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A third of North America’s birds have vanished

nautil.us

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Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#31

Post by leeoniya »

themitigating wrote: post #24
leeoniya wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct. people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits. as a species, humans plan and invest very little beyond our own lifetimes. but we're just animals after all. all the…

Bullshit. That's cultural. Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric. Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/europe-renewabl... You just won't say the real people who are to blame. You want to lay the blame on all people equally

> Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric.

80% of 0.001% is a rounding error. scale matters. just because a first-world country of 5M can do something does not make this attainable for the other 99.999% of the human population.

> Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed

imo, nuclear (not fusion, mind you) + electric, is the only realistic way out of the energy mess.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#32

Post by zdragnar »

8note wrote: post #7
goda90 wrote: post #3

They're all in my yard... Seriously, the number of birds I've seen in my yard and neighborhood is way higher than in years past. I don't know what the explanation is. Maybe the local population has had a boom, or other food sources have disappeared and they have chosen my corner of suburbia. My first assumption was that they were rebounding after a few years of avian flu.

In terms of quantity or variety?

Not OP, but I've noticed an uptick in both this past spring. I suspect it has more to do with the exceptional weather and flooding attracting different types of migratory birds than anything else, though.

On average, I can't say that I've seen this trend of lesser quantity or variety around my house, but I'm also in a fairly remote area with tons of natural habitat still available.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#34

Post by jmye »

themitigating wrote: post #24
leeoniya wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct. people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits. as a species, humans plan and invest very little beyond our own lifetimes. but we're just animals after all. all the…

Bullshit. That's cultural. Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric. Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/europe-renewabl... You just won't say the real people who are to blame. You want to lay the blame on all people equally

What do you think Norway’s primary export is, speaking of blaming the right people?

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#35

Post by 23B1 »

One thing I dislike the most about these problems – and the information/media/activism around them – is the "solutioning".

Yes, we should recycle and reduce carbon emissions and learn to live in a more integrated fashion with earth. But the problem is so diffuse and requires substantive work against powerful forces (government, business, apathy).

What I'd like to see more of, when presented with these sorts of problems, is viable solutions proposed that can be implemented bottom-up, and in the following hierarchy:

1. Regular Individuals like me e.g. "build a bird-friendly yard"

2. Influential individuals like architects, urban planners,

3. Small groups, e.g. birdwatchers, Boy Scouts, churches, schools

4. Small towns & neighborhoods, e.g. "build bird friendly parks"

All too often the "solutioning" defaults to the highest concentration of power, e.g. government/regulation – but that obviously isn't working at the speed it has to, and I suspect its because it's very easy to say "they should/we should" instead if "I will/we will".

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#36

Post by zdragnar »

themitigating wrote: post #28
chiefalchemist wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you are, but I'm in central NJ and just last week I mentioned to a friend that I felt there were more birds than usual. Obviously, anecdotal, but it was a mild winter here. That said, I also feel like there are less squirrels. But they had peaked during Covid due to - I believe - less road kill.

[flagged]

What makes you think that the verb "to feel" is exclusively limited to emotion? Among the definitions you'll find in a dictionary, it also encompasses experiencing a sensation, whether by touch or intuition.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#37

Post by amelius »

leeoniya wrote: post #20
themitigating wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollution is a problem for everyone. We need government regulations and every single person changing their lifestyle but guess what, it won't happen. We had peak awareness in the 80s and 90s, I remember in school time was dedicated to ecology and the environment. Now half the US is actively working against environmentalism. You're blaming the media for not talking about species going extint but about flooding. If peo…

> If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct. people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits. as a species, humans plan and invest very little beyond our own lifetimes. but we're just animals after all. all the…

> people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits.

But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads. And that would solve a lot of other problems too.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#38

Post by leeoniya »

nostromo wrote: post #26
leeoniya wrote: post #5

climate change is always framed in terms of how many coastal people it will affect when sea levels rise a few meters. the canadian wildfires going on now. the only thing i hear about it in the media is how bad the air quality will be in this or that city, or how many oil/gas/logging jobs will be lost. the amount wildlife that is being displaced or burned alive? fuck it! did you hear that 10k humans had to be evacuate…

The article mentions habitat destruction and agriculture as the driving issue, not climate change. > The hardest hit were grassland birds, down by more than 50 percent, mostly due to the expansion of farms that turn a varied landscape into acres of neat, plowed rows.

pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are not all different things.

i guess you can blame all the above on a single root cause, though: human over-population. we just don't have plagues and famines like we used to; we're really good at killing everything that we don't like.

i see my neighbors dousing their lawn with weed killer and pesticides every season, followed by grass nutrients! then burn 2gal of gasoline to mow that lawn every week. nothing better than an insect-less, uniform green lawn!

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#39

Post by leeoniya »

amelius wrote: post #37
leeoniya wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct. people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits. as a species, humans plan and invest very little beyond our own lifetimes. but we're just animals after all. all the…

> people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits. But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads. And that would solve a lot of other problems too.

> But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads.

i have uBO chrome extension installed, so i'm doing pretty good by that metric!

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#40

Post by dec0dedab0de »

leeoniya wrote: post #5

climate change is always framed in terms of how many coastal people it will affect when sea levels rise a few meters. the canadian wildfires going on now. the only thing i hear about it in the media is how bad the air quality will be in this or that city, or how many oil/gas/logging jobs will be lost. the amount wildlife that is being displaced or burned alive? fuck it! did you hear that 10k humans had to be evacuate…

The coral reefs are another huge problem. Most fish species spend some time of their life in one, and a staggering amount have been destroyed. Last year I volunteered for a few hours at a coral nursery, they said 90% of coral has been destroyed[1] since the 70s. I'm not sure if they meant just barrier reefs,just around Florida, or everywhere, but in any case it's already a disaster.

[1] I tried to Google to verify that number and found a bunch of different numbers with different qualifiers.

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