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Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#41

Post by spiffydave »

will4274 wrote: post #29
spiffydave wrote: post #27

In other news, 288,000,000,000 pounds of seafood was consumed last year. If we give a rough estimate of 5 lbs. per animal (probably a lot less than that) that's around 60 billion animals killed last year so we can eat them. It's estimated we can add another 40% to that as unwanted by-catch. So now we have 84 billion sea creatures killed each year on purpose. If you're concerned about the environment you might conside…

I mean... I have to eat. Is seafood any worse than land animal production?

I think you're asking the wrong question. Both have heavy environmental impacts.

To me the big difference is that seafood affects a natural ecosystem and species vs. farmed land animals.

Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#43

Post by spiffydave »

peytn wrote: post #36
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get ready to be told to simply go vegan.

At some point everyone will be vegan ascetics forever apparently. Including all of our descendants, who will recognize and appreciate how enlightened we are. Curiosity and discussion about other solutions cannot be tolerated lest it jeopardize the coming worldwide ascetic veganism forever awakening.

Not sure what your point was.

Facts seem valuable when making individual decisions that affect the planet, especially when we wring our hands and wonder when someone else will do something to solve our environmental problems.

Some of the answers are right there in front of you every day.

Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#45

Post by jakogut »

spiffydave wrote: post #40
plank_time wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of this was farmed seafood? I have a friend right now who is planning on opening fish farms because he feels it will have less of an environmental impact.

Looks like farmed fish is 50%. However, they feed farmed fish wild fish apparently. Takes 5 lbs. of wild fish to grow 1 lb. of farmed fish. Hmmm... doesn't sound sustainable. https://www.livescience.com/5682-milestone-50-percent-fish-f...

I don't get why black soldier fly larvae isn't more common and popular as animal feed. BSF larvae have numerous advantages, including eating their weight in organic matter very quickly, and being a good mix of fat and protein for growing out farmed animals.

The adult flies also have no mouth parts, and do not hang around people or spread diseases as a result.

Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#46

Post by baron_harkonnen »

spiffydave wrote: post #44
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get ready to be told to simply go vegan.

What's your answer to making a difference?

If (1) our current system is unsustainable, and (2) we can't make a difference, then we are, by the most basic rules of logic, (3) headed for a collapse of our current system.

It's a bit strange how often people will aggressively make either point 1 or 2, and then concede that the other is also true, but then decry the 3rd, which follows from 1 and 2, to be ridiculous pessimism.

Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#48

Post by baron_harkonnen »

bloniac wrote: post #2

It’s so, so startlingly bad I will ignore it.

There's a beautiful irony in this comment being do voted, as it is people aggressively ignoring the truth of what the commenter is say regarding our habit of aggressively ignoring and denying hard truths.

Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#49

Post by liketochill »

inasio wrote: post #15

What does the number even mean, is it a lot, what is the denominator? Doing a rough back of the envelope calculation, looking at tidal areas, barnacles and other creatures there go from one milliliter to one centimeter square, meaning that the dieoff represented 1000 square meters to 10 hectares, which in all honesty is probably not a lot

Two restaurants I have been to have advised that they can’t get oysters due to the die off that was part of the heat wave.

In the inter tidal zone walking around it was a solid field of mussels before the heat wave. Maybe 10 underfoot, so say 20 per square foot or 180 per square meter.so 1,000,000,000 mussels would occupy 5,000,000 sq meters of intertidal coast. If the intertidal zone is 5m wide that is 1,000,000 meters of coast, or 1000km.

If all of the mussels and oysters died in 1000km of coastline I’d say it is a significant event.

Edit: a million mussels in the area the size of a tennis court? I was thinking of the clams I was walking on in June … definitely weren’t at that density

Re: Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

#50

Post by throwawaysea »

Since Scientific American was one of the first to push false articles (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-hea...) claiming the PNW heatwave was primarily caused by climate change, I’m sharing this analysis from a UW Professor who is considered to be the foremost expert on northwest climate, where he shows that the event was less due to climate change and more due to a rare mix of factors (a black swan event). In other posts he mentions the record breaking event would have taken place even without climate change, but that climate change contributed a few degrees to the peak temperatures. The attribution study he is critiquing itself claims this recent event was a 1 in 1000 years event even with climate change: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/flawed-heatwave-repor...

As others have mentioned it is unclear if a billion creatures is significant or not. But regardless this isn’t going to be a seasonal event.

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