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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

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Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#61

Post by maxbond »

flakeoil wrote: post #44
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

I'm curious, what does that quote really mean? I can attempt to draw a few conclusions, but I'm not quite sure of either and they can also almost be the opposite of each other.

I don't know that I know what it means, but I'll tell you a thought it brought to mind.

A while ago I was having a discussion, and someone asserted that synthetic fertilizers are necessary because composting doesn't scale.

And my reaction was, surely composting scales to an entire biosphere - like, empirically we know this, right? There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. Surely it's that we don't have the required technology and wisdom to create supply chains that can run as closed loops and accept inputs that aren't so rich and concentrated?

I don't want to argue this point, there are definitely good counterarguments that could be made, but I'm just trying to illustrate the shift in perspective I think the commenter may have been going for rather than change the topic.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#62

Post by anal_reactor »

wayoverthecloud wrote: post #25

When you get caught up on the hustle of modern society and lose yourself in modern technology, it's so easy to forget that you are a part of a larger whole and there is more life on Earth besides human. For some reason knowing that other animals exist just for the sake of existing and even sleep off when life gets harder gives a new perspective. I feel that we humans use too much knowledge and complicate problems eve…

[flagged]

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#63

Post by seszett »

lukan wrote: post #48
begueradj wrote: post #22

This reminds me of the fact that humans used to be able to hibernate ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117993/ ) and ( https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35033907/early-hum... )

From glancing over, it does not really seem a confirmed fact, but a hypothesis. "They chose to spend the worst part of the year trying to sleep through it inside of relatively safe caves, and to do that, they sacrificed nutrition and vitamin D from the sun." Also it does not really matter for your vitamin D levels, if you are outside in winter in the north or in a cave. The sun is too low for the body to produce Vita…

> only the Inuit for example do not need sun, to produce Vitamin D btw

As far as I can tell, they need vitamin D just like any other life form and can only synthesise it from the sun, just like all other lifeforms on Earth.

They might have adapted to reduced amounts of available vitamin D though[0], because they don't have much of it available to them in the first place and because there's really no other source than producing your own from the sun, or eating things that have produced it from the sun. So they have a vitamin D deficiency, but it's less severe than for most people.

[0]https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/etudinuit/2016-v40-n2-etu...

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#64

Post by Scarblac »

maxbond wrote: post #61
flakeoil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what does that quote really mean? I can attempt to draw a few conclusions, but I'm not quite sure of either and they can also almost be the opposite of each other.

I don't know that I know what it means, but I'll tell you a thought it brought to mind. A while ago I was having a discussion, and someone asserted that synthetic fertilizers are necessary because composting doesn't scale. And my reaction was, surely composting scales to an entire biosphere - like, empirically we know this, right? There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. Surely it's that we…

The argument doesn't quite work imo because farmers are actively working against the normal ecosystem - we don't want the normal plants to grow there, we want our desired crops. With enough production for us to feed the world and to give farmers a living wage.

I still think it's doable (but not if we also want to feed many times our mass in lifestock), but it's not easy.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#65

Post by moritzruth »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #60
xyst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What is the reddit fallout that happened last year? (I don't follow or read reddit, unless a search for something specific leads me to a particular page, so I'm clueless about this and curious to know more)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Reddit_API_controversy

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#66

Post by lm28469 »

fire_lake wrote: post #42
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

A systematic study of birds would find that many do indeed starve to death.

Is the goal of humanity to replicate infinitely and love as long as possible regardless of anything else ?

Because that's what cancers do and it never end well for the host

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#67

Post by lynx23 »

xyst wrote: post #54
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#68

Post by figassis »

wayoverthecloud wrote: post #25

When you get caught up on the hustle of modern society and lose yourself in modern technology, it's so easy to forget that you are a part of a larger whole and there is more life on Earth besides human. For some reason knowing that other animals exist just for the sake of existing and even sleep off when life gets harder gives a new perspective. I feel that we humans use too much knowledge and complicate problems eve…

We invented technology and methods to make things that are meant to be difficult, easy (like food, transportation, mating, surviving). So now we have to invent more technology and methods to find an equilibrium for the system that we broke and barely understand, so we continue to break it and abstract away the instability, understanding it less and less. I mean, what is the purpose of the stock market? housing/mortgage market? An upvote? The cookie banner and ad tracking industry?

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#69

Post by jonplackett »

fire_lake wrote: post #42
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

A systematic study of birds would find that many do indeed starve to death.

I do enjoy scientific debunkment of religious quotes.

After the Notre Dam fire someone on Twitter was claiming a miracle because the golden (statues I think?) had survived. Someone then pointed out that the melting point of gold is several hundred degrees above the temperature of a wood fire.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#70

Post by krisoft »

maxbond wrote: post #61
flakeoil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what does that quote really mean? I can attempt to draw a few conclusions, but I'm not quite sure of either and they can also almost be the opposite of each other.

I don't know that I know what it means, but I'll tell you a thought it brought to mind. A while ago I was having a discussion, and someone asserted that synthetic fertilizers are necessary because composting doesn't scale. And my reaction was, surely composting scales to an entire biosphere - like, empirically we know this, right? There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. Surely it's that we…

> surely composting scales to an entire biosphere

By definition, yes.

> There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber.

There are about five times more humans today than there were when Fritz Haber invented his process.

The question is not “will there be an ecosystem”. Of course there will be. The question is are you ok with 4 out of 5 person potentially starving to death.

> Surely it's that we don't have the required technology and wisdom…

Synthetic fertilizers is the required technology and accepting that is the wisdom.

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