Because they've been outed: https://birdsarentreal.com
this made my day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2wir9wRp8w
thank you.
Bird populations declining fast across North America
71–80 of 322 posts
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#72> 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"…
This seems quite plausible, it's consistent with e.g. 90% of cats killing nothing and 10% of cats killing less than a bird/egg per day - and an outdoors cat can do much more than that.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#73Until human society stops serving abstractions (like money) over things that are real, then real things will continually face consequence. These will still over into our lives in a multitude of ways until we no longer have real systems to support these abstractions. Loss of natural life is such a failure. Today we speak of stock markets, governments, businesses. Someday, our main concern will not be these shared drea…
But isn't the problem that these abstractions exist precisely to help coordinate real things? The economy (and by extension, to a limited degree, the stock market) directly influences a lot of real things and basic needs.
The way we use money to coordinate activity is very selective: Money only solves problems when those with problems have money. This means that the environment and the poor are generally not served by capitalism.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
"if we wanted to." It's unfortunate, but people are too obsessed with their short term comfort and prosperity to consider making sacrifices for saving the environment, nature and future generations.
do we have to be? are we unable to overcome this trait?
I become more and more pessimistic by the day that we can overcome these aspects of human nature. Sure, we can probably get some subset of the population to overcome these traits, but we need the vast majority of people to sacrifice their current comfort for the good of the planet and future generations. I just don't see that happening, unfortunately. Our response to covid, especially in the west has been abysmal and that was a relatively easy testcase which we've failed (Asian countries have generally done much better, though).
I think that in order for us to save nature we need to get away from our western utilitarian view of nature - the idea that nature is here for us to exploit and exists only to the extent that it furthers our goals. But these are deep-seated beliefs that are very difficult to change on a mass scale in a relatively short period of time - it would take generations and we don't have that kind of time.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#75I’ve always imagined that we’re in this situation of creeping ecological and environmental collapse because of a long buildup over hundreds of years of bad priorities. But it isn’t. Most of the damage has taken place during our lives. Over half the carbon humans have emitted is after 1990. This isn’t an inherited problem. We’re doing this to ourselves. Right now.
I suspect, totally off the cuff, that this is more related to destruction of insect habitat, overuse of pesticides, cats, night time lighting, and a whole slough of other anti-insect man-made problems. Global warming plays a part, no doubt, but my guess would be that it’s not the primary problem. Almost all of the yards around me are insect deserts, and these yards are common across the US urban and suburban regions.
For many decades now, we’ve effectively been waging war on a key part of bird diets.
Edit: also, as mentioned elsewhere, we’ve reforested, but have subsequently lost critical meadowland. And our new forests tend to be more monocrop than the woodlands of old.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#76the single most terrifying experience of my life has been to read biology conservation articles these last two years, coupled with my increasing understanding of climate change (literature). we often forget that ecosystems (that we barely understand) provide us with crucial benefits and should be considered as (like many planetary scientists say) Life Support Systems . if there remain historians a century from now, i…
I suspect you might be experiencing the classic freshman medical student syndrome. The papers (or medical studies) need to be contextualised, and that contextualisation takes lots more of knowledge than just reading some papers casually.
Instead, I suggest reading IPCC reports. While quite stark and damning, they provide context for the predictions and balance speculation out, so you don't get "we're all going to die in a decade", "our kids are going to starve to death" kind of nonsense that gets into public attention (thus incentivising lousy papers coming to similar conclusions).
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there's a lot to quibble about in this rosy portrayal of the COVID clusterfuck, particularly anti-rationality's rearing of anti-Science conspiracy theories and "hesitancy"--but I won't. > When we focus on something, we get it done Yeah, great. Can we focus on not ruining this planet for the stock market? Climate change, deforestation and plastic pollution are seriously damaging the one planet in the known unive…
We are focusing on it plenty enough. The timeframes for serious climate change are measured in half-a-centuries, remember how much changed in the last decade? Solar got massively cheaper, it became possible to convince countries to reduce their carbon emissions purely through political pressure, billions get spent on energy and sustainability R&D. Hell, even nuclear is quickly losing it stigma after Europe haven't ha…
I do remember how much changed in the last decade. A very nice decline in solar power cost. But you know what? That didn't solve any problems. Emissions kept rising at an exponential rate, meaning the problem not only kept getting worse, it got worse at a faster rate. Adding solar capacity replaced no fossil fuel capacity. We're using more fossil fuels than ever. We are still on exponential growth. So the next decades look bad. And those half-century bad predictions? They wouldn't be nearly as bad if we didn't continue exponential growth--that literally means no GDP growth, something no politician or public policy advocate will even talk about. Growth is making the problem worse, yet it is literally the only strategy that any one can think of to make life better in any way. Exponential growth of something. We've lost our collective minds, TBH. Like trying to grow a watermelon in a lightbulb. Exponential growth busts this planet's capacity, every time.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Within the context of a Model. Models that don’t capture the very large scale effects are useless and therefore not worth talking about. What’s left is models that used to capture large scale effects and all the smaller effects that where never captured by the model.
This sounds more like an argument for systems design. You can easily build models and meta-models that help navigate various scopes. For example the concept of the long tail is by definition a widely-scoped way of gaining leverage in a situation where smaller details are important. Traffic control systems, computer hardware design...these all incorporate the same combinations of depth and breadth of thinking. I think…
You keep moving the goal posts.
You talk right by any argument made.
Like infinitely big little numbers, you can string semantic wank together endlessly, producing nothing of value to those that need to eat and cannot.
Biology of the masses rules, not 1 of 7 billions personal preference to ramble endlessly.
IMO your mind is the closed one. It’s an endless concept deep dive, zero results.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#79> "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 sin…
it means cats and other factors are outpacing replacement, for a total of 3 billion lost… that’s a lot. Total population was somewhere in the area of 10 billion in north america, now around 7 billion
So I guess my next question is: what is the replacement rate? Because 2.6B dead a year from a single source when there is only about 10B alive at any one time, AND that 26% annual death not being the highest cause of bird mortality (e.g. >>26% of all birds die a year), then that means there are a lot of bird babies and a lot of bird corpses out there. The stats are a bit mind boggling for me.
Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the pandemic and my society's inability to deal with it To put the doom and gloom in context, we had a novel virus go from virtually zero to pandemic in the course of a few months. Within weeks we had working treatments. Within a year, effective vaccines. Less than two years from first publication, and over 4 billion people have been inoculated. All within the systems of abstractions you decry. We're messing up a l…
Indeed. It's also just that people don't remember the issues of the yesterday, they just disappear without much reflection. Remember ozone layer hole? Acid rains? Leaded petrol? Asbestos causing lung cancers? All sorted out when we realised they are problematic. Not immediately, not without some foot dragging and screaming, but sorted. We are great at solving problems. We just take a bit of time and convincing to get…
Just a reminder, but we solved, err, almost none of those things. The ozone layer hole has just barely stabilized, and might recover by 2075, acid rain was never a scientific concept, but a media scare, but leaded petrol did absolutely contaminate the air and water and that lead is still out there, so is most of the asbestos, we just let it be for the most part, as it is really expensive to deal with--I know, I have some in my house.
It's a matter of perspective. Do we solve large problems? Not really. Do we forget about large problems and/or declare victory? A lot. We only have so much attention span.