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Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

theguardian.com

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Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#151

Post by ben_w »

gspr wrote: post #73
mathgladiator wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I feel these days is despair. It's hard enough to get people to just wear masks, or not throw parties with active covid infection. I think and feel that we are doomed. I wonder if the polymaths have just given up.

Remember not to conflate the loudness and visibility of the idiots with their numbers!

Anyone who uses public transport can get a good idea of the percentage of noncompliance in their area. Here in Berlin, I see an average of four people not wearing masks or wearing them wrong on an average half-full train carriage or bus.

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#152

Post by paulmd »

jlengrand wrote: post #114
paulmd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

individual-scale action is not a substitute for collective action. You can plant trees and sort your recycling every day for the rest of your life and it won't make the tiniest fraction of the difference that raising fuel economy standards or implementing a carbon tax or whatever would do. individual action is often presented as a sop precisely because industry wants to divert discussion from the forms of collective…

Entirely correct. And that's infuriating Though it does not stop us from acting at local level. Let us all stop replacing our phones every year, and there will be a shift in consumption models. We collectively, as a sum of locals, have the power to make things change.

Not saying don't do those things, but we need society-level action to really make an impact. To plagiarize the saying about the internet and censorship, capitalism is a self-correcting system designed to route around any "errors" like individual ethics/behavior that produce non-optimal profits according to "the rules" of the system. If you reduce the demand for coal because everyone chooses to pay the extra for solar energy, someone is going to scoop up that cheap coal and find a way to use it. You have to "change the rules of the game" to make any impact, and that's society/collective level action.

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#153

Post by redisman »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #68
sp332 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the region recovered" Yeah, because the volcano stopped erupting. This current disaster is not short-term.

You mean the forest fires? Depending on the region, they'll abate either from human intervention or seasonal snow/rain, or a combination.

Until the next year or two when they come back again bigger from a unseasonably warm summer and unseasonably wet winter which grows even more fuel. And then again and then again and then again, growing worse each time until the forest doesn't grow back again at some point.

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#154

Post by redisman »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #84
jibcage wrote: post #5

It feels like the earth is dying. I wonder if the human population has longer than 20 years of tolerable existence left on this planet.

To paraphrase George Carlin: The planet is fine, but the people are fucked.

The planet is fine, but 99% of current species and a large number of current plants are fucked.

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#155

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

ben_w wrote: post #151
gspr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember not to conflate the loudness and visibility of the idiots with their numbers!

Anyone who uses public transport can get a good idea of the percentage of noncompliance in their area. Here in Berlin, I see an average of four people not wearing masks or wearing them wrong on an average half-full train carriage or bus.

Vee häff camz in Hamburg. If the driver sees that, it's end of the line for them. If they are cought by "Kontrolletties" it's that plus 80EUR fine.

Winke, Winke :-)

edit: Written as experienced multiple times in the last few weeks. Fine was initially 40EUR.

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#156

Post by josefresco »

indigochill wrote: post #53

On the topic of seeing across many fields, it's occurred to me there is a common theme across the crises of 2020 (particularly as seen through the lens of the US): "I can't breathe". Covid: check George Floyd's murder which sparked worldwide protests: check Smoke covering half the US: check Not that I'm a polymath or have any answers. My approach to these problems is to leave the fate of the world to those who hold t…

Just wait until November where depending on the outcome, American democracy itself might be saying "I can't breathe".

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#157

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

redisman wrote: post #153
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the forest fires? Depending on the region, they'll abate either from human intervention or seasonal snow/rain, or a combination.

Until the next year or two when they come back again bigger from a unseasonably warm summer and unseasonably wet winter which grows even more fuel. And then again and then again and then again, growing worse each time until the forest doesn't grow back again at some point.

> until the forest doesn't grow back again at some point

gotta love this doom-obsessed gedankenexperiment

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#158

Post by aaronbrethorst »

redisman wrote: post #146
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual behavioral change is insufficient. A civilization-level crisis requires government intervention. Vote.

A dedicated individual can do quite a lot. Look at John Muir for example - should he have just voted and not do anything else with his life for the environment? Just from the most immediate problems I could see a lot of profitable work in modeling wildfires, maybe using satellite pictures to identify the most vulnerable spots to light up etc. Also optimizing power usage over networks and things like that are exactly…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24494744

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#159

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

zxcmx wrote: post #142
OJFord wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's cause and there's cause. If you have a smoke problem you can put the fire out without working out how it started.

The smoke problem is at the end of a long web of causes and effects. It is not possible to put out sufficiently large fires. We need to act earlier in the causal chain. But where? And who pays?

Do we know areas at risk of uncontrollable fires?

Yes?

Do we know how to mitigate the risks?

>Yes? Do the things.

>No? Pay the experts to figure this out. Draft them if need be.

No? Pay the experts to figure this out. Draft them if need be.

Everyone pays proportionally. Nationalize assets if need be.

We have the knowledge, resources, and capacity to solve these problems. (Change my mind). We lack leaders with the spine to take necessary action.

Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

#160

Post by EarthIsHome »

jfengel wrote: post #32
havelhovel wrote: post #20

I have been told on this forum that the men and women working in wildlife conservation are in it for vanity or for self gratification. Relatedly, I have been told on this forum that there is nothing that regular folks can do about climate change. But then events like this happen, and no one reflects on how fatally pessimistic this community can be. Are we ourselves not capable of forecasting the effect of a burning s…

The single most effective thing you can do for climate change, by far, is vote. The climate is one of those tragedy-of-the-commons problems that can only be solved when everybody consents to work on it together. It takes only a relatively small proportion to prevent any progress from being made. We certainly to have enough resources to intervene, but doing "something -- no matter how trivial" fails to minimize the de…

I don't know where you live, but on my ballot, "the environment" isn't listed.

Instead of goals or policies, what's listed are politicians.

An honest question: The west coast is represented by Democrats. Who am I supposed to vote for? We've known about climate change, and we've voted. We've had both Republican and Democratic regimes over the past half century, but what has changed for the better? Just recently, House Democrats voted to give 850,000 acres of a Nevada wildlife refuge to the airforce for bombing [0].

This makes me think you cannot vote your way out of climate disasters. Telling people to vote doesn't really solve the problem. What are concrete steps that can be done?

If voting is the only thing we can do, then I think we're in big trouble.

[0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/DROPTHEMIC2020/status/13062362926...

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