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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

#251

Post by alangibson »

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.

A lot of replies to my comments mention environmental pollution. I definitely agree there is less now. I was recently shocked to see that the once nasty brown river that runs through my home town is now Nile blue. The numbers on pollution levels agree with this anecdote too.

However, no one I asked had seen a horned toad or armadillo in years. And these are definitely the kind of folks that used to. Cicadas used to deafening on summer evenings, but now they were barely audible. Sample size = 1, but the numbers seem to bear out these anecdotes too.

It's totally possible for both of these to be true. Pollution can go down at the same time that animal populations are suppressed for some other reason.

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

#252

Post by jelliclesfarm »

nemo44x wrote: post #238
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone gets to decide how many children they have...there has to be an universal child tax.

Of course, only those who can afford children should have them. The environment and the commons are for everyone. And there is a cost to bringing new lives and to make sure we have diversity in the gene pool, we ought to have everyone contributing to the gene pool. Otherwise it would just become an inbred mess like we have seen happen with animals and plants. It just makes us weaker as a species.

Population:

1600s ..500 million 1975s ..3.5 billion 2020s ..8.0 billion 2050s ..10 billion

1/2 surviving child per person or have them donate their DNA to a gene bank.

Stop incentivizing children.

Provide quality of life for everyone.

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

#253

Post by jelliclesfarm »

davexunit wrote: post #231
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. Since you don’t believe that we are past carrying capacity, you shouldn’t be responding to this.

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

#254

Post by macspoofing »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #191
macspoofing wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

How does it compare to the ecosystem cost of coal strip mining? How much platinum and palladium is out there to reduce toxic partial combustion pollution? How much lead is out there in car batteries?

>How does it compare to the ecosystem cost of coal strip mining?

I think we're all in agreement that coal is terrible and we don't want to use it anymore. Having said that, the one benefit it has over solar and wind is that it doesn't actually need to be backed-up by any other power source. As in, it doesn't need an alternate base-load to be provided.

But again, I take your point ... coal is bad.

The question is, given the environmental impact of solar and wind, coupled with significant limitations (like needing base-load to be provided by fossil fuels) can we do better? It turns out nuclear is much better in every respect. That's all I argued.

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

#255

Post by macspoofing »

ajuc wrote: post #166
macspoofing wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Producing the same amount of power using coal has even worse toll on the ecosystem.

Agreed. Coal is terrible. Too bad solar needs fossil fuel back-up (coal or natural gas). You're not getting off fossil fuels with solar/wind.

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

#256

Post by macspoofing »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #184
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.

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…

>Yes, this is just the latest attack angle.

I didn't take that angle, so why bring it up?

Solar and wind are diffuse, low-density, energy sources. This is why you need to use a lot of land to collect that energy and therefore a lot of panels and turbines. This also implies a lot of land for mining the necessary metals, and a lot of land when they are inevitably decommissioned. There are costs to this in a world which has a growing population numbering in billions and growing per/capita energy needs and which is going through environmental collapse already.

This is NOT a bad faith argument. Wind and Solar may never be viable outside of niche areas. Wind and Solar may not even be that great against climate change given that they are not viable without fossil fuel base-load (natural gas companies are some of the biggest proponents of wind and solar these days).

Nuclear just so happens to be an energy source that doesn't release carbon into the atmosphere, doesn't need fossil-fuel base-load, and has minuscule land-use requirements. All I argued is that it is inevitable that we will have to rebuild our nuclear infrastructure because there aren't any other options.

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

#257

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

dorchadas wrote: post #154
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember fireflies? I myself almost don't believe that there were insects that would light dark fields in summer, and that children would fill jars with the these creatures because they were so plentiful you could grab a handful of glowing insects! I honestly feel that if I were to have grandchildren they would not believe me describing them or at the very least thing that I was greatly exaggerating. I know they stil…

I live in a decently rural area. This summer had a lot, for some reason, but overall I can't remember seeing many in recent summers. Same with earthworms coming out after a rain

I'm assuming you're in North America, many earthworm species there are invasive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworms_as_invasive_species

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

#258

Post by throwaway5752 »

macspoofing wrote: post #254
throwaway5752 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it compare to the ecosystem cost of coal strip mining? How much platinum and palladium is out there to reduce toxic partial combustion pollution? How much lead is out there in car batteries?

>How does it compare to the ecosystem cost of coal strip mining? I think we're all in agreement that coal is terrible and we don't want to use it anymore. Having said that, the one benefit it has over solar and wind is that it doesn't actually need to be backed-up by any other power source. As in, it doesn't need an alternate base-load to be provided. But again, I take your point ... coal is bad. The question is, giv…

We should make some tough calls about how much off peak baseload is supplied.

Nuclear is probably a bit overrated (very capex heavy, carbon intensive at build time) and still ultimately not renewable. We should and do have a massive investment in non-PWRs, for current baseload replacement, right? At some point you have to ask if there was an obvious nuclear solution, why nobody picked up the dollar bill on the ground. Gen 4s have been around for 20 years and the underlying ideas have been around a lot longer.

It's not just nimby or irrational phobia, nuclear has a lot of drawbacks that routinely get ignored because they are a small component of generating portfolios. Ironically, the best thing for them would be a high carbon tax credit system, but sometimes the same people arguing nuclear are against that for some reason.

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

#259

Post by jelliclesfarm »

davexunit wrote: post #231
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like I need to address the ‘ecofascist bullshit’ gem. Fascism promoted eugenics. Population control through responsible procreation is not eugenics. It is an incentive to make sure ones children and future generation has the best possible chance to thrive and flourish along with everyone else of our species without just a few gene pools monopolizing all the resources.

The 1/2 surviving child/per person is derived from rational thought and evaluation of our planet’s existing resources. Children are expensive and everyone pays for all the children in one way or another. It’s not always about the money.

When we have a planet that doesn’t expand and most of our resources are not renewable, it’s a zero sum game. Someone in the gene pool who spends all their life making a dozen babies benefits proportionally more than someone who has 1-2 children.

Also..this need to keep having babies is a scam perpetuated by organized religions of all types because the state was always funded by religion. And more subscribers means more power. That’s the kind of bullshit that needs to be stopped in its tracks. Have a nice day!

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

#260

Post by NoRagrets »

lilactown wrote: post #227
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #217

We are past carrying capacity. If we don’t bring down population to 1-3 billion, when the natural trend of depopulation happens, there won’t be enough resources to feed the population on the spoils of a collapsing eco system. When the apex predator gets hungry, everything gets eaten. Not only are we a super apex predator, we are also the most hungry and are outbreeding all other species and devouring eco systems. It…

We are not beyond carrying capacity. We have enough food and other resources to clothe, house and feed everyone in the world and forever if we could organize ourselves. Capitalism has failed us in doing so. We need a new way of organizing. The Malthusian idea of "there are too many people" leads us to only one logical conclusion: eugenics, genocide. Don't fall into that trap. The basis is provably not true.

Do you have the numbers to prove that we have resources to ‘live forever’?

Capitalism is the only reason we have survived as a species. It is because of capitalism that we are able to procreate relentlessly and without a thought to our future resource management.

Population control through incentivizing responsible procreation is not ‘genocide’ and ‘eugenics’. Negative incentives is not the same as coercion/genocide/eugenics.

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