A third of North America’s birds have vanished • Hacker News Board

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#471

Post by flagrant_taco » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #449

flagrant_taco wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planet will bounce back one way or another, short of a global nuclear war I don't see how we can do more damage than the asteroid that took out the dinausaurs. Humans just may not be here to enjoy it if we can't get out of the way and stop consuming natural resources for the sake Of GDP growth.

Nobody said otherwise. I don't understand why someone always has to respond to climate apocalypse discussion with " but actually the planet will be fine."

The GP I was responding to did actually allude to a future of inevitable climate issues and species collapse.

For me the fact that the planet will love on regardless is a sign of optimism though, not doomsday apocalypse or some kind of perverse nihilism. It's like looking up at the stars, it reminds me of how small we are and that we're just a part of history rather than the start and end of it.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#472

Post by brnaftr361 » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

forgetfreeman wrote: post #415

jorvi wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty pro-climate / nature, but from a pure scientific bent and it is enlightening (and frightening) the frothing rage you get from most “green” people if you point out that having outdoor cats and having kids are two of the most damaging things you can do to your environment.

At the risk of getting flagged the logical conclusion to this train of thought is that the most effective singe action any individual can take to reduce carbon emissions is to mass murder their neighbors and then kill themselves.

"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal."

Rustin Cohle, True Detective

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#473

Post by brutusborn » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 3:32 AM UTC

Timon3 wrote: post #459

brutusborn wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I’m probably being a bit too picky, but I honestly don’t think this is how science works, I think this paper is a good example of the problem of low quality papers clogging up academic publishing due to perverse incentives. I had a quick look through the first half dozen citations on the paper, and it is a lot of stuff like this: “The effects of modern climate change are occurring more quickly in grasslands r…

> I had a quick look through the first half dozen citations on the paper, and it is a lot of stuff like this: “The effects of modern climate change are occurring more quickly in grasslands relative to many other ecosystems (Loarie et al. 2009;” This quote doesn’t really use any of the data/methods of the original paper, it just uses the paper to support the fairly obvious idea that climate change has variable effects…

I was referring to citations of the paper (theoretically if these researchers are citing the paper, then they should be using the ideas, model or data from the paper).

Have a look here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40768520_The_veloci...

It has 2172!! citations! And in many(most?) cases these citations are pointless. It’s essentially used to pad out other ‘water is wet’ papers and/or hack researchers indexes.

If it were a scientific article, the citations would reference it to use/improve/critique their hypothesis/model/data. I’m sure there’s a couple of these among the 2172 citations, but good luck finding the seed among the chaff!

I think this stuff annoys me because of the huge opportunity cost. Climate change is such a big problem with so many critical questions unanswered, yet tomes of research get funded that tell us nothing about how to solve the problem. And worse: we get such volumes of drivel that serious researchers have to wade through heaps of nonsense to find quality papers.