Someone should create a wikipedia entry for P. S. Landis as "inventor and the man who saved Sperm Whales"
'Delayed extinction of.'
Sperm whales are not 'saved' yet.
How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
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Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#32This is humiliating to us as a race of sentient species. If we still badly need sperm oil, why don't we work to inject the relevant genes into some bacteria and get our oil in any quantities we want to? Or reproduce the process in any other way (synthesis, cell culture).
Sure, I'll just hop into my time machine and teach the scientists from the 70s all about gene splicing...
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#33I expect we'll see a similar process with using animals for food. As our scientific knowledge increases, and as our needs increase, synthetic meats will become more and more attractive, eventually leaving us all meat-eaters who do not harvest animals. Complex systems remind me of a theater set up for a complex play. Hundreds of ropes hang down from the ceiling. Somebody is always pleading us with us to pull rope A to…
One could even argue that it's already happened. Modern breeds of food animals are more or less "synthetic meats." They're much more efficient at converting feed into flesh than any natural animal is, and they'd have no chance of surviving in the wild.
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#34Sad how there's no discussion of the economy that enables stuff like this to happen. "Why were people so cruel and evil?" is a stupid question; it's not about cruelty or being "evil". It's about money. Don't expect people to be moral in this economic system. Morality is a weakness in a capitalist society, and you'll go out of business if you bring morality into a competitive business ecosystem. This is why we need to…
> Moreover, sure P. S. Landis "saved the whales", but he didn't do it to save the whales, he did it to generate an enormous amount of profit for Mobile Oil, and was paid for it handsomely.
OP mentioned that with different intent: in conservation of nature, we can get better results quicker by focusing on improving technology & organization than by merely loudly protesting current uses of natural resources. Alas, it's better to align incentives with conservation of nature than to try to conserve it against 'em.
To the wit,
> Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments (...)
> It was not their attention grabbing activities that stopped killing whales, but the unsung efforts of chemists finding a synthetic replacement to sperm oil.
> Suddenly, the car companies did not need to lobby [for whale hunting] any more.
and in comments below the article:
> But demanding to stop something without suggesting such better alternatives is waste of time. I'd even say that it is immoral. I see many people believing otherwise.
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#35In case you didn't, spare a few minutes and read through the comments on the original article. Excellent stuff in there, particularly from the OP.
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#36Conclusion: "The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100 years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratorium…
A bizarre conclusion IMO. "Only in the 1980s, a chemical solution to this problem was found." At that point, the whales had already been saved. The chemist may have saved automatic transmissions, but the whales were already good by that point.
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#37Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long. They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspectiv…
Good infographic, but it misses the actual deepest dive by a warm blooded animal at over 35,000 feet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#38Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long. They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspectiv…
My dive-master friend has told me that the bends isn't an issue if you're holding your breath. The bends is a result of the air mixture that you're breathing with a SCUBA.
This is why freedivers can dive down to 100meters, and then come back up quickly without dieing.
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#39Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long. They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspectiv…
Good infographic, but it misses the actual deepest dive by a warm blooded animal at over 35,000 feet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
*Freedive
Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
#40I expect we'll see a similar process with using animals for food. As our scientific knowledge increases, and as our needs increase, synthetic meats will become more and more attractive, eventually leaving us all meat-eaters who do not harvest animals. Complex systems remind me of a theater set up for a complex play. Hundreds of ropes hang down from the ceiling. Somebody is always pleading us with us to pull rope A to…
I think in the long term, you are right. But according to the ArsTechnica summary at http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/why-meat-from-a-... that may be quite a long term.