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Humpback whales are forming super-groups

bbc.com

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Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#101

Post by elmomle »

ndisn wrote: post #100
voakbasda wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they think it might make people give a shit enough to do something to change that outcome? Fear is a strong motivator, but it is not a good one in this case. To really be effective, there must be the threat of direct, immediate, and severe consequences. Instead it causes people to treat their messages as hyperbolic and undermines their entire movement.

There also has been, in the past, threat of indirect consequences that would happen in the future and which never came true.

[dead]

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#102

Post by b112 »

CalRobert wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If asked the question, most people would choose to, I believe.

They wouldn’t pay a nickel more for gas to save their own kid.

You are a chipmunk. Every second is met with immense risk of predation, whether cat or hawk. Yet you must still seek food, mate, and water. You must "live in the moment", ignore future hypothetical dangers, and simply live.

You must be in your territory, defending it daily from others. You must live knowing the cat sleeps 50 feet away.

Future dangers must be misty, put out of mind, lest you become paralyized with fear and inaction. To be concerned for unimmediate danger, is impossible.

We are descended from such.

Humans have a very limited capacity to be concerned too far in the future. And think, if we were, how the probabilities expand that danger the further out you go.

Then also understand that the average IQ is 100, and consider how many are below that.

So, as a chipmunk do you work diligently collecting nuts for your winter, and your family? Or do you give up some nuts for a future that is misty, distant, opaque?

Don't be too hard on people, they're only human. They're only, really, chipmunks with bigger brains. And many are trying.

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#103

Post by pastage »

SecretDreams wrote: post #96
SecretDreams wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I'm wondering is why is there such a push for this stuff? Why does someone want everyone to think life as we know it is ending? Simple thought exercise (it's a 2x2): What are the consequences of climate change being consequential vs inconsequential? What are the consequences of us doing too little or too much to mitigate climate change? Which quadrants are most consequential for the future of our planet?

tl;dr is there's very poor ROI to do nothing to improve our polluting habits and banking on the world sorting itself out. Furthermore, most actions we can take to improve climate outcomes can also improve societal and technological outcomes. The only downside to taking more actions to have clean energy and less pollution are based on made up economic rules that normal people are supposed to follow, but that the super…

While I have no problem blaming the rich. You are post here you are most probably part of those people who are skirting it at their leisure. Even I with a life long devotion to climate and environmental issues have a hard time to be a positive effect. The only way to not skirt your responsibilities right now is to be a Greta Thunberg.

> liquified dinosaur bones

I know this is a nice factoid that does not need to be true. When I was 13 I did believed it, so now days I try to not spread this factoid. We can talk about the fascinating history of millions of years of efficient carbon storage on our planet.

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#104

Post by AlecSchueler »

Oarch wrote: post #73
AlecSchueler wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the BBC, it's the UK as a whole. Miles per hour or deeply entrenched for speeds but for measurements we use meters. The same for weight, we weigh people in stone but we weigh everything else with grams.

We even weigh different kinds of drugs differently. So I'm told.

Always found it funny that cannabis in small amounts was sold in grams but later quantities in ounces.

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#105

Post by SummSolutions »

zyxin wrote: post #15
swframe2 wrote: post #2

I hope we create whalegemma (similar to dolphingemma) so we can explain to them how to co-exist better with humans (e.g. avoid this area during their whale hunting season, travel to this area if you get sick or tangled in rope).

There is a group that is attempting to communicate with whales by training a transformer based model on whale sounds. https://www.projectceti.org/

Animals have been highly underestimated, and it’s encouraging to see this work being done. This article discusses their use of vowels and diphthongs. https://ls.berkeley.edu/news/uc-berkeley-and-project-ceti-st...

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#106

Post by bmitc »

timschmidt wrote: post #87
bmitc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just one view of the stack and isn't a systems view. Other things support and interact with those other things.

Algae are the bottom of the ocean food chain. Everything interacts with it. But algae's happy to grow in a bowl of water left in the sun. Lots of things eat krill and small fish. They're near the bottom of the foodchain too. In addition to algae, krill are opportunistic omnivores who often consume detritus. But their primary diet is algae. Small fish tend to be pretty similar. It's not that other things don't interac…

But it's not a bottom up interaction. If whales are killed off from climate change, then those other things can get out of control. Too much algae, and then you have hypoxic environments.

A perfect example of this is when sea otters were nearly hunted to extinction which caused sea urchins to flourish which caused the death of coral and coastal environments which started to affect the larger things that depended on those environments.

My point is that any change to the careful balance can have non-linear effects.

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#107

Post by griffzhowl »

jackmott42 wrote: post #94
pretzel5297 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much agree. It's a pretty common mistake to bundle real information with obviously wrong details and lose credibility. Especially in the eyes of people looking for a reason to discredit the argument.

The disingenuous people who discredit climate change will do so no matter how serious people act. There is no point in changing behavior on their account.

The point is to convince people who are undecided. Using information that's known to be false or weakly supported is then short-sighted and counterproductive, because enough false predictions will turn up that those undecided will tune out entirely

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#108

Post by latchkey »

pastage wrote: post #103
SecretDreams wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr is there's very poor ROI to do nothing to improve our polluting habits and banking on the world sorting itself out. Furthermore, most actions we can take to improve climate outcomes can also improve societal and technological outcomes. The only downside to taking more actions to have clean energy and less pollution are based on made up economic rules that normal people are supposed to follow, but that the super…

While I have no problem blaming the rich. You are post here you are most probably part of those people who are skirting it at their leisure. Even I with a life long devotion to climate and environmental issues have a hard time to be a positive effect. The only way to not skirt your responsibilities right now is to be a Greta Thunberg. > liquified dinosaur bones I know this is a nice factoid that does not need to be t…

> I know this is a nice factoid that does not need to be true. When I was 13 I did believed it, so now days I try to not spread this factoid.

I took it as sarcasm.

Re: Humpback whales are forming super-groups

#109

Post by AlecSchueler »

gilrain wrote: post #70
AlecSchueler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a pity we couldn't figure out how to better coexist with whales.

…while not changing anything about our behavior, you mean. Because we were never ignorant of how to do better; we just couldn’t accept even any inconvenience, any obstacle to our “growth”.

I'm well aware! Not only are we unable to change our behaviour we in fact have the hubris to imagine that if we could only use our technology to communicate with the whales that it would be enough to say

> "Don't go to these places—even though you want to, even though your family has been breeding there for generations—because that's our special whale hunting area"

And that their behaviour would change for us, that their response would simply be:

> "No worries, thanks for the heads up! Sorry for getting in the way of your harpoons"

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