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Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

bbc.com

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Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#121

Post by rexpop »

roenxi wrote: post #100

I live in a city. We've exterminated every animal except cats and dogs, which we've modified with a multi-millennium breeding program to suit our desires. Pretty much every surface is covered in concrete, all the plants are curated by humans. As far as the eye can see is a totally artificial biosphere. This is where pretty much all the humans live. Most of the people who get worried about wildlife decline live here t…

> exterminating the competition

Nature is not our competition, it is the substrate in which we live. To exterminate it is to exterminate ourselves. A simple example is how ocean flora, outside our concrete biomes, produce the oxygen we breathe.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#122

Post by cleandreams »

aaron695 wrote: post #30

Lucky we have the doomsday cult to keep telling us the world is warming and will wipe out the animals in 100 year so let's not concern us with local problems. In reality it has and always will be local. And the solution has and will be for a few more decades use fossil fuels to help. (The doomsday cult sunk nuclear) This applies to both the environment and if you have empathy, other humans.

A member of the 'doomsday cult' here. From the West Coast, I see global warming out my window in the form of unprecedented wildfire, in part caused by warming and related drying out of the landscape. Denial doesn't fix this problem.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#123

Post by bosswipe »

0-_-0 wrote: post #106
bosswipe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't live on land that looks like this but it's destroying biodiversity anyway https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-t...

To be fair, that's a desert so technically speaking agriculture increases biodiversity there

Ok maybe something like this makes my point better since it shows a town where we live and outside of town where we don't live https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/default/files/u...

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#124

Post by jessaustin »

rch wrote: post #111
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

I think the future is very grim for biodiversity. Even if we stopped destroying habitats tomorrow, many larger animals are already living in small, isolated pockets surrounded by roads, farms, and industry. Meanwhile, plants and smaller animals face intense competition from invasive species - often brought in by accident thanks to the constant flow of goods around the globe. We're probably headed for a pretty homogen…

My perception is that climate change policy hasn't been sufficiently focused on biodiversity, maybe because it has taken so much effort to get the public on board with the idea that the science is real. That's going to have to change.

There isn't much overlap between these two issues. Climate change is associated with using fossil fuels to produce energy. Decreases in biodiversity are associated with human land use such as agriculture, transportation, and construction, and also with pollution. Politically, tying one issue to the other just poisons them both. The only variable they share is the human population. Growth in human population is already slowing dramatically.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#125

Post by hh3k0 »

andai wrote: post #98
hh3k0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important part of that statement is "lives". According to the IPCC, humans have transformed _more than 70%_ of all ice-free land if you take stuff like agriculture into account. Edit: It'd seem that I've had remembered outdated figures.

What's the latest stat?

Ah, sorry. It'd seem that my edit note was confusing.

The >70% figure mentioned in my previous comment is recent (2019).

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#126

Post by titzer »

0-_-0 wrote: post #106
bosswipe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't live on land that looks like this but it's destroying biodiversity anyway https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-t...

To be fair, that's a desert so technically speaking agriculture increases biodiversity there

Biomass maybe, but biodiversity no. There is a myriad array of weird desert things adapted to such a climate, just not huge numbers of them.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#127

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

samatman wrote: post #41
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

I think the future is very grim for biodiversity. Even if we stopped destroying habitats tomorrow, many larger animals are already living in small, isolated pockets surrounded by roads, farms, and industry. Meanwhile, plants and smaller animals face intense competition from invasive species - often brought in by accident thanks to the constant flow of goods around the globe. We're probably headed for a pretty homogen…

That's the direction things are heading. It's (past) time to start collecting genomes and marrow samples from as many critically endangered species as possible. Unextinction is a difficult problem, but without the necessary material, it's impossible. Sure, that's going to favor charismatic megafauna. But we like those, it's right in the name. And it's no substitute for building wildlife corridors, managing park lands…

What you propose is like putting humpty dumpty back together, except you're also drunk, blind-folded, and one of your arms is handcuffed to a hippo. I think gene-banks are a novelty, nothing more. Definitely not part of any serious wildlife conservation strategy.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#128

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

sethherr wrote: post #74
samatman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the direction things are heading. It's (past) time to start collecting genomes and marrow samples from as many critically endangered species as possible. Unextinction is a difficult problem, but without the necessary material, it's impossible. Sure, that's going to favor charismatic megafauna. But we like those, it's right in the name. And it's no substitute for building wildlife corridors, managing park lands…

... wait, how is what you’re suggesting different from zoos?

It's like a zoo where everything's dead. Which actually simplifies things quite a bit for us. There are many animals we still haven't figured out how to keep in captivity, because studying wild animals in the wild is very expensive. Crazy expensive. Especially ocean animals.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#129

Post by throw51319 »

samatman wrote: post #41
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

I think the future is very grim for biodiversity. Even if we stopped destroying habitats tomorrow, many larger animals are already living in small, isolated pockets surrounded by roads, farms, and industry. Meanwhile, plants and smaller animals face intense competition from invasive species - often brought in by accident thanks to the constant flow of goods around the globe. We're probably headed for a pretty homogen…

That's the direction things are heading. It's (past) time to start collecting genomes and marrow samples from as many critically endangered species as possible. Unextinction is a difficult problem, but without the necessary material, it's impossible. Sure, that's going to favor charismatic megafauna. But we like those, it's right in the name. And it's no substitute for building wildlife corridors, managing park lands…

Another pseudo-intellectual "solution" in the same realm as... let's go to Mars!

This planet is made for us, we are made for it. We need a top down approach to limit damage to nature and make sustainability the "GDP" of tomorrow.

Re: Wildlife in ‘catastrophic decline’ due to human destruction, scientists warn

#130

Post by chongli »

seanwilson wrote: post #117

50% of habitable land on earth is taken up by agriculture, 77% of which is used for meat & diary (including the crops grown for livestock to eat), which contributes only 18% to the global calorie supply because of the inefficiency of animal products: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets I wonder how much of an impact it would have to return the land used by meat & diary to nature (40 million k…

I think these figures are pretty misleading. First of all, they only look at calories, not protein. If you wanted to replace all the meat and dairy with equivalent protein substitutes you’d be looking at huge amounts of land for growing soybeans, peanuts, tree nuts. Replace all the milk with almond milk and you’re still dealing with huge water and land use for a product that has inferior protein and nutrients.

Second of all, you can raise livestock like cattle, sheep, and goats on extremely rough terrain. Good luck growing soybeans on a bunch of jagged cliffs. Those areas may be highly inefficient in terms of land area per gram of protein, but it’s not going to be productive farmland otherwise.

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