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Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

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Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#281

Post by reportingsjr »

soared wrote: post #138
froindt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me about stories of people trying to record nature untouched by man-made sounds. It has become increasingly difficult to find locations which are purely nature. I wonder how much easier it has become since the number of people generating "work noise" has fallen so much? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/24/machine-...

Maybe in Europe, but in the US there is a ridiculous amount of untouched space a <20 miles from almost every major city with the exception of California and the north east.

If you ever go camping far out in the wilderness you will realise how hard it is to get away from human noise at night. The sound of planes flying overhead is almost constant over the entire continental US, even in desolate and wild areas.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#282

Post by [deleted] »

orbital-decay wrote: post #217
crazygringo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading. Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife. When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By…

> the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife Native Americans weren't a monolithic group, and the balance with wildlife is just a part of the noble savage myth, for most of the groups. Maya, Toltec, and Aztec societies deforested Central America quite significantly before collapsing (and before Columbus).

[deleted]

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#283

Post by pinkfoot »

fit2rule wrote: post #279
pinkfoot wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … the Australian FNP. They were far, far more advanced than European propagandists could allow anyone to imagine. Other thank some claims about land management and herbal medicine, what were that not only more advanced in but FAR more advanced? Ship building, metallurgy, literature, maths, chemistry, conflict management, law? I am genuinely curious.

Oldest continually running mining operation of mankind. Longest running school. A Hippocratic oath before Europeans genocided them. Forms of agriculture which literally guaranteed a well-fed populace. An understanding of antiseptic materials, and even micro-biology, in an age of European miasma theory and blood-letting. There is much to learn about oneself once you drop the prejudice. I'm not suggesting we haven't "a…

> There is much to learn about oneself once you drop the prejudice.

Oh get over yourself - I asked "out of genuine curiosity."

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#284

Post by Noos »

basilgohar wrote: post #199
kortilla wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, a grotesque carbon tax of 300% on a barrel of oil would only put prices back to where they were before the Russia/Saudi dump. You’ll find that people will adapt quite quickly as the price ramps up (we can smear over a year if we need to). Carpooling, switching to electric, or just getting a closer job will all suddenly seem very feasible when the numbers are concrete.

I'm surprised no one brought up the idea more people will just telecommute and work remotely, as so many are now discovering they can.

I'm sure plumbers, nursing home workers, retail employees, carpenters and skilled trades, factory workers, and more will telecommute.

Do people not get that not everyone is a knowledge worker whose work is always done on a computer?

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#285

Post by soared »

reportingsjr wrote: post #281
soared wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in Europe, but in the US there is a ridiculous amount of untouched space a <20 miles from almost every major city with the exception of California and the north east.

If you ever go camping far out in the wilderness you will realise how hard it is to get away from human noise at night. The sound of planes flying overhead is almost constant over the entire continental US, even in desolate and wild areas.

Maybe the Colorado Rocky Mountains are different, but they don’t have plane noise like that outside of the corridor the interstate follows, which the planes also mostly follow.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#286

Post by soared »

jedberg wrote: post #222
soared wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in Europe, but in the US there is a ridiculous amount of untouched space a <20 miles from almost every major city with the exception of California and the north east.

It turns out there is no where you can go in the United States that is more than 20 miles from a paved road.

Not sure if that’s true but even if it is, 20 miles is a massive distance.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#287

Post by 9q9 »

crazygringo wrote: post #190
monktastic1 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a quote from Charles Eisenstein. He cites The Once and Future World and then channels Steve Nicholls in Paradise Found : "Atlantic salmon runs so abundant no one is able to sleep for their noise. Islands “as full of birds as a meadow is full of grass.” Whales so numerous they were a hazard to shipping, their spouts filling the entire sea with foam. Oysters more than a foot wide. An island covered by so…

I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading. Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife. When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By…

   Native Americans who lived in an 
   ecological balance with wildlife.
One of the competing explanations for the disappearance of the woolly mammoth in North America about 10k years ago is that they were hunted to extinction. Other explanations make hunting a co-factor.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#288

Post by JshWright »

knolax wrote: post #243
orbital-decay wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife Native Americans weren't a monolithic group, and the balance with wildlife is just a part of the noble savage myth, for most of the groups. Maya, Toltec, and Aztec societies deforested Central America quite significantly before collapsing (and before Columbus).

> Aztec > before collapsing (and before Columbus) In the alternate universe you come from, who was fighting Cortez?

They weren't referring to Columbus as the person who conquered South/Central America (there were quite a few conquistadors involved there... not just Cortez).

They were referring to the arrival of Columbus as the watershed moment that signal the arrival of Europeans en masse to the Americas.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#289

Post by netcan »

toasterlovin wrote: post #274
netcan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those dates are in flux recently. As is the pattern in discoveries of our very ancient history... the story gets more complicated as we go. The fallacy that, IMO, we are falling into is (ironically) caused by scientific reductionism... the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. This doesn't work as well for the evidence types paleoanthropology has to work with.

With the advent of ancient DNA, we now have a second, relatively precise type of evidence also pointing at, IIRC, 15-20k years ago as when the initial peopling of the Americas took place.

Initial peopling, or oldest known genetic ancestors of current individuals.

Take Israel or Morocco as a comparative example. There were sapiens there before Neanderthals, but they are not thought to be ancestral to any modern people. The majority are not. This makes intuitive sense when thinking of species or subspecies (eg Neanderthals), but it works the same with populations.

Also, it's easy to think of ourselves in permanent "infinite growth" mide, where we colonise and dominate. But, recent years aside, humans bloomed and receded just like other species. Range expanding and contracting.

Just because a population is in the same place does not mean that it's ancestral. The first, second or eighteenth population may have no current ancestors... or none in that area.

As Dawkins puts it "descendants are common, ancestors are rare."

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#290

Post by JshWright »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #277
knolax wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aztec > before collapsing (and before Columbus) In the alternate universe you come from, who was fighting Cortez?

Unsure why this is downvoted. Toltec empire ended around 1200 AD. Mayans... hard to define, like the Rome technically even still around. The Aztec Empire was right there when the conquistadors showed up.

They weren't saying the Aztecs weren't there. They were saying the Aztecs had massively deforested areas prior to the arrival of Europeans.
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