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Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

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Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#211
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the solutions being pushed kind of suck for most people. We’ve had 50 years of sustainability and eco-asceticism. Denial is a perfectly fine reaction to the solutions being proposed.

A dollar a gallon tax on gasoline would be more than enough to capture the CO2 it releases. Other energy sources are similar. These costs are way below what happens when some oil producer throws a tantrum or starts a war. However, unlike wars, etc., such a tax would directly cut into oil company profits.

Your crazy if you think the government isn't going to just piss that money away. Its already at ~$.50 a gallon with federal and state taxes. And the oil companies will just stop producing to lower supply and inflate the price. More taxes are going to hurt the individual , companies have enough money to get around it. No, we need a revolution.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of "reasonably torturous" is pretty wild.

Quite literally wild. There is nothing quite like watching David Attenborough walking us through the absolute ruthlessness of the animal kingdom in his plummy staccato voicing. There is no doubt that had cows evolved differently they would be as torturous to their prey as any other animal. I think we can definitely do better, but I think it's equally clear that mother nature is not very opinionated on the topic.

This is an appeal to nature fallacy.[1]

Every horrifying thing beyond imagination has happened in nature, including all sorts of rape, torture, murder, and infanticide, much of this by humans as a part of that nature.

Does this justify humans in engaging in rape, torture, murder, and infanticide?

This is a discussion of ethics, not what nature allows (which is everything possible within the laws of physics).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#213

How feasible is it to grow crabs in captivity? We need to start farming food, no way natural ecosystems can support themselves _and_ humans at current levels.

I did a decent amount of research into this a while back. They (blue crabs) can be grown in captivity, but they’re cannabalistic, so they have to be kept apart from each other. This makes it pretty inefficient and high overhead. The crab farming operations I’ve seen literally have each crab in its own little compartment - this is too labor intensive to be feasible outside of places with very low wages like the Philip…

> but they’re cannabalistic

Seems like a place where GMO organisms might make sense. You just have to knock out this behavior somehow.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#214
post #82

Check out Dana (Donella) Meadows Lecture: Sustainable Systems (Part 2 of 4) - 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc

Thank you for posting this, what an amazing lecture.

I watched it too. Thank you!

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#215
I'm just curious what percentage of HN members diets is snow crab, and my point is snow crab isn't corn, wheat or chicken, and the only people this is going to affect are the snow crab fisherman, their families, and the economy of the towns in which they live and spend.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's already full of plastic So are you, and everybody else that has synthetic textiles in their house.

What's one more drop of poison, right?

Whatever plastic particles you're eating in fish flesh really are a drop in the bucket. You'd get a lot more benefit by throwing away all your clothing, carpets, bedding, etc that contain synthetic fibers and replacing them all with pure cotton, wool, silk or flax but I doubt you're in a rush to do that. Unless you're willing to go that far, nothing else you do will make a difference.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#217

I'm just curious what percentage of HN members diets is snow crab, and my point is snow crab isn't corn, wheat or chicken, and the only people this is going to affect are the snow crab fisherman, their families, and the economy of the towns in which they live and spend.

10% of mine

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, if you have to include the word torture in the descriptor of food production than there’s already an ethical problem to solve.

What is the ethical problem? What kind of solution would there be? How would that philosophical thinking apply to other apex predators, such as spiders who poison and wrap their prey while they hopeless wriggle to death for minutes or snakes who suffocate their prey to death sometimes breaking major bones, or a cat killing a rodent for fun? Do we have a responsibility to intervene against other torturous predators, w…

The ethical problem is in causing unnecessary harm to others.

The philosophical thinking would apply to those who are capable of entertaining and acting upon it. The spiders are obligate carnivores, so have no choice in the matter, and likely no concept of the issue.

That said, I think your point about responsibility to intervene is actually interesting. There's a whole ethical matter concerned with this question.[1] My personal take on it is that we have a responsibility insofar as we have power over the matter.

We have the power to control our own actions, but I don't see any way we could reasonably resolve the issue of wild animal suffering, at least in the near term with our current technological capacity. If hypothetically we did have a way to end all suffering on Earth without fucking it all up, I don't see how we couldn't feel an ethical responsibility to do so. Were we the ones suffering we would hope others would do it for us.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These have flopped. Most people who like meat want real meat. Most people who don't like meat don't want fake meat. The remainder is the market for fake meats, and it has proven small.

they flopped because they're expensive. I've tried both. They're both more or less edible. But impossible burgers are more money than just buying beef, and not as good. Why is this pea protein more money than beef?

Subsidies and economies of scale.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, the difference is that marine animals travel a lot more than land animals.

Oddly enough, there’s decent evidence that preserves that ban fishing are effective for preserving the biodiversity in the larger region that includes zones where fishing is allowed.

Thinking about how many sea animals produce large quantities of offspring, I wonder if the answer is that while normally competition for food & predators limit how many survive in those situations a fair number can expand out of the protected area, with the predator population artificially low after having crashed along with whatever was overfished.
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