Bird populations declining fast across North America • Hacker News Board

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#211

Post by Cullinet » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #186

Groxx wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenhouse (specifically carbon dioxide) specifically might be solved, because trees exist and are pretty good at what they do, but I absolutely do not believe that a 95% reduction in population would lead to a consistently-healthy world. I think you dramatically underestimate our ability to pollute in small populations. Consider how bad air pollution was in London during the 1700s and 1800s.

I didn't say a 95% reduction in population would lead to a consistently healthy world. I said if global population was 5% of what it is now, greenhouse gas emissions would practically be a non problem.

What do you think about our ability to raise qualified adults enough to manage the continuing industrial sectors of the planet, if we were 5% of our present number?

Subjectively and with zero rigor I think that possibly 150 to 100 years ago levels of population were capable of creating so much of the modern world. But from the Holocaust to Pol Pot, the Bangladesh civil war, mass exterminations of some of humanity's most capable gene pools is something that I very badly want to be convinced hasn't badly harmed the species potential.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#212

Post by whalesalad » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #62

I’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.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#213

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

moosey wrote: post #5

Until 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…

[deleted]

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#214

Post by hungryforcodes » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

tengbretson wrote: post #169

moosey wrote: post #5

Until 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…

I don't know if the "population of birds in north America" is a more or less abstract concept than money, but I'd bet they're similar.

Though population of birds in theory is a measurable real thing -- and money really is an abstraction. Without humans it wouldn't exist. On the other hand, birds would probably exist much better without us.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#215

Post by dwaltrip » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #181

toqy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably Arguing about how many people the earth can sustain is pointless without defining what kind of life you expect people to be living. How many billions can capitalism + western rates of consumption sustain and for how long vs a simpler way of life. > aren't all sudden…

> Arguing about how many people the earth can sustain is pointless without defining what kind of life you expect people to be living. How many billions can capitalism + western rates of consumption sustain and for how long vs a simpler way of life. Not really, 10 billion "simpler way of life" people have huge catastrophic footprints as well. Farming being a major one. But the point was not to come to a precise figure…

They probably get upset as they assume you are implying some moral judgment against having kids. Most people want kids, just like those before us for untold hundreds of thousands of years.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#216

Post by carbonguy » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

AlanSE wrote: post #194

throwawaylinux wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This illustrates why it's a terrible shame that the overpopulation topic has effectively been silenced and demonized in science conservationism and environmentalism. I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably, let alone a much larger one. They'll angrily insist that the earth's "carrying capacity" is 20, 50, 1…

Well, people get wildly irrational at me when I suggest that the only viable option here is for people to migrate from Earth into orbit. Space constraints will go away, because in 3-dimensional space everyone can live in as large of a house as they want but remain in a fast commute to urban centers of space cities. There are plenty of materials available on the moon to build whatever we want with. This can, of course…

I suspect part of the reason people have a strong response to your suggestion is that it's patently impractical, and thus easy to pick apart.

To offer one small critique: you suggest that we first need "people to migrate from Earth into orbit," THEN "take full intentional control of the planet's climate" - surely if we have the ability to fully control Earth's climate, we don't need everyone in orbit?

And, since we have to develop the technologies necessary to implement your plan anyway, wouldn't it be easier to just figure out how to remediate the biosphere directly, instead of figuring out how to get everyone into orbit, THEN figure out full planetary climate control, THEN artificially-accelerated natural productivity restoration?

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#217

Post by thatguy0900 » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #176

pirate787 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a group like this, which feeds a couple dozen feral cats on "Kitty Cat Lane." Of course there is science behind the insanity -- toxoplasmosis infections from the cats they love.

Enough with the petty, denigrating attacks people helping mostly harmless animals, which is a generally good thing. These rescuers/helpers run 'neuter and release' programs and are keen on having population control, not increasing the number of rogue cats.

Mostly harmless to you... What a strange thing to call what is effectively an apex suburban predator that is known to kill for fun with no intention of eating.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#218

Post by carbonguy » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #181

toqy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably Arguing about how many people the earth can sustain is pointless without defining what kind of life you expect people to be living. How many billions can capitalism + western rates of consumption sustain and for how long vs a simpler way of life. > aren't all sudden…

> Arguing about how many people the earth can sustain is pointless without defining what kind of life you expect people to be living. How many billions can capitalism + western rates of consumption sustain and for how long vs a simpler way of life. Not really, 10 billion "simpler way of life" people have huge catastrophic footprints as well. Farming being a major one. But the point was not to come to a precise figure…

> _My_ world view deems no person "excess".

So we don't have "too many" people? The world is not OVERpopulated? Because excess means "too many" or "more than needed," so if you're saying there's no excess, then you're saying there's not too many people.

I definitely agree with you, by the way: the world does not have an excess of humans!

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#219

Post by pdonis » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

jwmhjwmh wrote: post #210

pdonis wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what you mean by "information channels". I mean information channels to and from the central computer. > Wouldn't a factory mainly just need to communicate its inputs and outputs the computer or computer cluster doing the calculation? If that's all it's doing, a free market does that fine. There is no need for any additional computation. Similarly for any other economic actor. If the central computatio…

You say "a free market does [calculation] fine," but it has obvious deficiencies that I have already remarked upon. As I have said before, the optimization problem can be solved on modern computers without the problems of the market. The inputs and outputs of individual processes are known in a market system, so logically this information can be centrally recorded for use by the planning process. If a production cent…

> You say "a free market does [calculation] fine," but it has obvious deficiencies that I have already remarked upon.

And as I have already remarked, central planning does not fix those deficiencies, it makes them worse.

> the optimization problem can be solved on modern computers without the problems of the market.

I strongly disagree, for the reasons I've already stated, but it doesn't seem like we're going to resolve that here.

> Maybe free market capacity scales exponentially

Yes, because the computation consists of the individual actors deciding their actions and the communication of price signals between them. (Note that while I say "price signals", these are much more general than just money prices. Many positive sum trades are made that do not involve money.) That's a general feature of distributed computing: you have to count the communication between the nodes as part of the computation.

> Do you think that, during World War II, the U.S. should have structured its wartime economy around free market principles?

Yes.

> Did it make things worse by not doing so?

Yes.

> social security gets gutted because the U.S. government is not a government of the people.

Ah, the No True Scotsman argument. Every time socialism fails, socialist ideologues say it's because it wasn't true socialism.

> The governance model described in the book I linked is based on sortition rather than election.

I'll take a look. However, I am extremely skeptical that any governance model can fix the fundamental problems with centralized control.

> It seems you agree that China investing in solar power is beneficial to it

I said that China's government believes it will be beneficial to China. They could be wrong. But even if they're not, that is not at all the same as saying that it is the most beneficial thing that could be done with the same resources. I am not saying that governments never do beneficial things. I am saying that governments, on net, will do worse than a free market would do. That is also not the same as saying a free market would always achieve an optimal result; in many situations there may simply be no way of achieving an optimal result. But that does not mean all achievable results are equivalent.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#220

Post by carbonguy » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #201

ip26 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

populations are naturally in slight decline on their own Yeah, by maybe 10-20% generation over generation. If your target population is 5% of today, and your strategy is to use the natural population decline of Western countries, you aren't getting to those levels for a good 15-25 generations. 400-700 years or so.

> Yeah, by maybe 10-20% generation over generation. So my counter-example disproves the absurd claim that any population limitation or reduction requires or devolves into genocide. > If your target population is 5% of today, and your strategy is to use the natural population decline of Western countries, you aren't getting to those levels for a good 15-25 generations. 400-700 years or so. I'll assume that math works…

The point is probably that, if you believe the biosphere is in crisis NOW, then waiting hundreds of years for human populations to decline is not a solution.

There's an odd disconnect in the comments you've been making where you identify this problem of overpopulation, but seem extremely reticent to describe what you think should be done about this problem you've identified. Maybe I've missed it, and I plan to continue reading the thread to see if that's the case, but if I haven't, let me ask you directly: what, if anything, should be done about human overpopulation?

And if your answer is "nothing, I'm just pointing out it exists" then... well, thanks for contributing, I guess?