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Bird populations declining fast across North America

emagazine.com

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Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#41

Post by rubylark »

> "declined by 29 percent—or a total net loss of around three billion birds—since 1970."

> "estimates that our pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone"

So is the net loss of 3B birds since 1970 a lot or not a lot? If 2.6B birds each year are killed just by house cats, then wouldn't the decline of 3B over 50 years be not that big of a difference? It sounds like banning outdoor cats would single handedly solve the decline and result in a bird population boom.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#42

Post by [deleted] »

themodelplumber wrote: post #26
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between abstraction and reality is all the little details that get excluded from abstractions. Consider, people cooking at home are creating real value that doesn’t get captured in GDP, which means maximizing GDP may is not maximizing the actual economy. The difference is not so critical when people are starving, but the difference continues to grow until maximizing GDP starts harming the economy.

There are a lot more differences than that. You are communicating a subjective model of reality, one model of many, many models.

[deleted]

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#43

Post by elihu »

jonmc12 wrote: post #22

> The U.S North American Bird Conservation Initiative estimates that our pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone. The 100M pet cats in US on average kill 26 birds/yr? Doesn't seem right. When I track the source[1] of research, the estimates include both "own" and "unowned" cats and rely on some assumptions like "a correction factor to account for owned cats not returning all prey to owners"…

That sounds plausible. Cats can be very effective predators.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#44

Post by UncleOxidant »

mFixman wrote: post #24
SkipperCat wrote: post #18

I think this and many of the similar problems plaguing the earth will only be solved with a drastic reduction of people on the planet. Get the population down to 1 or 2 billion of us and a lot of these issues go away. Deforesting, not an issue if the demand for lumber is cut down by 80%. Same for coal, oil, paving, lithium... It all gets solved with just less people. 8 billion people is just too much, even if we all…

2 billion people consuming as much as the average American does right now gets you in a much worse situation than the current one. The only solution is strong government action to reduce emissions and environmental consequences of consumption. It's not completely un precedented: the hole in the ozone layer was the unavoidable apocalypse in the late 90s and is an almost solved problem right now.

Sure, we did mount a concerted effort to solve the ozone problem. But that was a lot easier to do than what we need to do now. We needed to change the types of propellants used in aerosol spays and we needed to change the types of refrigerants we used - it was lucky that we had pretty equivalent and readily available replacements. But now to solve the myriad of challenges we face we need to reduce consumption of many different resources at once - sacrifices will need to be made. Big sacrifices in some cases. And given our current political climate, sacrifices aren't popular (not that they have ever been, but especially not now).

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#45

Post by patall »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #12

In population dynamics, you often see periods of decline and gain. How do we know that this is a genuine long-term decline as opposed to a temporary downswing? I’ve always wondered. After all, not every population can grow forever. So which pieces of news should we be alarmed about, vs which are expected?

From the article:

> The study found that population decline was not limited to a few species but a wide range of species across every biome

In contrast, population dynamics is usually concerning either a single or a number of linked species. But on the greater scale, the planet as a whole will probably rebound after humans have destroyed everything including what has made their life possible and will hence have gone extinct.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#46

Post by contingencies »

Plant dense, heterogeneous local species in your garden, don't use herbicides or pesticides, and avoid prolonged or regular use of outdoor artificial lighting. Don't feed wild birds. Don't let cats out. If you have neighbours with cats, spray them with a hose until they learn to stay away. If that fails, trap them then spray them with a hose. That'll learn 'em.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#47

Post by LudwigNagasena »

Retric wrote: post #23
themodelplumber wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a bit of a dichotomous view on a complex web of interconnected "realities" and "abstractions", and I'm not sure if "real" is a great term for an opposite of an abstraction, which is also real in a lot of ways. Otherwise you are getting _very_ close to the N/S dichotomy in Jungian psychology and the Myers-Briggs type model :D and the growth idea there is transcendence of the dichotomy, bringing strengths of…

The difference between abstraction and reality is all the little details that get excluded from abstractions. Consider, people cooking at home are creating real value that doesn’t get captured in GDP, which means maximizing GDP may is not maximizing the actual economy. The difference is not so critical when people are starving, but the difference continues to grow until maximizing GDP starts harming the economy.

GDP is a useful abstraction that can help guide policies. Do you have concrete examples of its unjust use that were supported by economists?

I don’t know any government that considers maximizing GDP as its primary goal.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#48

Post by micromacrofoot »

jonmc12 wrote: post #22

> The U.S North American Bird Conservation Initiative estimates that our pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone. The 100M pet cats in US on average kill 26 birds/yr? Doesn't seem right. When I track the source[1] of research, the estimates include both "own" and "unowned" cats and rely on some assumptions like "a correction factor to account for owned cats not returning all prey to owners"…

26 a year for an outdoor cat honestly seems low to me… that’s 1 every other week. I had one cat that I started keeping inside because it was approaching one per day.

Without us they’d be doing this for sustenance, so in theory multiple kills a day.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#49

Post by titzer »

mFixman wrote: post #24
SkipperCat wrote: post #18

I think this and many of the similar problems plaguing the earth will only be solved with a drastic reduction of people on the planet. Get the population down to 1 or 2 billion of us and a lot of these issues go away. Deforesting, not an issue if the demand for lumber is cut down by 80%. Same for coal, oil, paving, lithium... It all gets solved with just less people. 8 billion people is just too much, even if we all…

2 billion people consuming as much as the average American does right now gets you in a much worse situation than the current one. The only solution is strong government action to reduce emissions and environmental consequences of consumption. It's not completely un precedented: the hole in the ozone layer was the unavoidable apocalypse in the late 90s and is an almost solved problem right now.

> is an almost solved problem right now.

I wish. We only halted its growth and it is only barely healed. From Wikipedia [1]:

> A 2005 IPCC review of ozone observations and model calculations concluded that the global amount of ozone has now approximately stabilized. Although considerable variability is expected from year to year, including in polar regions where depletion is largest, the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades due to declining ozone-depleting substance concentrations, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol.[107]

> The Antarctic ozone hole is expected to continue for decades. Ozone concentrations in the lower stratosphere over Antarctica will increase by 5–10 percent by 2020 and return to pre-1980 levels by about 2060–2075.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Prospects_of_o...

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