from the it's-only-natural-to-question-authority dept.
Around 80 percent of the land area in Europe is used for settlement, agriculture and forestry. In order to increase yields even further than current levels, exploitation is being intensified. Areas are being consolidated in order to cultivate them more efficiently using larger machines. Pesticides and fertilisers are increasingly being used and a larger number of animals being kept on grazing land. "Such measures increase yield but, overall, they also have negative impacts on biodiversity," says UFZ biologist Dr. Michael Beckmann. "This is because even agricultural areas offer fauna and flora a valuable habitat—which is something that is frequently not sufficiently taken into consideration."
Betteridge's law of headlines says no, but is more intensive farming really crowding out native species more than less intensive farming?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday April 12 2019, @09:43PM (14 children)
The population in Europe was declining as standards of living increased, this would have solved the problem under discussion naturally. However this was considered a bigger problem that had to be "fixed" by importing the Middle East and Africa. So now an increasingly less civilized Europe will plunder the land to feed the rapidly expanding population. They made their choice, now they get the consequences. Until the rising level of stupid precludes continuing and chaos ensues, which is also bad for the local ecology but only briefly. Then the human population will crash, nature will return and after a Dark Age everything kicks off again, having learned nothing of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @09:52PM (5 children)
Dark ages are just what the Muslim imams want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @10:01PM
FTFY
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @12:12AM (3 children)
I believe all religious leaders yearn to return to times of ignorant and gullible controllable populaces who will believe damn near anything a man dressed in a robe and wearing a funny hat tells them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:17AM
"uuuhnnn, I'm . uhhn . doing. this. uugh. for. JEEEESus!!!. Ohhh GOOOOD, take it you peasant! oooh yeaah. uuuh .... Now remember, this was all covered by the sanctity of the cross. If you tell anyone you will burn in hell forever."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:51AM (1 child)
And cheap loud populists, like Trump and Bolsonaro to only mention 2.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:41AM
Trump doesn't wear the funny hat.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday April 12 2019, @10:23PM (2 children)
..but how to maintain a healthy welfare state with declining youth population segment? Importing earners is the only answer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:05AM (1 child)
But that is the joke. No matter how you slice and dice the numbers one would be hard pressed to point to ANY identifiable group of immigrants into Europe that pays more in taxes than it takes in services. So they are losing money on every immigrant and making it up in volume.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Saturday April 13 2019, @02:51PM
I know, I just like repeating that insane argument because it's so paper-thin and obviously untrue, but it's the only argument even pretending to be rational that I get back when talking about the subject. It gives me a good laugh every time. After that it's just name-calling and screeching. There are just some things we cannot have a discussion about, I suppose.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @10:34PM
Yay, racist garbage modded up. Yall-qaeda are fucking dumb, can't even see they're fighting with their religious brethren. On an intelligence scale of 0 - 100 I'd give Yall-qaeda a 10 and Al-qaeda a 9.
Jmorris is super special though, he gets to be the genius of the idiots. A shitty savant if you will.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @10:49PM (1 child)
On a separate topic: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/trump-cbp-commissioner-pardon/index.html [cnn.com]
Please explain how McConnel and Trump are NOT leading us into the jaws of fascism? Is "owning the libs" truly worth selling out the idea of a democratic republic and the basic rule of law?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:33AM
No explanation possible, we voted for a fascist, we got a fascist. Hopefully we'll get a pendulum swing away from the jaws in 2020 - the 2018 elections seemed to indicate that's where we're headed...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:30AM (1 child)
The last Dark Age only fell from late Roman levels of technology. If we truly crash this time, I think we're going much deeper - not sure how long the rebound will take, but with a population of 8+ billion and all these powerful resources at our disposal, it certainly looks like we're taking down most of the ecosystem with us this time. If we do rebound after a crash, it will be to build a society on a devastated ecosystem - probably with a carrying capacity under 500 million, planetwide. Tremendous amounts of knowledge will likely be lost, but I doubt we will have "learned nothing" from the incident. Stories of jet planes, flat panel TVs, and instant planetary communication are likely to survive for dozens of generations, at least among the humans whose parents live long enough to tell their children stories.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:25AM
That is just science, yeah knowing it once existed is most of the battle to recover it. Which is why it would be far better to lose the knowledge of electricity entirely and keep a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings so we might not just repeat the same pattern yet again. Better still a copy of Anonymous Conservative's The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics. But it wouldn't work. The American Founding Fathers had plenty of books that survived the Dark Ages, they had the writings of the old Greek and Roman philosophers. They knew Democracy decays into Socialism then into Despotism, they knew because they read the histories of how it had happened every single time it was tried. They warned us. They wrote it anew in books of their own. Books our Universities refuse to look at because they were written by dead White men. So we are damned to repeat known failures. As will our descendants after the world is rebuilt. Science advances, but humans are still basically the same creatures who first crawled out of a cave and discovered fire.
Seriously. Look at what current politicians are promising, compare to Kipling writing in 1919. More delusions, ultra feminism, Socialism, UBI, etc. We have learned nothing. One doesn't even nee to read a history book, Socialism is bringing misery and destruction right now in Venezuela. Now we are even losing the ability to keep advancing science. Soon we won't even be able to maintain what tech we have, plenty of signs we are already making that dreadful turn.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 12 2019, @10:04PM (2 children)
Figure out your population issues on your own. We don't want any more Europeans over here. We're all about diversity now and that means no white people. Or Asians unless they're from a poor or oppressed nation; the Chinese and Japanese have too much privilege.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @10:40PM (1 child)
Transsexual whites and Asians are OK for now.
And your government seems keen on bringing at least one white person from London.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @11:09PM
He's from Australia, and if we can teach him how to cook, and shit in a toilet, we should keep him, somewhere
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Friday April 12 2019, @10:42PM (11 children)
Obviously, if life had never arose on earth, we'd have a perfectly pristine planet. For some value of "pristine".
But life is messy by its very nature and problems arise. The only reason that e don't see the problems that arise all the time in nature even without man is our amazingly short timeline and that much of what we notice are problems that have already been worked out. (Oxygen catastrophe, Permian extinction, KT impact, etc, etc)
Earth is a work in progress and will be until life dies out and the heat engines of the atmosphere and geosphere run down. Then it'll be pretty boring. For now, get used to having to solve problems. In fact, be glad that we have problems because sterility and heat death are the only things that don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @11:15PM (6 children)
I just want to take a comfortable shit in the morning. Is that too much to ask?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 13 2019, @02:34AM (5 children)
Three words: Heated Toilet Seat.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:15AM (1 child)
Yeah, and a taller toilet so I'm not teabaggin' my damn balls!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 13 2019, @11:03AM
That's a personal preference thing, I'd think. Maybe a taller toilet bowl with an optional, secondary reservoir of clean water for the boys to go swimming in?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Saturday April 13 2019, @04:09PM (1 child)
The Romans had something like this (Roman shared toilets) [thevintagenews.com] , should not be too hard to turn that room into a caldarium ...
Surely that's something the American Empire can improve on, no?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @11:09PM
Roman shared toilets
With snakes biting your balls off, and the occasional gas explosion? You're better off shitting on the sidewalk...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @04:20PM
Installing a bidet changed my life. I dread having to shit outside of the house, and my TP expenses have been cut by half at least.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Some call me Tim on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:14AM (3 children)
I agree, the fact that humans can't do anything to effect the global climate is a huge reason not to worry about that crap. If the earth gets tired of us it will eradicate us and move on. The entire wealth of the planet could be put into the effort to somehow stop climate change (who are these idiots that think the climate doesn't change?) and nothing would happen.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @10:56AM
fact? you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
effect? you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:39PM
Ok, evidence as opposed to unsubstantiated facts indicates that we can and do influence the climate through such things as our ability to change the albedo of land on a massive scale (for example, roughly a ninth of all land is used for growing plants which tends to increase the sunlight absorbed by the land) and of course, the green house gases (and their opposite) we've put into the atmosphere.
So it is natural to suppose that since we can change climate, we can similarly resist climate change both man-made and natural, particularly, if the part of the climate we're trying to stabilize is something relatively simple like global mean temperature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:42PM
You're a flat earther.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:18AM (2 children)
You can't use Betteridge's Law on this headline. Yes, the headline is phrased as a question, but the question is not one that can be answered with a simple yes or no. It asks: "How Much...?" It's a question that can only be answered with numbers or percentages. Now if it were stated: "Are We Losing Too Much Nature Due to Higher Yields?" you could Betteridge it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 13 2019, @02:36AM
You're obviously not someone with kids in the house, otherwise you would know the great joy to be found in saying "no". Can I have a pet monkey? No! Can my friend spend the night? No! What time is it? No!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 13 2019, @01:40PM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @02:17AM (1 child)
I’m seeing deer, foxes, raccoons on an almost regular basis. And when the city goes to sleep they get it mostly to themselves.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Some call me Tim on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:20AM
That's called food and clothing. Time to get a hunting license. Or not, your choice.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by CZB on Saturday April 13 2019, @04:40AM
In some ways industrial ag competes with diverse native plants. One way it doesn't is all the irregular edges. I have edges and whole fields that have gone back to pasture or wilderness because my large tractor can't fit in the tight, irregular turns that a horse and plow could.