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David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

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Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#161

Post by ljsprague »

noisy_boy wrote: post #59
toomuchtodo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenpeace used to drop boulders into the ocean to prevent bottom trawling circa 2021-2022. Unsure if they still do. Fairly straightforward to solve for if you’re willing to drop chunks of rock (granite, non reactive) or concrete in the ocean at the right spots. Bans are nice, destructive force against adversaries works better though. Hard to take the selfish out of the human, so you have to engineer systems accordin…

I think it would be a great PR idea for a billionaire to buy a few old ships and use them to drop rocks over the most popular/vulnerable fishing grounds. What happened to rich people who were all not evil?

Bill Gates promotes vaccination which is in some ways the opposite of "protecting nature".

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#162

Post by koonsolo »

McDyver wrote: post #106
adastra22 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current top-10 billionaires on Forbes' list all got rich by creating value, though some like Larry Ellison certainly did both.

I don't agree. They didn't get rich by creating value. They might have created value, but they got rich by keeping that value to themselves. I would also argue that they don't create the value themselves, but their workers do. Just like that joke: a worker is admiring the boss's Ferrari, and the boss tells him "if you continue working hard, next year I'll have 2"

I'm freelance, which means I'm my own boss working for a bigger company.

So do I fall in the category of being exploited, or do I fall into keeping all the value for myself?

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#163

Post by colechristensen »

create-username wrote: post #150
colechristensen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we have surviving records people have been saying the past was golden and the present is decay with a long list of the present ills which are the downfall of the glorious past. It's a boring take and has been incorrect for thousands of years and will continue to be. Arguments about how some list of things haven't been on a monotonic increase during the last generation do not refute this.

It’s not boring, it explains the demise of the human experience, no matter how bigoted you pretend you are

huh?

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#164

Post by xenadu02 »

01100011 wrote: post #100
bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)

"Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine; the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, The planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in…

It's glib and funny but also hilariously wrong.

In 1800 the US population was 5.3 million (give or take). Non-industrialized. In 2025 it was 340 million (give or take a bit more). Fully industrialized.

In 1800 even if you put every able bodied potential logger to work logging you couldn't make that much of a dent in the forests in the short term. Crews had to cut the trees by hand, move them via river or animal power, etc. In 2025 a single person in a machine can exceed the output of entire crews from 1800. A parcel of land that would take a year to log in 1800 can be clear-cut in three days in 2025.

340 million people need far more lumber per year and fully industrialized are capable of cutting down far more trees.

In 2025 if we wanted to do it we could cut down every single tree in the entire USA within a handful of years. That was not even remotely possible in 1800.

Scale matters.

Will life survive? Sure. Will geologic events eventually clean up the land? Yes. But I don't think saying we can only be as bad as one of the great extinction events is the zinger George Carlin thinks it is.

And just to be clear: I think reasoned acceptance of some extinction may be necessary to make humanity a multi-planetary and eventually multi-solar system species. In the long long run every single species on earth is a dead end. The sun will die and all life with it. As the only intelligent life with the capability I consider it our moral duty to make life resilient to such things, taking as many species with us as we can. But what are doing now is basically lighting our inheritance on fire to fuel executive bonuses and nothing more. That's just stupid.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#165

Post by xenadu02 »

antithesizer wrote: post #14
abbadadda wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“No one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off.” - Tenet Preventing “bombs” from going off is not rewarded. And indeed the Line Must Go Up Crowd is reliant upon someone else fixing the problem while they get theirs. But when the majority think that way we’re f**ed.

The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow, so perhaps we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back just yet.

> The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow

Yeah but humans on the whole are terrible at handling long-term consequences even when they are reasonably certain those consequences a) exist and b) are terrible for them personally.

Ironic is it not? Vaccination campaigns have been so successful anti-vax idiots who have never had to watch their child die of a preventable disease think vaccines are a scam.

Ever build something? You will get an earful about code and how stupid the regulations are. Nevermind that half the buildings in a city may survive an earthquake because of those rules. People often just don't connect the dots and they sure don't want to pay extra to make the building stronger.

Why are so many roofs in Texas ruined by hail? We have the technology to make a roof hail-proof for all but the absolute worst storms. But we don't. Too expensive. I'm still surprised Florida actually improved construction standards after Andrew which - shocking - has helped in the recent storms.

Or why isn't it required to make homes in fire-prone areas defensible and fire-resistant in California? Local control, too expensive, haven't had a massive fire until this year except ... oops Oakland Hills fires in 1991 that gave us a preview of the LA fires! Did we prepare? LOL.

And hey - what do you know. The USA's whole "pandemic preparedness" program was torn down because we haven't had one since 1917 and what a waste of money. Just in time for COVID.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#166

Post by borski »

noisy_boy wrote: post #59
toomuchtodo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenpeace used to drop boulders into the ocean to prevent bottom trawling circa 2021-2022. Unsure if they still do. Fairly straightforward to solve for if you’re willing to drop chunks of rock (granite, non reactive) or concrete in the ocean at the right spots. Bans are nice, destructive force against adversaries works better though. Hard to take the selfish out of the human, so you have to engineer systems accordin…

I think it would be a great PR idea for a billionaire to buy a few old ships and use them to drop rocks over the most popular/vulnerable fishing grounds. What happened to rich people who were all not evil?

They still exist. You just don’t hear about them in the news, because good news doesn’t sell ads.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#167

Post by borski »

McDyver wrote: post #106
adastra22 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current top-10 billionaires on Forbes' list all got rich by creating value, though some like Larry Ellison certainly did both.

I don't agree. They didn't get rich by creating value. They might have created value, but they got rich by keeping that value to themselves. I would also argue that they don't create the value themselves, but their workers do. Just like that joke: a worker is admiring the boss's Ferrari, and the boss tells him "if you continue working hard, next year I'll have 2"

> They didn't get rich by creating value. They might have created value…

Odd to contradict yourself with only a period separating the contradictory statements.

> I would also argue that they don't create the value themselves, but their workers do.

Sure, that’s fair - but those workers also have jobs and salaries because of risk the founders took to de-risk the company before the employees joined.

The level of risk required is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#168

Post by xenadu02 »

marssaxman wrote: post #36
jcgrillo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we keep at it like we have been maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel for Earth, ecologically. In say 100k or 1M years, after we're long gone and things have started to repair themselves.

This is where I find hope: ten million years from now we'll all be gone, and the earth will be a beautiful, thriving place once again. The short term doesn't look so good, but at least I will only have to watch a few more decades of it.

Was it part of beautiful nature when an asteroid strike killed most life on earth?

What does it matter if a bunch of non-sentient animals keep on trucking here on earth? Some disaster will eventually kill most of them just like it has repeatedly over the eons.

Then the sun will die and all life on earth with it permanently. In fact the sun's red giant phase will erase even the traces that life ever existed here. Is there some value in that abstract notion of everything being melted into slag and disappearing?

It is entirely possible we are the last chance life on earth has of becoming inter-planetary. Of surviving in the long term.

As for the heat death of the universe who knows. That's far enough into the future some future generation can deal with that problem. We don't know enough to say if that's what will happen or if there is any way to avoid it (like escaping into another universe).

Not that I think a planet full of non-sentient life is worth very much. It is no different than a huge factory of machines left on automatic. A bunch of biological machines fussing around accomplishing nothing and having no purpose. The concept of beauty only exists while there is an intelligence around to enjoy or contemplate it.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#169

Post by [deleted] »

closewith wrote: post #118
abrookewood wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part of the film is horrifying. Like genuinely, sick-to-the-stomach horrifying. I can't believe that anyone would willingly cause that much destruction.

> I can't believe that anyone would willingly cause that much destruction. I interact with fishermen as part of a marine SAR role and there's a significant subset who treat the sea with contempt. Not usual to see them dump rubbish overboard in littoral areas, flicking cigarettes butts into the sea, etc.

[deleted]

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#170

Post by ChocolateGod »

Silhouette wrote: post #16

None of us see the end of the story but I do fear that the story could change when we inevitably lose a passionate advocate in Sir David whose credibility on this issue has been unchallengeable. I take some comfort from the younger generations who are now growing up with a much greater awareness of the natural environment and the damage we humans can do to it and a much lower tolerance for political sophistry and cap…

> I don't know who the next David Attenborough could be

My moneys on Danny Dyer.

But in all seriousness, I can't think of a single person who's voice is as recognisable and fitting as Sir Davids, will be the end of an era for sure.

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