How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct • Hacker News Board

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#41

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 5:57 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #38

srean wrote: post #8

Sperm 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.

This is not true. DCS has been found in cases of free-divers who perform repeated deep dives. The primary gas that causes DCS is nitrogen, which exists in large quantities in the air you are breathing now. The reason you don't often see DCS in free divers is that it takes time for the high-pressure nitrogen to dissolve in the blood and enter tissue.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#42

Post by wazoox » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:16 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #18

jamesbkel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick addition to the awesomeness of sperm whales: part of the reason they dive so deep/long is to hunt giant squid. While a sperm whale vs. giant squid battle has never been observed, there are multiple counts of sperm whales with scars that are from squids and in some cases almost certainly from giant squid.

They find giant squid beaks inside sperm whale stomachs too.

Yes, that's apparently what causes them to secrete ambergris.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#43

Post by microarchitect » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #22

cq wrote: post #19

Sad 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…

Can you name an economic system that doesn't have similar flaws? Economic systems only usable by hunter-gatherers don't count, unless your real argument is with civilization rather than capitalism.

You ask this question as if it were a rhetorical question.

Is there any reason to believe that such an economic system that also combines much of "good" properties of capitalism cannot exist?

Disciplines like game theory and mechanism design have made tremendous advances over the last few decades. Surely we can put these ideas to work in designing better political and economic systems.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#44

Post by jonhendry » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:23 PM UTC

_THE_PLAGUE wrote: post #4

Whaling needs to be brought back. Sperm whales are prevalent once again, so controlled harvesting of them should be possible just like hunting deer or anything else. This creates jobs, and contributes to finding renewable energy sources. Furthermore, because without whaling sperm whales have no predators they are getting abundant and taking up too much of the marine ecosystem's food supply. We need to limit their num…

a) they're still endangered. b) we don't need the oil.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#45

Post by gcb » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:27 PM UTC

rsanchez1 wrote: post #9

It boggles the mind why the car companies lobbied to keep whale hunting when their numbers were already so low. They wanted a few more years of automatic transmission working at then-current levels, and then what? The same mass transmission failures that happened, only without anymore whales left. Poachers are similarly mind boggling. Instead of leaving a viable population to harvest more animal parts (not saying it'…

The scariest part of the history is that people had no idea they were buying dead whales.

Just like today even in food its optional to have a list of ingredients... So it seems we haven't improved much in this regard.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#46

Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #41

blhack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not true. DCS has been found in cases of free-divers who perform repeated deep dives. The primary gas that causes DCS is nitrogen, which exists in large quantities in the air you are breathing now. The reason you don't often see DCS in free divers is that it takes time for the high-pressure nitrogen to dissolve in the blood and enter tissue.

On the other hand, think about it. With a SCUBA tank, you are taking many breaths under high pressure. With a single free-dive, you only take one breath. With many free-dives, you take many breaths. Is it surprising that repeated deep free-dives cause DCS?

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#47

Post by dfc » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #37

srean wrote: post #8

Sperm 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

So that nobody wastes their time. The wikipedia link is to a submarine that made the deepest dive with humans aboard.

I think most people understood "the deepest dive" to mean unaided / freedive.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#48

Post by rdl » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:41 PM UTC

tyng wrote: post #3

Someone should create a wikipedia entry for P. S. Landis as "inventor and the man who saved Sperm Whales"

He also was involved in creating Mobil 1 synthetic oil, which is one of the better synthetic motor oils out there.

You could make the argument that better motor oil allows cars to stay on the road longer, reducing demand for energy/materials to make new cars, or increasing the number of affordable, reliable used cars for less wealthy (or more frugal) people to drive. Plus, some improved fuel economy (due to engine being in better repair longer), so less CO2 emissions.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#49

Post by guard-of-terra » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:50 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #32

guard-of-terra wrote: post #24

This 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...

We still need those kinds of lubricants, they're just aren't available now except for emergency cases.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#50

Post by Lagged2Death » Mon, Nov 21, 2011, 6:59 PM UTC

dexen wrote: post #27

philwelch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name an economic system that doesn't have similar flaws? Economic systems only usable by hunter-gatherers don't count, unless your real argument is with civilization rather than capitalism.

Let me reverse that question for you: Can you name an ecosystem (as in, natural system) that doesn't have similar flaws? A predator predates on its prey as long as feasible. When prey is overhunted, some of the predator population dies out (negative feedback, if you will), or the predator adopts (behavior or genome) to use alternative food sources, or to better utilize the resource. Nothing new to see here, move alon…

When prey is overhunted, some of the predator population dies out (negative feedback, if you will) ... please don't make it sound unnatural.

I think it's OK to characterize human interaction with the ecosystem as unnatural.

Feedback loops like the one you mention work OK for cheetahs and gazelles. Too many cheetahs leads to too few gazelles leads to skinny cheetahs and eventually to fewer cheetahs, etc. But that happens because one is the food for the other; the amount of predation is directly related to the current populations of both, and the amount of predation also has an impact on the future of predation.

Consider an alternate history scenario: No replacement for sperm whale oil was ever found. Sperm whales were hunted entirely to extinction to keep those big American cars rolling. When the whale oil ran out for good and all, Americans all learned to drive stick. Impact on human population of the planet: none. Impact on the rapaciousness of future generations: questionable. Feedback loops (as opposed to straight-line cause and effect) closed or otherwise in evidence at all: zero.

Human interaction with the ecosystem is fundamentally different from the interactions that arise between the other actors within it. Demand for sperm whale oil had virtually nothing to do with the number of humans alive on the planet, and the amount of whale oil left in the world had no impact on the demand for cars, either. With no reciprocal connection, there are no levers for a feedback loop to even take hold of.

One might even say that what separates humans from animals, in the grand scheme of things, is our ability to escape from the feedback loops the rest of the ecosystem is in the thrall of, or even to escape from the feedback loops the rest of the ecosystem is.