energy to produce a solar panel than it produces over its lifetime; I never read a source so I googled it. [1] is a pretty insightful post; it takes the price of a solar panel, assumes that 100% of that cost equals energy pricing, and calculates it'd take nearly 30 years, worst case, for it to recoup its energy cost. But then it goes deeper with other costs, e.g. co2 sequestering and the like.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-conventional-energy-is-used-t...

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

#182

Post by throwaway5752 »

Remember how everyone made fun of Al Gore? Manbearpig? Leaving the Paris accord?

Remember how they are mocking the Green New Deal?

Remember Dominionism, making fun of "soy boys", and everything else?

You should remember this when they try to pretend they do everything they could to remove environmental regulations and delay dealing with global warming until it was too late.

Also remember a good percentage of them believe in End-Time Theology (ever wonder why Evangelicals care so much about a Jerusalem embassy?)

edit: California is burning down just like Australia did earlier. So is Siberia. Pay attention to methane emissions from permafrost and shallow clathrates. This article is a different facet of the same problem. We are beyond the Earth's carrying capacity and it's because the wealthiest wanted to keep getting wealthy and because some religious fanatics believe in the Rapture (including a fair number of the top members of the current US administration).

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

#183

Post by nemo44x »

davexunit wrote: post #170
nemo44x wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it reminds of Nassim Taleb's idea of anti-fragility in that because our monoculture and reliance in chemicals to sustain it, it would only take a certain devastating thing to endanger the national food supply. Do you have examples of or references to regenerative farming practices? I ask because I'm curious about them to see if they scale like modern Ag which for all of its problems (many you pointed out), h…

Sure, starting really generally: "regenerative agriculture" and "permaculture" are good keywords. I think looking for any solution to scale the way industrial agriculture does is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. The scaling of industrial agriculture is the problem. I don't think any one alternative is "the" solution, but rather that many alternative methods need to be applied where appropriate and at…

This is a really great source of resources and search terms, thanks!

It feels like a lot of people are doing active work here to change the way we think about Ag from a WW2 inspired industrial model to something that is sustainable, good for the ecosystems, and still affordable so poor people can eat food too. It just doesn't seem like it gets the media attention it should and it's something that effects everyone.

I only became interested in these things when I bought a home and had a lawn and decided to make it a hobby of mine. I started off buying various herbicides and fertilizers and applying them safely and responsibly. But started to read the labels a bit more and research the chemicals since it occurred to me that wearing safety equipment and staying off areas for 3 days means that I'm probably working with potentially dangerous things. And even if they are "safe" to be on after a day (they claim) it's still sort of weird to think about applying these things when pets and family and friends will be on it, oblivious to the chemicals that have been applied. Maybe with the limited use and reduced concentrations for home use mean they won't really harm anything, but it still makes me feel a bit uncertain about using them.

My wife maintains an organic vegetable garden (which is really tough so I now have so much more respect for organic farmers that bring to market pricy but delicious produce) and I wonder about these chemicals drifting to the garden in the soil. I've sort of found a balance of using organic fertilizers, compost we make, and good old fashioned manual weeding, etc so I don't have to use the herbicides so much. I still use them in areas where hand weeding isn't practical, like if a weed is coming out of a crack in the hardscaping, for example. But, it's a lot more work to be sure than using chemicals which were very effective.

I'm happy I never used any pesticides. We don't have a huge bug problem but it's nice to see butterflies, honeybees, etc even if you have to put up with the occasional mosquito.

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

#184

Post by throwaway5752 »

jamil7 wrote: post #68
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.

Yes, this is just the latest attack angle. Office buildings and cats kill ~4 orders of magnitude more birds than wind turbines (https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...). Let's also not wonder about the land cost of pumps/pipeline/refineries, or the rare metal content of the cracking catalysts, catalytic converters on all of the IC cars.

The arguments start from bad faith attempts to sabotage mass adoption of renewable energy. Some people aren't using them in bad faith, but are just useful spreaders of them.

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

#185

Post by overthemoon »

wow_yes wrote: post #161
dominotw wrote: post #155

I have to 'pick a lane' very soon re: having kids or not. This stuff really weighs on my mind all the time. People with young kids what are your feelings about this?

With a world sliding into fascism, with slowly boiling oceans, and rampant inequality it's impossible to justify

The end of the world has always been right around the corner. One of many things that having children represents is hope for the future. Maybe you don't find that compelling or realistic, but I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel on humanity.

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

#186

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ajuc wrote: post #171
badestrand wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear? I am sure you know the answer but because you ask for it: Radioactivity is nasty. Example Germany: When I grew up my parents couldn't pick mushrooms and I couldn't play in a sandbox because a few thousand kilometers away there was a reactor incident and the wind blew it over. Today people living near a power plant receive free jodium tablets in case there will be an accident…

You get more radioactive elements over your life from breathing air in coal-burning country than you would from eating these mushrooms. And it's no a one-time catastrophe result, but everyday operation.

Often quoted, and while it's true that coal fumes and (worse) the leftover slag is a huge problem, the fear of nuclear is that it's a lot more sudden. Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly. Fumes are dangerous and are basically destroying the world / ecosystem, but it's a slow process as opposed to a nuclear power plant meltdown (Chernobyl, Fukushima) which cause much shorter term issues.

Basically people live to a hundred even with pollution, but life expectancy and quality of life is much lower near a meltdown site.

That said, if you look purely at numbers, nuclear (assuming it doesn't explode) is better for humanity than coal.

That said that said, loads of countries recognize how bad coal is, and it's being phased out in favor of gas and renewables.

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

#187

Post by Petrova »

yesenadam wrote: post #49
slavik81 wrote: post #36

I saw a figure[1] the other day that blew me away. If you exclude pets and livestock, then human beings comprise ~90% of all mammals (by weight). All wild whales, bears, lions, deer, moose, mice, rabbits, wild horses, camels, beavers, buffalo, elephants, tigers, rhinos, chimpanzees, pandas, goats, etc... are in that remaining 10%. [1]: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...

A kind of similar xkcd diagram of Earth's Land Mammals by Weight https://xkcd.com/1338/ - there's hardly any wild animals, comparatively.

I've always wondered why horses are not used as livestock since they can also produce milk and have commercial use as well such plowing fields or transportation.

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

#189

Post by wow_yes »

Guy2020 wrote: post #174
wow_yes wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a world sliding into fascism, with slowly boiling oceans, and rampant inequality it's impossible to justify

"Fascism," "democracy," what's the difference? There's always an elite class pulling the strings. The world has always been a mess. The only thing that is dying is our illusions. Edit: for those that downvote me, go tell the millions living in violent poverty how magical democracy is. There will always be a show. What matters is who's putting on the show.

But those running the show now are open, avowed white supremacists, nationalists, xenophobes. We're in a world very similar to pre-WW2.
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