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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

#61

Post by alluro2 »

concinds wrote: post #47
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…

Blaming "profiteering and ever-increasing growth" is way too easy. Can any legislature get away with dramatically increasing taxes on meat, fish, gas, and plane tickets, just at a level high enough to account for environmental externalities? Even dictatorships couldn't get away with it because it would cause too much unrest.

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...

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#62

Post by dismalaf »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #6

- stupid question - if everyone on the entire planet went 100% vegan from tomorrow, will carbon emissions really go down by 60%?

No, because most of the estimates are wonky as hell. For one, calories from silage don't exactly translate directly to calories humans can make use of. Second, most estimates are worst case only and ignore the fact most animals are pastured for some/all of the year on marginal land. Some animals can survive entirely on foraging and waste from agriculture (pigs are a great example).

On the other side, not all climates can produce all the plants required for a balanced vegan diet. Here in Canada, nothing grows for 6 months and what does grow is relatively limited.

The lowest energy system would likely include a reduction in animal products but not a complete elimination, while keeping transportation to a minimum.

Also, just like with energy generation, there's the game theory aspect. If you reduce emissions, will everyone cooperate? What if you suffer only to have someone else increase their emissions anyway? We see this here... We limit our fisheries to try preserve ocean fish, only for Chinese vessels to sit on the edge of our borders hoovering up all the aquatic life...

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#63

Post by tapoxi »

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…

I wonder how much Claude Code were cost if we were to take the cost of environmental destruction from its energy consumption into account.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#64

Post by mapt »

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.

Sharks are an ancient division of life, roughly 440 million years old, which has survived far warmer oceans.

There are ~500 living species of shark and likely tens of thousands extinct in their lineage.

We are perpetrating a mass extinction event that incorporates not just temperatures, but ocean acidification and trophic cascade for fisheries. In mass extinctions, enough things about the ecosystem change that specialists often go extinct. Great White Sharks are a specialist species in their extreme size; Most size specialists are in a precarious local maxima that disappears too quickly to adapt if conditions change drastically.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#65

Post by beepbopboopp »

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 News comment.

None of this is to say don't mourn or long for any of this, but the show doesnt end, the charecters just change.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#66

Post by moffkalast »

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.

I presume it was due to the temperature gradient being extremely low, so they could gradually adapt to the change over hundreds of years. We're pulling the handbrake in geological terms.

https://xkcd.com/1732

(that chart was made in 2016, given that we were at +1.5C last year we're outdone even the most pessimistic scenario presented on that graph by quite a bit, the line is now almost horizontal)

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#67

Post by dd8601fn »

MisterTea wrote: post #53
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…

It's hard when your job and even hobbies are intertwined with this destruction. I enjoy working with computers and industrial machinery - two giant sources of pollution and social disruption. I sometimes feel this existential crisis where I am part of the problem yet I have no way to escape and become filled with guilt. Yet without this technology our lives would be more difficult. I sometimes think about a post-indu…

This may upset some people, but I think you have to come up with mental demarcation for responsibility, or you’ll go nuts.

I simply cannot decide to avoid all the technology of my field because whoever designed the electrical infrastructure didn’t do it responsibly. Or because the handling of ewaste hasn’t been dealt with. Or because everyone sourced materials in unethical ways.

My responsibility for most of that kinda ends at my voting behavior or trying to make reasonable personal decisions that are well within my small sphere of influence. A problem domain that I can handle.

Anyone who watched The Good Place knows what I mean. It’s not absolution for my own behavior, it’s just not holding myself accountable for everything that everyone else does… badly.

Otherwise there’s just no sword to fall on that’s big enough to feel at peace with the world. (Think of the snails!)

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#69

Post by Insanity »

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…

First off, I'm vegetarian and generally climate-conscious. I think we humans should do what we can in order to protect our planet. I think we can do a lot to keep the planet a good place for all living beings.

But to also say something unpopular, humans are part of the natural world. So these human driven changes to nature are just 'nature changing nature'. I understand that we are potentially causing mass extinctions, but this needs to be seen as natural unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism. So, this might just be the way planets with intelligent species evolve, they outcompete the others and exploit natural resources to their benefit. It might just be a biological/evolutionary law.

Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this. Bacteria outnumber all other class of organisms IIRC, and they are shown to survive in truly challenging conditions.

Re: As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating

#70

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

Insanity wrote: post #69
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…

First off, I'm vegetarian and generally climate-conscious. I think we humans should do what we can in order to protect our planet. I think we can do a lot to keep the planet a good place for all living beings. But to also say something unpopular, humans are part of the natural world. So these human driven changes to nature are just 'nature changing nature'. I understand that we are potentially causing mass extinction…

Yeah, but some of my favorite life forms are vertebrates. Would hate to see that branch go.
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