I've heard smoke inhalation cited as a possible cause for this, but it looks too early for a definitive explanation.
It's not likely the particles, it's more likely the temperature changes and the carbon monoxide.
Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
221–230 of 236 posts
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#222I was walking the trash bins down our long drive to the road yesterday in a soup of wildfire smoke and fog when it occurred to me — we sure have a compartmentalized way of looking at the issues plaguing the world right now. Part of that is the sheer complexity of our contemporary world. There are few polymaths — most are specialists. It feels like we’re sorely lacking people who see across many fields to synthesize e…
Are we the cause of Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn being on the fritz as well? They are experience major magnetic field changes as is Earth. Are we responsible for the changes on the other planets as well?
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, sorry. It would be awful. The implication was that we should turn things around before that could ever be the conclusion another lifeform might come to.
Seems like a damn hasty conclusion anyway. We have reason to judge the health of human civilization above other factors, but what grounds do they have with an outside perspective? What's right and wrong for this planet, or for us, from their alien perspective? Why would they sympathize with, say, the dolphins instead of us (they might - for random reasons?)
> Why would they sympathize with, say, the dolphins instead of us (they might - for random reasons?)
It wouldn't necessarily be random, it could just be math. If any being looked at any ecosystem objectively, and they see 1 species making that ecosystem worse for 8.7 million other species, then it might seem obvious to side with the 8.7 million other species.
Is it ethical to eradicate 1 species to save 8.7 million others? Well, now we've got a classic trolley problem on our hands. They could keep on flying and do nothing, or they could intervene. Not everyone will agree on the ethical choice.
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
We would have to shut down 90% of the pollutants world wide to do anything. Will make the Covid shutdowns look like a long weekend. And even then it might not make a difference if climate change is out of our control. You willing to do that?
"We would have to shut down 90% of the pollutants world wide to do anything." This is vastly overestimated and straight up poorly informed statistics. There are dozens of solutions for pollution that involve energy efficiency, which doesn't require a single shut down and merely uses what we're already consuming more efficiently (think gasoline standards, heating, A/C, LEDs, insulation, weatherization, etc). Alongside…
I agree that ‘better’ is worth doing and we could wait forever for ‘perfect’ to come along while the world burns.
However even doing these things won’t return the biosphere to it’s previous condition, we’ve extracted extreme quantities of energy from underground and dumped them into the atmosphere, and our ‘locked in’ climate change will not decrease with those measures alone. We need to restore balance and I can’t see a way of doing it short of significant carbon sequestration - vastly beyond what can be achieved by reforestation.
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to point out the issues of 1) commenting on areas where one doesn't have expertise 2) not recognizing that and find credible sources of information. No offense, but even though you projected confidence I doubted you had any ornithology background. Since I didn't either, I recognized my lack of expertise and did some good faith basic research, informally speaking, to see if I could find out what the most likely…
Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. HN is only an internet forum. If you have better information to contribute, that's wonderful, but there's no requirement for other commenters to be specialists, or to quote specialists. Human conversation is far broader than that, and needs to be. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I know tone is hard online, but I never intended it a personal attack for a moment. Looking at it, I can see how it can be interpreted as condescending, though. I meant what I said: I am not a specialist, either. However, this was the top comment on this submission when I replied, and it was factually incorrect. I did not spend a long time searching for the links I cited. Dang, you understand running an online community better than I ever will, likely. What is the right call on civility vs correctness? How could I have done better here?
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, the sky was orange and the sun never came out. The ice just keeps melting when it shouldn't. The hurricanes are getting worse. The years just get hotter. It's happening , present tense. The data is in, you can see it with your own eyes. It's clear as day (pun intended).
Yep, that's great. It's also happened many times in the past when no documented industrial civilization existed. There is a long term correlation with solar activity(CME's,Sunspots,Solar flares) that can attest for large climatic swings of the past. The science is not clear as day, and if you stopped searching for the truth of the matter you've stopped do science.
> There is a long term correlation with solar activity(CME's,Sunspots,Solar flares) that can attest for large climatic swings of the past.
Based on 2020's level of solar activity, would you expect it to be hotter or colder than it actually is?
Because from what I've seen, you'd expect it to be colder.
Which means something else is causing the temperature rise.
So why bring up solar activity at all?
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#227How serendipitous. I was just chatting with my partner and we heard birds chirping outside our house. I realized that I had not heard them for a couple weeks now and guessed it had to do with the awful smoke conditions here in Portland. The smoke is still bad but it is noticeably less apocalyptic this morning. I thought birds would flee bad smoke like this but maybe they were just holed up in their nests waiting for…
Noticed the same thing today, birds are back in our yard, here in So Cal.
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a damn hasty conclusion anyway. We have reason to judge the health of human civilization above other factors, but what grounds do they have with an outside perspective? What's right and wrong for this planet, or for us, from their alien perspective? Why would they sympathize with, say, the dolphins instead of us (they might - for random reasons?)
> Why would they sympathize with, say, the dolphins instead of us (they might - for random reasons?) It wouldn't necessarily be random, it could just be math. If any being looked at any ecosystem objectively, and they see 1 species making that ecosystem worse for 8.7 million other species, then it might seem obvious to side with the 8.7 million other species. Is it ethical to eradicate 1 species to save 8.7 million o…
Objectively, why intervene? We are life that came from this planet, and this is unfortunately the "natural" course of life of this planet right now :)
It's true, that they might be into "gardening" and want to shape the planet they pass by to their aesthetics and values, but it's hard to guess what they are, and it's not objective.
I appreciate the discussion of this.
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#229They have started an iNaturalist project.[1] If you find any dead bird in the affected areas you can submit the pictures of it to the project database. It will help in identification and understanding the scale of impact.
[1]: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/southwest-avian-mortali...
Re: Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
To paraphrase George Carlin: The planet is fine, but the people are fucked.
I think about that comment from Carlin ALL THE TIME in relationship to global warming and natural disaster. Our perspective on saving the planet is very ego and species centric. As said in Jurassic Park "Life finds a way". However that life might not include humans.
Does that mean we should just let nature take its course, or maybe be proactive about it and fix some of humanity's worst tendencies i.e. our extremely wasteful society, plastic absolutely everywhere?