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Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

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Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#51

Post by myshpa »

toss1 wrote: post #32

Note that the areas of the three largest deviations are, in order: Biosphere Integrity, Novel Entities (synthetic chemical & processes), and Biogeochemical Flows. The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature & hydration, and so on, endlessly. This is the food web. If it collapses, we as…

> This is the food web

One major contributor to the overshoot is our current agricultural practices, with animal agriculture being a primary offender.

It's responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gases, it's a leading driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and it contributes to soil degradation and water pollution.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4

Humans are driving one million species to extinction - UN backed report finds that agriculture is one of the biggest threats to Earth’s ecosystems

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption

DEFORESTATION

https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation

Drivers of Deforestation - combined, beef and oilseeds for animal feed account for nearly 60% of deforestation

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/whats-driving-deforestation

Just four commodities — beef, soy, palm oil, and wood products—drive the majority of tropical deforestation.

Beef - 2.71 million hectares / year

Soy - 480,000 ha / year (77% for animal feed)

Palm Oil - 270,000 ha / year

Wood - 380,000 ha / year (but probably more)

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

CO2 - 16.5+% animal agriculture (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352100490_Emissions...)

Methane - animal agriculture leading driver, https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#methane-ch4-e...

N20 - animal agriculture leads again, https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#nitrous-oxide...

SOLUTIONS

We can significantly reduce our footprint by adopting plant-based diets, reforesting the pastures (more than 50% of which were originally forests), and allowing biodiversity to recover.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4

The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land - shifts in global food production to plant-based diets by 2050 could lead to sequestration of 332–547 GtCO2, equivalent to 99–163% of the CO2 emissions budget consistent with a 66% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 °C

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#52

Post by mc32 »

Liquix wrote: post #20

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest. To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the…

Hmmm, I think if we had similar (but roving, pastoral, etc) neolithic with population we do today (ok, doubtfully possible, but whatever carrying capacity), we'd never the less have resource fouling, resource depletion and we'd be sending soot into the atmosphere.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#53

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

ipnon wrote: post #38
dr_dshiv wrote: post #28

I don’t know why this triggers such skepticism in me. Particularly the section on novel entities. But it feels funny, somehow, and I can’t put my finger on it.

I think the thought, like death, is simply so horrible it defies full consideration. This is why climate activists can seem fanatical, because it has a religious quality. Either you believe “it” will happen in our lifetime, very soon, or it will not happen at all, and it’s this horrifying, apocalyptic nature of the problem that causes this schism. If some of these climate scientists are right in their claims it is th…

There’s a lot of religion going on right now. Whatever that is in humans that encourages that, going back to tribal behavior, or survival or whatever, it hasn’t gone away just because formalized religions are weak right now.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#54

Post by pixl97 »

Acssux wrote: post #5

How is something critical if it has been transgressed and we are still alive? Or on the very first moment every single one is past we all suddenly die?

If the engines on your plane fall off mid flight, everyone doesn't die instantly. They die instantly after 30 thousand feet of screaming terror.

This comment screams lack of education about complicated systems. For example take overpopulation in things like grazing mammals. The funny thing about being overpopulated is that it is not instantly deadly. Once the mammals eat enough of their food source that their food source cannot reproduce reliably the game is over. But they tend to have reserves of fat and muscle that last for some period of time. The weakest die first. Then the population reduces. But the population doesn't go back to what was previously considered at the over population limit. No, populations massively collapse because there is nothing to eat at all. 9 out of 10 members of the population can die. And if it's something like an island, extinction is on the menu.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#55

Post by autoexec »

haltist wrote: post #31
lkbm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says: > Boundary positions do not demarcate or predict singular threshold shifts in Earth system state. They are placed at a level where the available evidence suggests that further perturbation of the individual process could potentially lead to systemic planetary change by altering and fundamentally reshaping the dynamics and spatiotemporal patterns of geosphere-biosphere interactions and their feedback…

California's climate patterns are already changing but the state has managed to deal with the problems and will probably continue to do so. Texas on the other hand is starting to see problems with their electricity grid during summers and it's going to keep getting worse as temperatures continue to rise.

California's "dealing with the problems" seems like a lot of shortsighted non-sustainable policy. Parts of CA are burning right now. At this point they've been bragging about maybe not having to go back to rolling blackouts. Reliably providing even the most basic services like water and power is such an astonishingly low bar that only in the poorest developing nations should that even be in question yet here we are. Long term, I don't see Texas or California holding up very well to climate change.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#56

Post by pixl97 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #45
dr_dshiv wrote: post #28

I don’t know why this triggers such skepticism in me. Particularly the section on novel entities. But it feels funny, somehow, and I can’t put my finger on it.

> why this triggers such skepticism I know it does for me - because the people who claim to believe in it the most don't actually live their lives as if they actually believed it. Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to do whatever I could reasonably do to create cooler summers and less smog, but I've never heard any actual concrete proposal beyond "vote democrat".

In general because the tragedy of the commons is solved by one group pointing a gun at everyone else. Nobody wants that, but at the end of the day that's what we're going to get if we like it or not.

The longer we wait, the more people are going to get shot by that gun.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#57

Post by Eduard »

swader999 wrote: post #30
paint wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is technically not wrong, but misleading, as it omits the fact the dams broke due to a natural disaster, Storm Daniel, which previously also "affected Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey with extensive flooding.". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Daniel

No kidding, but to say that climate change did this when hurricanes have been on the decline the last thirty years is misleading. This is weather and engineering failures. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24268-5

> No kidding, but to say that climate change did this when hurricanes have been on the decline the last thirty years is misleading. This is weather and engineering failures.

> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24268-5

This HN user categorically and obsessively has their own opinion on climate change, and how it is influenced by humans.

Their "evidence research" is taking the first Google search result that they believe to support their position in the discussion at hand - even if it doesn't make sense (hurricanes in North America versus Mediterranean).

If they don't invest in such sloppy research, their arguments hit rock-bottom Tiktok factoid niveau. one can better just assume nonsense/randomizing/lying and ignore this user for anything climate-related.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#58

Post by analognoise »

myshpa wrote: post #51
toss1 wrote: post #32

Note that the areas of the three largest deviations are, in order: Biosphere Integrity, Novel Entities (synthetic chemical & processes), and Biogeochemical Flows. The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature & hydration, and so on, endlessly. This is the food web. If it collapses, we as…

> This is the food web One major contributor to the overshoot is our current agricultural practices, with animal agriculture being a primary offender. It's responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gases, it's a leading driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and it contributes to soil degradation and water pollution. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World…

Humanity would rather go to war to thin our numbers than give up eating meat.

The only viable method is lab grown meat that tastes exactly the same, same texture, and is cheaper. That's it. People have real stuff in their lives - they're not worried about planetary survival in 100 years, they're worried about next months rent, etc.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#59

Post by toss1 »

myshpa wrote: post #51
toss1 wrote: post #32

Note that the areas of the three largest deviations are, in order: Biosphere Integrity, Novel Entities (synthetic chemical & processes), and Biogeochemical Flows. The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature & hydration, and so on, endlessly. This is the food web. If it collapses, we as…

> This is the food web One major contributor to the overshoot is our current agricultural practices, with animal agriculture being a primary offender. It's responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gases, it's a leading driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and it contributes to soil degradation and water pollution. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World…

>>Our agriculture and food production are major contributors to the damage

Yes - deadly serious.

I had to travel to the US midwest recently, after not having been there for a long time. As I drove out of the city the first impression of the farmlands was pleasant. But after an hour of highway-speed driving past nothing but bare fields (out of growing season) with scant rows of trees, we became a bit horrified — there was absolutely zero habitat for anything but the artificial plantings, when they were in season. And they would be coated with pesticides to ensure that there were no insects, or anything that ate them, or that ate the things that ate the insects, etc.. And indeed, returning to the airport in daytime, there was remarkably little wildlife.

It was a seriously disturbing experience, which I did not expect.

>>Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

Yikes. The damage being done by 7 billion right now, adding 20-30% more is kind of unthinkable, even setting aside the agricultural damage. And you're absolutely right that we need to adopt a plant-based diet.

The conversion away from meat does seem much more doable, since only 12% of Americans eat 50% of the beef. Moreover, that's men between 50-66 years old, so if younger generations don't acquire that habit, we'll get a 50% reduction just by that sub-population aging out.

[0] https://phys.org/news/2023-08-mere-americans-nation-beef-sig...

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#60

Post by myshpa »

Acssux wrote: post #5

How is something critical if it has been transgressed and we are still alive? Or on the very first moment every single one is past we all suddenly die?

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/st-matthew-island/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity#Planetary_Bo...

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