Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 106 posts

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#91

Post by haswell »

Ygg2 wrote: post #89
haswell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was primarily responding to this: > The real quest is getting multi planetar. Which when viewed as the "real" quest, has potentially problematic downstream effects. My point was that there are many people who see who see the world as something to escape and live lives prioritizing things that harm our long term ability to survive here in the pursuit of that escape. I appreciate the clarification that this is not wh…

> I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated. Thanks, I'm pretty sure I know what I meant. I meant a gaming analogy (main quest/ side quest) not the Christianity metaphor. Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that. > But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is…

> Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that.

Fully agree, nor was it my intent to imply otherwise. But once uttered, we can't control how other people interpret our words. I see clarifying these differences in interpretation and gaining a shared understanding as the primary purpose of a thread like this.

> Earth is never a stable place. Ecosystems are a constant rise and collapse of dietary chains, continents aren't standing still, and cataclysms are a dime a dozen. Organisms causing mass extinctions are also nothing new under the Sun. Albeit, we do hold a speed run record I believe.

Again, agree. And yet, despite that instability, life on earth has rebounded or remained abundant up to this point given large enough timescales. What is different now is that we have some control over what may be the next major cataclysm. Whether or not we figure out how to collectively exert that control is another question entirely.

All I'm saying I that I hope we're not spending time trying to terraform mars while our own planet dies. If we can make mars habitable, we can rectify the situation here barring cosmic scale events that doom earth entirely.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#92

Post by thatcat »

fallous wrote: post #59
542354234235 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a useful distinction for non-religious reasons. First is that humans change the environment more than anything else, by a large margin. As they say, “the dose makes the poison”. All species modify the environment they live in, but none are reshaping the oceans, every landmass, the air, the climate etc. like humans. Humans created multiple elements that never existed on earth. Second, humans are consciou…

Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.

The life that produced oxygen wasn't using technology to create that change at accelerated rates. Also each time that has happened, it destabilized the ecosystem and led to mass extinctions.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#93

Post by thatcat »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #79
fallous wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.

How long did it take to oxygenate the planet though? Millions of years, billions? How long did it take to spew enough carbon into the atmosphere to create acid rain? How long did it take to clear cut most of the wester European forests? No one thinks the earth was perfectly harmonious before man, but in the last 200k years (0.0004% of the earth's age), we have DEFINITELY left a mark that no other life form before had…

SO2 and NOx produces acid rain

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#94

Post by perrygeo »

mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

Your hypothesis makes sense. I'd call it "human exceptionalism" - the (wildly unsupported) assumption that we are separate from nature.

Religions that see humans and nature as part of the same system don't have this idea of "unnatural" landscapes. They have no concept of "wilderness". All landscapes are landscapes to which we both belong and shape through our actions.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#95

Post by satisfice »

mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

I also don’t see the value of the distinction. You could say that the idea that human-created change is unnatural is a purely artificial construct.

What does concern me is the collapse of natural (meaning tested over millions of years) biodiversity.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#96

Post by jermaustin1 »

thatcat wrote: post #93
jermaustin1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long did it take to oxygenate the planet though? Millions of years, billions? How long did it take to spew enough carbon into the atmosphere to create acid rain? How long did it take to clear cut most of the wester European forests? No one thinks the earth was perfectly harmonious before man, but in the last 200k years (0.0004% of the earth's age), we have DEFINITELY left a mark that no other life form before had…

SO2 and NOx produces acid rain

My bad - point stands, just wrong element/molecule.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#97

Post by Ygg2 »

haswell wrote: post #91
Ygg2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated. Thanks, I'm pretty sure I know what I meant. I meant a gaming analogy (main quest/ side quest) not the Christianity metaphor. Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that. > But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is…

> Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that. Fully agree, nor was it my intent to imply otherwise. But once uttered, we can't control how other people interpret our words. I see clarifying these differences in interpretation and gaining a shared understanding as the primary purpose of a thread like this. > Earth is never a stable place. Ecosystems are a constant rise and collapse of dietary ch…

> But once uttered, we can't control how other people interpret our words.

Sure I could. If the HN had an edit button.

Death of the author, eh? I don't prescribe to that notion. It makes every interpretation valid. Even if the one interpreting them is tripping balls.

> All I'm saying I that I hope we're not spending time trying to terraform mars while our own planet dies.

If we are waiting until every human being is content and happy, and environment is perfectly stable, we'll be waiting past heat death of the universe.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#98

Post by fallous »

thatcat wrote: post #92
fallous wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.

The life that produced oxygen wasn't using technology to create that change at accelerated rates. Also each time that has happened, it destabilized the ecosystem and led to mass extinctions.

Indeed, microbial life did not have technology and yet fundamentally changed the environment to the point that it produced mass extinctions. That was my point. Humans are not the only form of life to fundamentally transform the environment, nor is technology required in order to do so.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#99

Post by haswell »

Ygg2 wrote: post #97
haswell wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that. Fully agree, nor was it my intent to imply otherwise. But once uttered, we can't control how other people interpret our words. I see clarifying these differences in interpretation and gaining a shared understanding as the primary purpose of a thread like this. > Earth is never a stable place. Ecosystems are a constant rise and collapse of dietary ch…

> But once uttered, we can't control how other people interpret our words. Sure I could. If the HN had an edit button. Death of the author, eh? I don't prescribe to that notion. It makes every interpretation valid. Even if the one interpreting them is tripping balls. > All I'm saying I that I hope we're not spending time trying to terraform mars while our own planet dies. If we are waiting until every human being is…

> If we are waiting until every human being is content and happy, and environment is perfectly stable, we'll be waiting past heat death of the universe.

Do you feel that’s a good faith interpretation of my point given what we’ve discussed?

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#100

Post by sfn42 »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #79
fallous wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.

How long did it take to oxygenate the planet though? Millions of years, billions? How long did it take to spew enough carbon into the atmosphere to create acid rain? How long did it take to clear cut most of the wester European forests? No one thinks the earth was perfectly harmonious before man, but in the last 200k years (0.0004% of the earth's age), we have DEFINITELY left a mark that no other life form before had…

That carbon we're spewing into the atmosphere was once part of the atmosphere. We're just putting it back.

Similarly, life forms are responsible for removing it, producing oxygen etc. The planet has gone through multiple mass extinctions, ice ages etc, it has changed much more significantly and over short time periods before.

That's not to say we shouldn't be reducing emissions and trying to reduce our impact. I just don't like this argument that seems to me like it's based on trying to guilt people - "The earth was fine until we ruined it!", it's bullshit. The earth is a planet, we do not have the capability of destroying it. We can change it so we and many other life forms can't live here any more but it will still be a planet and there will most likely still be some form of life here for millions of years to come.

The problem is we are shitting where we sleep, we are ruining our own home. If we take it too far, which we may already have done, we won't be able to live here any more, at least not in the way and scale we currently are. And we're certainly not living anywhere else any time soon either, so that means we screwed ourselves.

And when we're gone I personally don't care whether there's still dolphins or whatever. Life comes and goes. That's life. Everything will end, the sun will die and so will the universe. The only question is when.

Why anyone would care about what happens after we're gone is beyond me. What we need to prioritize is self preservation. And we rely on the current ecosystem so if we ruin it we ruin ourselves. But from the resulting apocalypse new life will form, which couldn't have existed without it. The earth will be fine, we might not be.

Post reply on HN