The Ocean is Broken (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#161

Post by moultano » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:29 AM UTC

spikels wrote: post #139

moultano wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the fallacy that led to the collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery. Regulators assumed that cod catches would start to drop long before the number of cod dropped to unsustainable numbers. This didn't happen. The number of cod caught remained stable until it collapsed. What they didn't account for in their models is that cod are schooling fish, so the local density of them remains constant even as the…

Not sure which fallacy you refer to. I'm just trying to understand what is actually known about this issue and what is just anecdote like the OP. I know about the collapse of the cod catch in 1992[1] as well as declining catch of some species of tuna in some areas[2]. On the other hand some fisheries have come back after they supposedly collapsed, such as the BC sockeye salmon[3]. And since the overall catch is rough…

The fallacy is that global fish production is related to the quantity of fish in the ocean. That number won't drop until after its too late.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#162

Post by malbs » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:49 AM UTC

secstate wrote: post #108

sliverstorm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fish farms are some of the worst pollutants in the ocean. Remote stretches of Patagonia are becoming cess pools of salmon shit as a result of salmon farming. Don't get me wrong, there are sustainable ways to farm fish and other seafood, but most are a complete ecological disaster. Even something as seemingly harmless as mussel farming has detrimental impacts on the local ocean ecology, as surprise, surprise mussels p…

As well as all the antibiotics that are pumped into the feed to keep the fish "healthy"

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#163

Post by bananacurve » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:56 AM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #69

I just spent three weeks at sea in the Andaman, and... it's grim out there. The sea is virtually lifeless. Small pockets of sea-life survive on reefs in national parks, but as you look up from the water, you see trawlers scattered across the horizon - soundly within the nautical boundaries of the national parks. They operate day and night, as the article says, and the size and brightness of the arrays of floodlights…

If you believe your own claptrap you shouldn't you be killing as many humans as possible?

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#164

Post by MereInterest » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:05 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #65

pertinhower wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this supposed to make me feel better? I'm real happy for the earth surviving and all, but I want to survive too, and I want people to survive. A philosophy of, "The earth will survive though we'll be gone—and maybe that will be justice," is ridiculous, because if we're gone, who will be left to celebrate the justice? Justice lies in the conscious mind, and if the conscious mind is gone, justice goes too.

It isn't supposed to make you feel better at all; just to make you aware of the fact that the Earth will probably survive even if you, me and all of our descendents don't.

Not in the slightest. It is the conscious mind that gives meaning to the world around it. There is no splendor in nature that is not in the eyes of those watching it. We have seen no evidence of any intelligence beyond our own. If we die, all meaning goes out of the world.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#165

Post by rosser » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:13 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #153

rosser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lion doesn't know any better than to eat a gazelle. You do.

What possible difference does that make to the gazelle?

Every difference, if you choose not to eat it.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#166

Post by chrissyb » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:20 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #130

sliverstorm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone think I'm talking about sustainability, even when I say "I'm not talking about sustainability"?

1. You're failing to articulate what you are talking about. 2. Sustainability is what matters.

Sustainability is an over hyped and misunderstood term.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4005

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#167

Post by mitochondrion » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:21 AM UTC

rosser wrote: post #72

derefr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a particular kind of scope insensitivity on your part, though: although we're inflicting suffering and death... so is the rest of nature, greater in most cases by enough signifiant figures that our effect gets lost in the noise. For every individual animal suffering at the hands of a human, millions die of starvation and disease in exactly their "adaptive habitat"--when they're not slowly chewed to death by pr…

A lion doesn't know any better than to eat a gazelle. You do.

What is "knowing better"? How can there be any intrinsic moral compunction to eat or to not eat the gazelle?

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#168

Post by pdonis » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:34 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #90

sliverstorm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

what's desperately required is to reduce total population levels. By a lot.

Got any ideas on how to do that?

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#169

Post by beedogs » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:41 AM UTC

bananacurve wrote: post #163

madaxe_again wrote: post #69

I just spent three weeks at sea in the Andaman, and... it's grim out there. The sea is virtually lifeless. Small pockets of sea-life survive on reefs in national parks, but as you look up from the water, you see trawlers scattered across the horizon - soundly within the nautical boundaries of the national parks. They operate day and night, as the article says, and the size and brightness of the arrays of floodlights…

If you believe your own claptrap you shouldn't you be killing as many humans as possible?

What kind of flippant, useless comment is that? You dismiss his entire experience as "claptrap" and then sarcastically suggest he go on a killing spree? Get the hell out of here.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#170

Post by pdonis » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:45 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #105

o_s_m wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the materials used in the solar panels, in addition to the process used to make them.

Noting that parent was referring to net primary productivity (on which, Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine", is very strongly recommended: http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange... ), the sustainability of various renewable energy technologies is an open question. But here's the dilemma as I see it: • Modern technological civilization is predicated on abundant cheap (high EROEI) energy sour…

What's your alternative?

Nuclear. I notice you don't mention this at all, unless you mean to include it in "electrical generation", in which case your statement that technological civilization is not sustainable strikes me as far too pessimistic. Even if you only consider nuclear to be a temporary energy source while we develop high-grade solar energy, it still can get us a lot further than our remaining fossil fuels.

Also, any evaluation of "sustainability" is fundamentally limited by our inability to predict how our society will change in the future. For example, a sustainability analysis done in the late 19th century, when horses were a primary mode of transportation, would have shown that that mode of transportation was not sustainable--we would have ended up, as the saying goes, knee deep in horses--t. Then the automobile came along.

In other words, there's a common confusion (as shown by many posts in this thread) between a specific way of doing things being unsustainable, and our society in general being unsustainable. It's far harder to show the latter than the former, because we can always change our way of doing things.