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The Ocean is Broken (2013)

theherald.com.au

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Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#81

Post by pygy_ »

sliverstorm wrote: post #54
pygy_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's patent nonsense. The problem is not consumption/destruction per se, but the fact that we destroy more than what the planet can build out of solar energy. We're burning the reserves and the means of production.

What, precisely, is nonsense about my comment? Brushing something off as nonsense and saying vanishingly little else is not exactly a compelling argument. Also, did you read my parent? Parent was not talking about sustainability and burn rate vs. incoming solar energy or production rate. Parent was talking about mental anguish brought about by the costs his existence poses on the planet- at least, that's what I heard…

The anguish of the parent comes from the fact that the common industrialized lifestyle is not sustainable (he refers to ocean acidification aka net carbon dioxide surplus). If our lifestyle was sustainable, I don't think he'd feel any anguish, but you'll have to ask him to be sure.

re. nonsense, paragraph per paragraph:

1) biking is more energetically efficient than walking.

2) eating any kind of meat daily is not sustainable in the long run, and thus not intelligent (which does not prevent me from eating some, from time to time).

3) You ignore the notion of sustainability. Having some impact does not matter, as long as you stay beneath the sustainability threshold.

4) Your 100 / 110 ratio seems to come out of nowhere. Do you have any data to support it?

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#82

Post by tolmasky »

leobelle wrote: post #20
BoppreH wrote: post #11

There was an "What If"[0] on xkcd about the ocean and ships' weight. The question itself was innocuous, but inside a parenthesis was this sentence: (Marine fish biomass dropped by 80% over the last century, which—taking into consideration the growth rate of the world’s shipping fleet—leads to an odd conclusion: Sometime in the last few years, we reached a point where there are, by weight, more ships in the ocean than…

And yet, are you still eating meat? Fish? What are you doing for your part?

"What are you doing for your part" is equivalent to nothing, UNLESS you are perhaps paradoxically working in finance to become rich enough to have enough money and/or influence to someday have a real effect on these problems. Or maybe actively researching sustainable technologies, or part of a pro-environmental lobbyist group or something.

Don't kid yourself: if you want to stand on a high horse understand that your lack of eating meat makes absolutely no difference here. If you actually want to take the position that individual initiative is needed, then you have to be doing pretty crazy things to make a dent. Arguably its worse than doing nothing because you assuage your own guilt by convincing yourself that you are no longer part of the problem and disincentivizing yourself from being part of the actual solution.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#83

Post by darkarmani »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #40

The astounding decline of the ocean's fisheries is an incredibly important issue. But we all know that. What we all don't know is the solution. What we've got is a classic tragedy of the commons. It's made more difficult due to the international nature of oceanic fisheries - those little guys like to swim around, paying no heed to national boundaries. Plus there's all of that international ocean to police. Who's goin…

> We have to privatize the oceans fisheries. It is imperative. It has to happen now. It has to happen yesterday. Fish stocks are collapsing. Fish stocks have collapsed.

How does that help non-crop fish? They don't have direct economic value to the private fishing company.

What happens when the private fishery comes to the conclusion that it is a lost cause, so their best interest is to fish as fast as possible?

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#84

Post by sliverstorm »

pygy_ wrote: post #81
sliverstorm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, precisely, is nonsense about my comment? Brushing something off as nonsense and saying vanishingly little else is not exactly a compelling argument. Also, did you read my parent? Parent was not talking about sustainability and burn rate vs. incoming solar energy or production rate. Parent was talking about mental anguish brought about by the costs his existence poses on the planet- at least, that's what I heard…

The anguish of the parent comes from the fact that the common industrialized lifestyle is not sustainable (he refers to ocean acidification aka net carbon dioxide surplus). If our lifestyle was sustainable, I don't think he'd feel any anguish, but you'll have to ask him to be sure. re. nonsense, paragraph per paragraph: 1) biking is more energetically efficient than walking. 2) eating any kind of meat daily is not su…

Riding a bicycle is very energy efficient, but it still has externalities. Which was part of my point, everything does, even the most efficient choices.

I presumed my parent was not primarily concerned with sustainability due to bits like dead orangutans and I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal. Sympathy and orangutans are not really part of the sustainability picture, which is a separate and large issue I don't intend to dive into right now.

Eating meat can be sustainable. I'm pretty confident if we all ate crickets, there would be practically no sustainability concerns, and we can't all eat quinoa as our protein source anyway. Chile is not able to grow enough quinoa to feed the world (quinoa is a picky plant)

The 100 / 110 is purely invented as a thought experiment, but I consider it to be representative. Your daily BMR is ~2000 Calories. Engaging in activity, sports, games, or mental exercises do increase your caloric consumption for the day, but your body adjusts quickly and your additional caloric consumption for the activity falls quickly into the hundreds of calories for all but the most strenuous activities. Plus, the more strenuous (calorie-expensive) the activity, the more likely you are to take rest days, which lowers your average daily caloric consumption.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#85

Post by frankzinger »

derefr wrote: post #73
frankzinger wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some good points, but let's look at the context: millions of fish and other sea animals die as bycatch every day. This is a huge amount of death and suffering that can be avoided and serves no purpose whatsoever. Plus, we're humans, we have the power to manipulate and control (to a certain extent) nature, so saying "we're doing no worse than nature" is not good enough, IMHO. It's within our power to do less damage, a…

Doing "better" or "worse" than nature in human activities is a social more that sounds nice to humans, not a sound consequentialist policy for making animal lives better. Looking at the relative scale, you have to realize that cutting back on things humans do would have a lot less of an impact on a "global species-neutral utilitarian metaethics" than changing the things animals themselves do to one-another. Here's an…

I think my point has gotten lost somewhere. My point is that we can and therefore should do less damage, not for the sake of the human race's karma or to "fix the planet", but for the sake of individual animals. Not because it's right in the philosophical sense, but because thinking about animals not suffering makes me happy.

Sorry if I am misunderstanding you, but all your replies seem to be about the big picture, while that is exactly what I was saying I "don't get about most people".

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#87

Post by derefr »

frankzinger wrote: post #85
derefr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing "better" or "worse" than nature in human activities is a social more that sounds nice to humans, not a sound consequentialist policy for making animal lives better. Looking at the relative scale, you have to realize that cutting back on things humans do would have a lot less of an impact on a "global species-neutral utilitarian metaethics" than changing the things animals themselves do to one-another. Here's an…

I think my point has gotten lost somewhere. My point is that we can and therefore should do less damage, not for the sake of the human race's karma or to "fix the planet", but for the sake of individual animals. Not because it's right in the philosophical sense, but because thinking about animals not suffering makes me happy. Sorry if I am misunderstanding you, but all your replies seem to be about the big picture, w…

> Not because it's right in the philosophical sense, but because thinking about animals not suffering makes me happy.

Right, and that's exactly what I'm responding to: "following your happiness" in helping animals is, on the whole, actually pretty shitty for the average, randomly-selected animal (where any randomly-selected animal will tend to live in the wild, not near any humans) compared to other things you could do, like introducing invasive plants with known anti-parasitic properties to foraging ranges.

If you actually care about animals suffering less, rather than the fuzzy feeling you get by seeing an animal near you suffering less, then you should do things that maximize global animal welfare, not urban animal welfare.

Read http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa....

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#88

Post by pohl »

sliverstorm wrote: post #84
pygy_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anguish of the parent comes from the fact that the common industrialized lifestyle is not sustainable (he refers to ocean acidification aka net carbon dioxide surplus). If our lifestyle was sustainable, I don't think he'd feel any anguish, but you'll have to ask him to be sure. re. nonsense, paragraph per paragraph: 1) biking is more energetically efficient than walking. 2) eating any kind of meat daily is not su…

Riding a bicycle is very energy efficient, but it still has externalities. Which was part of my point, everything does, even the most efficient choices. I presumed my parent was not primarily concerned with sustainability due to bits like dead orangutans and I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal . Sympathy and orangutans are not really part of the sustainability picture, which is a separate and large issu…

I'm having a hard time trying to imagine how financially-incentivized systematic removal of the habitats of species after species after species can be considered anything but unsustainable.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#89

Post by sliverstorm »

pohl wrote: post #88
sliverstorm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding a bicycle is very energy efficient, but it still has externalities. Which was part of my point, everything does, even the most efficient choices. I presumed my parent was not primarily concerned with sustainability due to bits like dead orangutans and I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal . Sympathy and orangutans are not really part of the sustainability picture, which is a separate and large issu…

I'm having a hard time trying to imagine how financially-incentivized systematic removal of the habitats of species after species after species can be considered anything but unsustainable.

People who are concerned about sustainability decry the collapse of fisheries & fish stocks, or the environmental impact of industrialized chicken farming. People who are concerned about ethics decry the destruction of pandas, orangutans, tigers, and gorillas.

None of these are good, but we don't eat pandas, so which examples of habitat destruction are used is informative.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#90

Post by dredmorbius »

sliverstorm wrote: post #31
CalRobert wrote: post #4

I sometimes wonder if shopping for groceries is as frustrating for most people. I like Nutella, but when I see Palm Oil as the second ingredient I picture dead orangutans. I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal and think of the enormous amounts of diverted water and fertilizer runoff that goes in to producing feed. I enjoy fish, but thinking of this makes me sick to my stomach. I enjoy many beverages that…

I can't think of anything at the grocery store that doesn't have some sort of negative implication. Heck, just driving to the grocery store burns fuel and supports the automotive industry. Biking to the grocery store burns food (of which all food has negative implications) and supports the bicycle industry. You can work yourself into knots over it; there is no way in which you can eat food and not have some negative…

there is no way in which you can eat food and not have some negative impact.

Actually, no, there are, collectively.

Humans have existed, give or take, for a couple million years. In modern form for about 80,000, and with present levels of cognition, for around 10,000.

For most of that time, humans most certainly did affect local ecosystems (and sometimes in significant fashion), but had relatively little impact on the global environment as a whole.

That ended with the Industrial Revolution, and it's only been picking up pace since, with global impacts becoming more evident since the 20th century. Global warming was first postulated in 1932 (by the US Naval Research Lab: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1woc0v/carbon_d...)

The simple truth is that we've got too many people, consuming too many resources, to be sustainable. As with software (fast, cheap, good, pick two), you've got three options from which you can choose two alternatives: big (populations), rich (in resource consumption), or long (in sustainability). Pick two.

Humans can support a large population with high per-capita resource consumption ... for a brief time. Or a high population for a long time ... at very low per-capita resource consumption (and there's no guarantee that present rates are in fact sustainable at low p-c rates). Or a high per-capita resource consumption (high personal wealth) for a long time ... with a low population.

Technology skews this a bit, but in the long term, I suspect, acts largely as an accelerator of resource depletion.

So, yes, your "lots of people doing little" is one option, but what's desperately required is to reduce total population levels. By a lot. The historical record shows that ~500 million - 2 billion might be a sustainable range. I tend to suspect the lower bound of that range.

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