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

#231

Post by davexunit » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #223

davexunit wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

None of this works at scale. The problem is that we are past carrying capacity. We need to control population. I am in favour of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth solution where we set aside half the planet for habitat and inhabit only half of the land and leave the oceans alone.

This is so completely wrong I can't believe I'm responding to it. We are not past carrying capacity. Population control is some ecofascist bullshit.

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

#232

Post by bluGill » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #92

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.

Just over 40. I live in Minnesota. I used to take trips in high school to the boundary waters area. The water was so clean, you didn't need a filter, you could drink right out of the lake. We didn't have to carry a ton of water, we just had cups that hung on the inside of our canoes. Thirsty? Just dip your cup and have a drink. Nighttime was always an adventure. The bears and other animals out there were always vocal…

The water in the boundary waters was never safe to drink. However people often got lucky and didn't get any harm.

I remember in my last trip seeing a pile of garbage and being mad about why people would do that. Then when I got back I happened to look it up and see that the dump was on the guides as something to notice - loggers left it there in 1800s.

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

#233

Post by bdefore » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #178

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a die-hard Dune (1984) and book fan, I'm not really ecstatic yet. Old movie had some unique qualities, and would be a great movie if it was 7 hours long. Also, why on earth they changed jihad to crusade in new movie?!

> Also, why on earth they changed jihad to crusade in new movie?! Do you really have to ask or do you not believe words have associations that aren't their exact dictionary definitions? Dune was written well before the word was associated with religious extremism in modern times, the word didn't have the associations of terrorism and caliphates and 9/11.

Says a lot that the word crusade does not carry such associations and colloquially leans more toward an admirable passion.

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

#234

Post by godelski » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

otachack wrote: post #109

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, think that the sequel is as good as the original. Cinematography was stunning and the world was a believable evolution of the world from the previous movie.

I agree and am ecstatic for Villeneuve's Dune!

And don't forget about The Foundation! It's a good time to be a fan of Space Opera.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/

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

#235

Post by bluGill » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

kortex wrote: post #80

x87678r wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear war is possible but much less likely, compared to when the Soviet Union and the US were watching each other "knowing" the other was itching to launch, and so if they do you better attack back first lest you lose. Acid rain is still a problem, but not nearly the problem it was 40 years ago. The economy has always been kinda hosed about something - but overall your standard of living is better than it would have been. There have always been endless wars - where they are have changed over time. There has always been slavery, again much less today than years ago. I have seen newpapers from 1880 (not a typo, in the 1800s) where the editors were wondering what they would do when the oil wells went dry.

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

#236

Post by jschwartzi » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

dustinmoris wrote: post #203

kortex wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you know anyone who died because they volunteered? Besides that, when I was 10 years old and I asked at that time 30-40 year old people to not smoke cigarettes indoors because the passive smoking was damaging my young lungs and can lead to severe cancer and early death I was told that this is none of my business. Those people voluneered to damange their own health and knowingly also damanged my and other children'…

So your solution to the problem is to just do as those 30-40 year olds did? This isn't a revolution that can be won with retribution. You have to be better than the people you're rallying against. Any time you sink to their level it's a tool they will use against you. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

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

#237

Post by ajuc » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #186

ajuc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

> Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly

Im my country (Poland) over 20 000 people die yearly of lung cancer. Significant percent of them never smoked cigarettes and the main reason they got that cancer was smog. Which in Poland is almost exclusively seen in winters and caused by burning coal.

Chernobyl caused up to 4000 victims according to the worst estimates (including cancer developed later).

Every year in just one country there's more victims of coal energetics than victims of nuclear power in the whole world over all time.

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

#238

Post by nemo44x » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #223

davexunit wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

None of this works at scale. The problem is that we are past carrying capacity. We need to control population. I am in favour of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth solution where we set aside half the planet for habitat and inhabit only half of the land and leave the oceans alone.

Who gets to decide who has children? And how many?

This is a really dangerous line of thought you are pursuing here. "We need to control population" is a scary thought and I hope this never becomes a serious solution to the problems we have to solve.

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

#239

Post by bluGill » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

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?

I'm optimistic. I work in agriculture and so see all the advances coming - right now there is more than enough food to go around despite bad weather, and yields are still going up fast. In the mean time world population growth is slowing down as third world countries advance to the point where more babies is bad for the family.

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

#240

Post by throwaway5752 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

cedilla wrote: post #201

throwaway5752 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah. There is no modern consumption without detrimental effects. And the thing is that the total effects of a system are difficult to estimate even for experts. And when we talk about birds, let's not forget the devastating effect of light pollution, which seems to get only worse with the availability of cheap, power-efficient LEDs...

Some modern consumption is far better than others. Plant based meat substitute is generally much better than beef. Electric vehicle are much better than non-electric. LEDs are better than incandescent (light pollution is much less severe problem than climate change, obviously, and solving it simply involves turning of lights).