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As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

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Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#131

Post by HelloMcFly »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #126
HelloMcFly wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is ok to not engage. I understand what you're saying. I appreciate the thought behind it. But in the end, I do not agree. I cannot be certain where my actions will and won't ultimately help accrue to impact; the pebble knows not the impact that its ripples will have. If you care about something, I think you should be involved.

> If you care about something, I think you should be involved. You're free to overthrow your government and instate humanitarian policies, but a pebble is not inclined to roll uphill.

Certainty that your involvement is inconsequential requires too much intellectual hubris, it precludes the possibility that you may be wrong in your forecasts so you can let yourself off the hook for any effort. I get it, I do, but I think that's mind poison. Surprises to happen, the world is chaotic, yesterday's longshot becomes tomorrow's surprise.

And, if nothing else, many of the efforts you can contribute to can have a clear and demonstrable impact at a more local level, or for a more limited time, even if it doesn't solve or mitigate the larger issue in the long run. Is it a waste of time for me to get involved in river clean-ups, or to work with a crew to re-wild an abandoned golf course, or remove asur honeysuckle from nearby native forests? Maybe you'd say "yes" because we'll have to keep doing it again, but that's the work with most things that matter.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#132

Post by Quarrelsome »

throwanem wrote: post #129
Quarrelsome wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All we can do is aim to be better, to aim to be perfect is putting obstacles in your own path for your own smug sense of satisfaction, while the world still burns the same. Unless you can change the many, including those most intransigent, you have to respect that just changing yourself, is something you only do for yourself. I don't see how its "moral cowardice" for me to own a car so I can ferry around my 84 year o…

I really don't have to respect that. If we're to talk about what you're ashamed of, why bring up the least blameworthy examples you can find? Do you want to be shriven, or enabled?

I mean I don't use that car for any other purpose. My carbon footprint is probably around or below average for someone in Europe. I eat meat maybe with half of my meals and rarely eat beef or pork. The last time I got on a plane was in 2018 for work. Last holiday via a flight was I think in 2012 and was about 3 hours each way.

I think the average American or even maybe Chinese citizen has a much higher footprint than me these days. I could do better, but to do so would impact my life negatively, win me nothing but smug self-indulgence and change nothing in terms of the long term outcomes of this planet.

So yea, what guilt, what "moral cowardice"? I wouldn't sneer at someone with a higher footprint than me (outside of maybe SUV owners because srsly wtf is that shit) because its collectively where we're culpable, not individually.

Its 2026 and like 30% or more of the citizens of the global super power don't believe in global warming. We're fucked and nothing I do or you do is going to stop that outcome. We probably should start seriously thinking about geo-engineering instead of worrying about moral cowardice.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#133

Post by HelloMcFly »

beepbopboopp wrote: post #65
HelloMcFly wrote: post #14

I want to ignore these articles as it is so painful to watch the beautiful clockwork of the natural world unravel. I hate facing the suffering, diminishment, and extinction of so much in the name of profiteering and ever-increasing growth. But this is the world now, there will only be more stories like this, and so I'm not turning away from it any further. The world becomes less beautiful, less rich, less full every…

Serious questions, how is this destruction and not just "change?" It seems throughout time the world has experienced acute shifts, dying offs and other events. In those transition periods many animals that you know and love today finally got a shot at main character roles. Heck the reduction of o2 in the air that killed/shrunk a lot of dinosaurs is basically the opening slave for you to be able to write this Hacker N…

Well, it is change, but that doesn't mean it's not destruction. While the world has experienced mass die-offs before, the hallmark of the planet's current situation is distinguished by its unprecedented speed and the fact that it is being driven by a single species' behavior rather than geological cycles or cosmic externalities.

To repeat myself in another comment: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works? In the same way, how long will it take the earth to return to such complexity and diversity of life? Many, many millenia.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#134

Post by alluro2 »

tracker1 wrote: post #93
alluro2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that is? Hint: taxing people buying food, which is getting worse and worse, while the top 0.01% gets more and more rich and keeps making it worse, is maybe not the solution people should embrace that you think it is...

An easier path would be to stop subsidizing the core of what is making junk foods to begin with. For that matter, at least in the US, having individual states require limitations of importing pre-processed goods could help too. I've thought that it might be an idea for more states to require at least half of all beef and chicken to be imported into the state in at least half-carcass form. This would incentivize local…

Thanks for a thoughtful and longer-form reply. All of these ideas absolutely make sense - and their challenges and compromises could be worked on, of course.

But, even starting to think about each of them, I can't escape the frame of the current socio-economic structure, where short-term profits currently trump all, and influence of the aforementioned "0.01%" (or whatever we call it) is direct, heavy and effective, and all of that brought us here to a large extent in the first place.

In such a reality of ours, these kinds of initiatives don't go far - and even if surfaced in the media, there is a significant portion of population who would be very strongly against them, due to how opinions have been shaped and polarised over past decades.

It does seem almost impossible from current perspective.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#135

Post by thrance »

acuozzo wrote: post #49
bilsbie wrote: post #36

My main skepticism (Shark lover here btw!) Is that sharks are an ancient species and they’ve survived way warmer oceans even relatively recently. For example the Medieval Warm Period Sargasso Sea surface temperatures were 1°C warmer than 400 years ago, and Pacific Ocean water temperatures were 0.65°C warmer than the decades before.

Were there any periods in which the rate of change in warming was the same or greater?

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#136

Post by micromacrofoot »

scottyah wrote: post #58
wongarsu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We grow a lot of human-edible food for the sole purpose to feed it to livestock, who then spend most of those calories on existing and put a small portion into body mass that we eventually eat. Sure, that stuff isn't of the same quality as food grown for human consumption, but putting livestock on a diet and diverting some of their food to human consumption would more than cover any shortfall from the missing meat

Yes, only the rich should be allowed to eat the basic food group of natural meat.

americans eat more meat than most other countries today, and most humans throughout history

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#138

Post by rexpop »

carlgreene wrote: post #18
mempko wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the emissions are done by the 100 biggest corporations. That's where I'd start fixing things.

Don't corporations just serve their patrons?

No; patrons express demand for the product, but corporations obscure the negative externalities.

If patrons were shown the real price, we'd switch.

But we're being lied to.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#139

Post by throwanem »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #132
throwanem wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't have to respect that. If we're to talk about what you're ashamed of, why bring up the least blameworthy examples you can find? Do you want to be shriven, or enabled?

I mean I don't use that car for any other purpose. My carbon footprint is probably around or below average for someone in Europe. I eat meat maybe with half of my meals and rarely eat beef or pork. The last time I got on a plane was in 2018 for work. Last holiday via a flight was I think in 2012 and was about 3 hours each way. I think the average American or even maybe Chinese citizen has a much higher footprint than…

Moral odium inheres, if nowhere else, in that you insist upon the seductive counsel of despair. The more convincing you make that, the less our fellows will feel themselves able in any meaningful way to act at all. What should I call such encouragement to cowardice, if not culpable?

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#140

Post by martinwilly34 »

throwanem wrote: post #139
Quarrelsome wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I don't use that car for any other purpose. My carbon footprint is probably around or below average for someone in Europe. I eat meat maybe with half of my meals and rarely eat beef or pork. The last time I got on a plane was in 2018 for work. Last holiday via a flight was I think in 2012 and was about 3 hours each way. I think the average American or even maybe Chinese citizen has a much higher footprint than…

Moral odium inheres, if nowhere else, in that you insist upon the seductive counsel of despair. The more convincing you make that, the less our fellows will feel themselves able in any meaningful way to act at all. What should I call such encouragement to cowardice, if not culpable?

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