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The Ocean is Broken (2013)

theherald.com.au

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Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#21

Post by leobelle »

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…

http://www.nutellausa.com/faqs.htm

Nutella is "a member of the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), Ferrero only uses palm oil which is extracted from controlled plantations in Malaysia."

So you can enjoy your Nutella guilt free.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#22

Post by geoka9 »

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?

And probably driving a personal car, too.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/03/ocean-aci...

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#23

Post by DougWebb »

Luc wrote: post #17
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…

It won't make you feel better, but sadly the extinction of species is as much a part of nature as the death of an individual organism, with nearly all species that have ever existed having gone extinct. Given that, I think the small kindnesses you are showing towards your fellow biosphere inhabitants are about all you can do. IMHO.

Yes species have gone extinct, but they're also been replaced. We're not seeing the replacements these days, only the extinctions. Eventually the biosphere can redevelop from a very small core of survivors, but we'll be long-gone by then.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#24

Post by jaegerpicker »

Reading stories like this are incredibly depressing. I love the ocean and aquatic ecosystems, always have. I grew up fishing and boating and still spend as much time as I can on those hobbies. I moved from Ohio to Maine in large part to be by the Ocean. I wish there was more that I could do to help affect real change. I volunteer, I try to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and I support a lot of different conservation groups but what I wish was that there was an open source like community to help with the science and education. I mean I would gladly help to contribute to some thing like that. For me that's worth more than chasing all the startup success in the world.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#25

Post by JoeAltmaier »

DougWebb wrote: post #23
Luc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't make you feel better, but sadly the extinction of species is as much a part of nature as the death of an individual organism, with nearly all species that have ever existed having gone extinct. Given that, I think the small kindnesses you are showing towards your fellow biosphere inhabitants are about all you can do. IMHO.

Yes species have gone extinct, but they're also been replaced. We're not seeing the replacements these days, only the extinctions. Eventually the biosphere can redevelop from a very small core of survivors, but we'll be long-gone by then.

In fact the day will inevitably come when we've 'reformatted' the entire ecosphere. Why settle for whatever random collection of life-forms were here when we came to sentience as a race? That's all we really have; a snapshot of life on our planet, different from what came before and certainly different from what will come once we've had our way with it, for better or for worse.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#26

Post by frankzinger »

fromdoon wrote: post #18
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…

As someone already said, we should not worry about our planet, for it is going to be here, long long after we are finished. We should be worried about ourselves. We rely on our planet for our existence and the current state of our planet hangs on a fine balance of its constituent elements. If we were to change the balance, the planet would not die, it would only enter into a new different state. But we would surely d…

"As someone already said, we should not worry about our planet, for it is going to be here, long long after we are finished. We should be worried about ourselves."

See, this is something I don't get about most people. Does nobody else feel sympathy for individual animals? We're inflicting immeasurable amounts of suffering and death and nothing will ever make that less of a tragedy.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#27

Post by Luc »

DougWebb wrote: post #23
Luc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't make you feel better, but sadly the extinction of species is as much a part of nature as the death of an individual organism, with nearly all species that have ever existed having gone extinct. Given that, I think the small kindnesses you are showing towards your fellow biosphere inhabitants are about all you can do. IMHO.

Yes species have gone extinct, but they're also been replaced. We're not seeing the replacements these days, only the extinctions. Eventually the biosphere can redevelop from a very small core of survivors, but we'll be long-gone by then.

I'm describing the situation, not making a judgement. We, as a species, appear rather better at making other species extinct than in preserving them. Our pitiful attempts at preservation will not suffice to preserve current species, I reckon.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#28

Post by pstuart »

leobelle wrote: post #21
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…

http://www.nutellausa.com/faqs.htm Nutella is "a member of the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), Ferrero only uses palm oil which is extracted from controlled plantations in Malaysia." So you can enjoy your Nutella guilt free.

If one also ignores the fact that it's mainly sugar frosting.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#29

Post by derefr »

frankzinger wrote: post #26
fromdoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone already said, we should not worry about our planet, for it is going to be here, long long after we are finished. We should be worried about ourselves. We rely on our planet for our existence and the current state of our planet hangs on a fine balance of its constituent elements. If we were to change the balance, the planet would not die, it would only enter into a new different state. But we would surely d…

"As someone already said, we should not worry about our planet, for it is going to be here, long long after we are finished. We should be worried about ourselves." See, this is something I don't get about most people. Does nobody else feel sympathy for individual animals ? We're inflicting immeasurable amounts of suffering and death and nothing will ever make that less of a tragedy.

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 predators, or hijacked by parasites to live horrible zombie lives.

Perhaps we like to imagine that animal populations are, on average, as healthy as we are when left to their own devices... but we have society, and medicine. Life as a wild animal sucks.

If you want to imagine a utopia, first imagine a world where both the lion and the gazelle somehow survive, without one dying to feed the other. This will probably take you a long time to picture, unless you've really given thought to problems like Friendly AI before.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#30

Post by chucknelson »

malandrew wrote: post #3

I really wish this story had had more pictures. It's a shame that all this is happening and no one seems to be really documenting it with photos and video and these images aren't being shown with these stories.

Same here - I was expecting to see at least a picture of the tsunami debris they mention.
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