SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth's ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization (Ceballos et al., 2015; IPBES, 2019; Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020; WWF, 2020). While suggested solutions abound (Díaz et al., 2019), the current scale of their implementation does not match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss (Cumming et al., 2006) and other existential threats tied to the continuous expansion of the human enterprise (Rees, 2020). Time delays between ecological deterioration and socio-economic penalties, as with climate disruption for example (IPCC, 2014), impede recognition of the magnitude of the challenge and timely counteraction needed. In addition, disciplinary specialization and insularity encourage unfamiliarity with the complex adaptive systems (Levin, 1999) in which problems and their potential solutions are embedded (Selby, 2006; Brand and Karvonen, 2007). Widespread ignorance of human behavior (Van Bavel et al., 2020) and the incremental nature of socio-political processes that plan and implement solutions further delay effective action (Shanley and López, 2009; King, 2016).
We summarize the state of the natural world in stark form here to help clarify the gravity of the human predicament. We also outline likely future trends in biodiversity decline (Díaz et al., 2019), climate disruption (Ripple et al., 2020), and human consumption and population growth to demonstrate the near certainty that these problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come. Finally, we discuss the ineffectiveness of current and planned actions that are attempting to address the ominous erosion of Earth's life-support system. Ours is not a call to surrender—we aim to provide leaders with a realistic "cold shower" of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future.
Journal Reference:
Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Paul R. Ehrlich, Andrew Beattie. et al. Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future, Frontiers in Conservation Science [OPEN] (DOI: 10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lester on Saturday January 23 2021, @10:47AM (74 children)
I'm a little skeptical about all this apocalyptic future for planet.
I watched a documentary about Chernobyl [wikipedia.org] twenty years after disaster. It is amazing how nature in 20 years has re-conquered the city. Tall trees, deers etc in the downtown. Here, in Spain, during pandemic confinement, when there weren't almost cars or people outside, in the cities or on the roads, in the outskirts of some cities you could see wild boars.
I don't think the loss of biodiversity is a great deal, if/when human kind disappear from earth, new species with be created to replace the niches we have left.
For centuries wolfs were a problem in Europe in spite of hunting, what has almost exterminated wolfs in Europe is the occupation of its habitat. That is what we are, an invasive specie. Can't we do things better and be less destructive? yes, being less people, instead of 7,500 millions, 2,000 millions or 1,000 millions. But that can't be done. We are more successful in Death Control than in Birth control, that is how nature made us, fight to survive and fight to breed. You can reduce births artificially for some time or in same places, but in the long term, as specie, we are going to use all our resources to avoid death and we will reproduce. And when we manage to reduce deaths and births what we get is population ageing.
WE have a problem. Nature hasn't, it will thrive ins spite of us.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jasassin on Saturday January 23 2021, @10:56AM (2 children)
If you have not seen the movie Idiocracy, please watch it.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @09:38PM (1 child)
Just like the climate change conspirators, Idocracy was off by hundreds of years.
Just in the opposite direction.
And only one of the two has been proven right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @08:49PM
It was satire which is why they added the date joke making Joe think it was 2005. Replace Brawndo with neocortinoid pesticides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @11:54AM
Time to repeat Chernobyl in other places to keep humans away too. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 23 2021, @12:38PM (50 children)
The thing about nature replacing itself: it depends very much on where it reboots from.
Chernobyl wasn't too far gone when humanity irradiated it and stepped away, the challenge of the radiation is far less for the natural world than the challenge of human exploitation. The recovery around Chernobyl only took a couple dozen years.
We can, and very nearly did, extinct the whales - which are a major component of the ocean food web, including fertilization of the water column to support annual plankton blooms in the polar oceans which absorb tremendous quantities of CO2. Replacement of a genus like whales in the ecosystem will take millions, not dozens, of years. We are, daily, extincting species we don't even know about through destructive over fishing practices with fishing fleets that were built in global competition between nations beyond the capacity of the oceans to support them, and for a while the nations were economically propping up these fleets to keep them running even though they were an economically losing proposition, I think that madness is slowly subsiding now.
The closer that palm-oil plantations come to 100% destruction of the rain forests they are replacing, the longer it will take them to return to something other than a mono-culture desert. Some of the larger rain-forest species are already beyond saving, again decapitating their food webs and changing them for millions of years.
Manhattan, London, Sydney, can all return to nature within a few thousand years of neglect, but what that nature will look like depends entirely on what species remain to do the re-wilding. If we continue on our current trajectory of near-total exploitation of nature, we're going to place humanity in a position of 100% dependence on our technology and civilization and when either one of those fails, we will fail as a species. Something else will replace us, sure, but is that really the goal of society, to make way for humanity's succcessors?
https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 23 2021, @02:11PM (4 children)
Exactly. It is somewhat unfortunate that it's always called saving the environment, when that actually is only a necessary part of the end goal which is is saving humanity.
Of course it doesn't help that many people show great hubris on human ability to handle bad situations. If our ecosystems fail in a big way, overpopulation will cease to be a problem quite quickly, and instead basic survival will become the main struggle again.
And even if we survive, we'll not be able to start a second industrial revolution later, since all easily exploitable energy resources have been used up by the first one and won't replenish in the next few millions of years. Thus even in the best case, humanity will likely be stuck in a medieval level society forever.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:27PM
Like the Sun, wood, water, and wind? Even if we ignore the many easily exploitable renewable energy sources, we still have a lot of easily accessible coal in the ground. And oil renews on a long enough timeframe. The Ghawar will never be the oil field it used to be, but it can generate enough oil to start an industrial revolution.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:34PM
Only if by choice...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @09:37PM (1 child)
Forever is an awfully long stretch of time, and necessity is the mother of invention. Sapients will develop a biological civilization in a mere few thousand years, I reckon, when there are no easier options and IF they do in fact need it. And that latter is a BIG if, given that working classes lived WORSE than hunter-gatherers through the whole "civilization" game except the last century or so.
As repeatedly demonstrated all over the world, a tribe needs only a vestige of biological civilization, namely poisoned arrows or blowdarts, to keep their "civilized" neighbors out for a thousand years, till those acquire assault rifles in bulk. Which, in absence of machine civilization anywhere, will be a mite complicated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @04:26AM
Who are the hunter-gatherer working class? Explain to me how you believe this worked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:35PM
Boo hoo.
Well I'm a little skeptical about all this apocalyptic future for planet.
So let's call it 50-50.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:57PM (43 children)
Keep in mind that "human" here means Soviet Russian humans. They were particularly hard on the environment. One of the many bits of dishonesty in this story is treating the worst of humanity, at least environmentally, as the mean. Those slash-and-burn palm oil plantations aren't happening in Western Europe, for another example.
Another bit of dishonesty is ignoring reality when it doesn't fit the narrative. We (I include you in that since you've been [soylentnews.org] told [soylentnews.org] multiple [soylentnews.org] times [soylentnews.org]) already know that we've detoured from that alleged trajectory of "near-total" exploitation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:14PM (38 children)
It's true they aren't happening in western Europe: They're happening to produce cheap palm oil for corporations based on Western Europe and the US, though, e.g. Palmolive soap.
Wherever you see an industry destroying the environment, look for a global supply chain, because there almost always is one. And that global supply chain is almost never owned by or operated primarily for the benefit of poor people in post-colonial countries.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:30PM (37 children)
Another bit of dishonesty here is construing every good thing humanity has done in the worst possible light, such as the "export the pollution" narrative.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:37PM (34 children)
:-) Even more dishonest are those who deny it. "Exporting the pollution" is precisely the intention. Out of sight, out of mind
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:40PM (32 children)
What's being denied, fusty?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:49PM (31 children)
What's being construed?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:21PM (30 children)
A fantasy which transferring blame for the many ills of the developing world on the developed world. The glaring flaw with that fantasy is that there would be no developing in the developing world without the economic trade with the developed world, the knowledge discovered/created by the developed world, and the developed world as a living example of what can be.
(Score: 0, Troll) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:28PM (29 children)
Exporting pollution is a common practice. We go in to colonize and pillage resources and enslave the population, not "develop" anything.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:54PM (28 children)
Remember when I spoke [soylentnews.org] of "your glaring tendency to ignore people doing things right". Here it is again. Billions of people wouldn't be living better lives now, if your words were true.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 24 2021, @12:42AM (24 children)
Define better lives. The librul agenda curriculum being taught in our high schools about Vietnam these days paints the French as an exploitative abusive conquering force who destroyed the existing different, but no less noble, Vietnamese civilization and replaced it with little copies of Paris in which the natives did the hard work for little pay and the French lorded over them reaping the benefits. Are the Vietnamese living better lives today after the French "civilized" them? After the U.S. brought them "freedom"? Of course, they were somewhat under China's influence before the French arrived but China wasn't nearly as heavy handed in Vietnam as the French.
If you choose to believe that history. Opinions largely depend on the lens used by the storytellers.
I met a South African in 1989 (in Belgium) while their revolution was going on back home in JoBerg. They had "white man's burden" on them in spades, really thought they were doing the South Africans a huge favor by continuing to rule them, and I think they really believed that. Clearly, the South Africans disagreed - and I don't notice them begging for their white ex rulers to come back in the last 30 years, even if some of their Euro-style cities have turned to shit, by Euro standards.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 25 2021, @06:20AM (23 children)
Nobody bothers continuing propaganda that no one believes.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 25 2021, @12:03PM (22 children)
That's the thing though - these expat South Afrikaners weren't just parroting a line, they really believed in their hearts that they were doing the natives a massive favor by governing how they live. Of course those same people also thought they were doing good work, God's work even, by translating the Billy Graham crusade to French live as it happened.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Monday January 25 2021, @03:50PM (21 children)
Finally, this ties back into the story. Why should we care that some dispossessed researchers, living in their own little bubble, are concerned that we're not buying into some purely imaginary "ghasty future"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 25 2021, @04:19PM (1 child)
Those elites were living a very middle class lifestyle in Belgium, small apartment, wife and daughter working as nurses. It matters because it's real - weeks of personal contact experience, as opposed to bullshit sociological cooked observations ground up and regurgitated through approved review channels.
Me, personally, I care about and relate to those researchers and the personal experience they gather through their travels and work than some dispossessed crank on the internet, living in a bubble in BFE, pontificating about what the rest of the world should be doing and not doing when they rarely experience anything beyond the propaganda traded back and forth in their local valley.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @01:51AM
It's a shaggy dog story [wikipedia.org]. And that dog isn't very shaggy!
Being wrong for 50 years indicates that experience isn't sticking, assuming they're getting it in the first place.
Also, why are you continuing to emphasize subjective experiences and feelz over science and knowledge? It's easier for you to just change your experiences and feelz than it is to change actual evidence!
I take it you think there's an optics problem somewhere on my end? Show me the evidence! Not some cool fantasy, bro.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 25 2021, @10:01PM (18 children)
Huh, never took ya for such a liar. I'll be gracious and say you are merely mistaken, and, closed minded, and obtuse, for personal reasons of course...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @01:41AM (17 children)
Multiple times you've outright dismissed injustices by China and Russia. The typical approaches are either dismissing the injustice as outright propaganda, conflating the injustice with some perceived injustice on the part of the US (which is traditionally called "whataboutism"), or your typical ad hominem attack of accusing the person of lying. For a glaring example of both in the same post, conflating [soylentnews.org] a 2014 staged referendum in the Crimea after its invasion by Russia that rationalized annexation with normal presidential elections in the US.
A brazen display of dishonesty with all the usual components (the accusations of lying come shortly afterward). And of course, imaginary US propaganda is more important than real Russian belligerence (and propaganda, of course).
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @01:51AM (13 children)
:-) You merely exhibit comprehension problems due to your own personal biases and choice to believe propaganda that suits them
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @02:26AM (4 children)
Long words. I imagine everyone who reads your stuff eventually develops "comprehension problems". What's the common factor?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @02:49AM (3 children)
98% reelection rate. Clearly you gotta problem
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @12:35PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @04:36PM (1 child)
This is your world. You can't blame me for what you put on the ballot. Tried to warn ya...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @07:03PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @12:44PM (7 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @04:39PM (6 children)
:-) The truth justifies itself, there's nothing to add. Just remove your blinders
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @09:54PM (5 children)
False. We don't start with an innate understanding of what is true or false. Even you.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @11:11PM (4 children)
Yes, we do. Or do you deny gravity?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @11:16PM (3 children)
What is the truth about gravity? I only have a PhD in mathematical physics, so use short words please.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @11:31PM (2 children)
Its self evidence. Do you deny the existence of mass attraction?
See, it's not that you aren't able to comprehend what I write, you just refuse because of the conflict with your preconceptions and biases. Your mind is a monkey trap of conformity. Learn to let go of your false idols.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 27 2021, @12:14AM (1 child)
What is "mass attraction"? Can't deny something exists when we don't know what it means in the first place.
It's not. I hope you're not going to lecture me on self-evident economics next and how usury fits into all that.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 29 2021, @01:27AM
:-) Wasted effort... Pearls to the swine
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @02:05AM (2 children)
There's something wrong with the narrative, you lying asshole!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 26 2021, @02:52AM (1 child)
:-) Never took you seriously as one. Still don't really, but you are when you say those things about me. But, you know, knock yerself out...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @12:38PM
In other words, you just lied again either in your accusation "never took ya for such a liar" or now (I'm betting on both). Clean your own bullshit first.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 24 2021, @01:04AM (2 children)
:-) If that made any sense, I could respond...
So you stand with the war mongers, I am not surprised. Your head is full of garbage
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @03:15AM
Suggested improvement for the use of headspace.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Sunday January 24 2021, @04:48AM
"War mongers"? That's quite the ass pull.
Sounds like you're projecting hard again.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @09:55PM
Nobody is denying that China is exporting more pollution than widgets. (Except maybe those whose pocket are lined by China.)
China! One of the good guys! A third-world country exempt from the Paris Accord that will cripple the US economy.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday January 24 2021, @04:17PM (1 child)
On the list of Great Human Achievements, I'd put palm oil soap, well, not very high on the list: Humans have had soap for a very very long time, most of it not palm-based, so at best I'd consider that a minor incremental improvement.
And if you think "Well, it must be great, lots of people are buying it", I'm pretty sure that's because they aren't aware of the costs they aren't paying for, e.g. environmental damage.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 25 2021, @06:44PM
Or are they from crops which are growing where there used to be forests before and the forests were cleared but that's fine because white people were doing the clearing and not brown people thousands of miles away?
And that way you can whitewash it and call it "sustainable"?
How about before making such a big fuss about palm oil, the UK, Western European countries and the USA replace their oil crops with forests till they have a higher forest percentage than the forest percentage of the palm oil producing countries? Then they won't look as big hypocrites as they already are.
Go check out the forest percentage of the UK, France, Germany, USA sometime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:34PM (2 children)
Western populations use exponentially more resources than poorer populations, the slash-and-burn is barely a blip on the radar in front of the mass of consumption.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:26PM (1 child)
And yet, the article spends so much time talking about slash-and-burn. The problem here is that mass consumption just isn't that environmentally significant. But destruction of habitat and pollution are. People spend way too much time trying to fix non problems.
And you're not going to fix the real problems until you fix poverty.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 24 2021, @01:18AM
That's easy! Just eliminate corruption and abolish usury...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2021, @02:35PM
The UK and many Western European countries are more deforested than the top[1] major palm oil producing countries.
From: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS [worldbank.org]
Forest area of:
UK: 13% (ironically one of the most vocal?)
France: 31%
Greece: 32%
Italy: 32%
Germany: 33%
USA: 34%
Spain: 37%
Canada: 38%
EU: 40%
Forest area of major soybean oil producing countries:
China: 22.4%
USA: 34%
Brazil: 58.9%
Forest area of major canola/rapeseed oil producing countries:
Canada: 38%
EU: 40%
Forest area of sunflower oil producing countries:
Ukraine: 16.7%
Russia: 49.8%
Forest area of major palm oil producing countries:
Indonesia:49.9%
Malaysia: 67.6%
So how much of soybeans, sunflowers, canola and olive trees are grown on land that had no forest before and how much were grown on land that had forest?
Before making such a big fuss about palm oil, the UK, Western European countries and other major complainers should replace their vegetable oil crops and other land with forests till they have a higher forest percentage than the forest percentage of the palm oil producing countries. Then they won't be as big hypocrites as they already are.
[1] https://www.greenpalm.org/about-palm-oil/where-is-palm-oil-grown-2 [greenpalm.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tokolosh on Saturday January 23 2021, @02:08PM (2 children)
Every day I read about the discovery of some new species or even a Genus. Every second day I read about the discovery of an animal that had been declared extinct.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/12/biodiversity-2020-new-species-discoveries-animals-insects/ [weforum.org]
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/15-extinct-animals-found-again.html [worldatlas.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:13PM
Overwhelming those discovered species are classified as endangered. Following up on them 20 years from now and most will be extinct. Furthermore the number going extinct far exceeds the number discovered https://www.ecowatch.com/species-extinct-in-2020-2649768697.html?rebelltitem=6#rebelltitem6 [ecowatch.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @07:22PM
Finding an extinct species just means it is still endangered and will limely be truly extinct soon. Your posts are so frequently spouting ignorant bulllshit with an air of educated cynicism. Just FYI.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday January 23 2021, @03:21PM (12 children)
I absolutely agree with you: nature is incredibly resilient - when it is allowed to be. That's part of the reason that I don't take global warming at all seriously: nature will adapt just fine.
If.
If it is allowed to. The root problem that we face is that people don't allow nature to recover. There are too many of us, and we are all over the planet, in any place where life can thrive. The only reason that Chernobyl has recovered, is because people are not allowed to go there.
If we want nature to be resilient, we need to leave large swathes of the planet absolutely alone. Take national parks, for example, and close most of them off to people. No logging, no hunting, no camping - let nature do its thing.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:10PM (10 children)
I haven't updated my blog much, or at all recently: https://5050by2150.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com] but others have started promoting the ideas: https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:58PM (9 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:05PM (8 children)
Read the blog, the 30% we have protected is 90%+ garbage for h. sapiens and our familiar species. Starting with: so we protected Antarctica? Slow clap. We need to strongly protect a representative 50%, and there are degrees of protection - much of that 30% is barely protected at all: "protected" fisheries where commercial fishing is still permitted, sometimes without catch limits or seasons, U.S. National Forests which are "sustainably managed" by planting monocultures of the most commercially valuable trees, game preserves where poachers operate virtually unchecked.
Not all protected land or sea necessarily needs Chernobyl level exclusion, but the brutal simplicity of Menschen raus, люди вне, (Humans stay out.) works orders of magnitude better to allow biodiversity to thrive than any complicated set of exclusions, provisions, and management rules based on our incomplete understanding of what makes nature work; especially when combined with the necessary doses of realpolitik to get any kind of protection legislated at all.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 23 2021, @08:16PM (7 children)
And that's supposed to be relevant why? Does it not count until we kick millions of people out of 50% of our cities?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 23 2021, @10:48PM (6 children)
If you only preserve penguin-land, desert, and Alaskan Tundra - until such time as you decide you want the petroleum from the Tundra then you F that landscape for 1000 years, you're going to be preserving a very limited set of species, most of which don't do much with h. sapiens in a natural setting.
It counts when there are significant, safe, functioning ecosystems representative of the kinds of lands we have moved into and obliterated the existing ecosystems from in the last 500 or so years. 99% of Europe (99.9 if you discount Poland) & 98% of the lower 48 US has had the trees clearcut in the last 500 years, most of them in the last 50. That means that the forest ecosystems that had built up over thousands to millions of years, or repopulated from nearby forests after they were burned by nature or man in the distant past, are not repopulating anymore - the ecosystems that developed there can't rebuild because they've been too fragmented and too many species simply extinct. Brazil is working hard to catch up, as is much of South America and Africa.
Keep the cities, sure, but farmland doesn't count as "wild space," including tree farms. You're near Yellowstone? Go take a walk on some commercial timberland, then take a walk in a natural forest - the difference is stark, unless all you see is the dollars you can get from cutting the trees.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 24 2021, @05:24AM (5 children)
That short list doesn't get you to 30%. And what's supposed to be the big deal with "F that landscape" for a 1000 years. The ecosystem doesn't care.
In the US, 7% of forest is old growth. And 500 years is nonsense. There's huge swaths of the US forest that never had old growth forest of that age in the first place, because the forests burn down every few decades naturally, even without humans of any sort present.
Depends on the "wild space". The areas affected by the 1988 Yellowstone fires look like commercial forest with trees of the same narrow band of age. And Yellowstone's lodge pole pine forests rarely get very old due to its tendency to burn.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @07:14PM (1 child)
You're so desoerate to not see the problems. Or you're too stupid to notice the signs. I'm gonna go with "desperate" based on your track record of ignoring inconvenient data.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 26 2021, @12:48PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 25 2021, @02:29AM (2 children)
Fires started by what?
And how long have the wolves been allowed back into Yellowstone? Have they reached pre-Lewis and Clarke levels of population even now? Predators very much influence the species mix of forests. Without over-grazing by "cute cuddly" deer, what would regrow in the lodge pole pine forests after the next fire?
Counting Alaska now, are we? Interior Alaska, while more habitable for humans than Antarctica, is still clearly not the most representative collection of "cradle of humanity" species.
In the South East forests were fire adapted. They would burn every few years at times, but the old growth trees would survive those fires. The 20 acres we owned north of Arcadia Florida was forested with old growth pine until the 1890s, then they built a sawmill 6 miles downriver, then they cut and floated the logs to the sawmill (some logs sank and were recovered by our neighbors in the 1980s, sold for thousands of dollars a piece), those that floated to the sawmill were used to build a small town, which burned down in the early 1900s. The area has been "fire controlled" since then and is regrown with non-fire adapted oaks which will, as soon as the fire department quits responding, burn down after then next drought+lightning storm. Fire adapted old growth pines would live hundreds of years, 500 was not unusual, until the 1890s.
Doesn't it? Care to comment on what has happened to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico around Deepwater Horizon?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 25 2021, @03:11AM
Thanks for trying but khallow is paid to push a pro-oil narrative.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 25 2021, @06:18AM
Multiple causes [wikipedia.org], some man-caused like someone dropping a cigarette into combustible materials, abandoned campfire, or power lines. And natural - lightning strikes. There were 250 identifiable fire starts in that year in or near Yellowstone.
Lodge pole pines. The trees are well optimized for spreading through fire.
Since when has "cradle of humanity" species been at all relevant to this discussion?
So there was old forest in the US? Who knew?
I don't think that's relevant.
Bunch of oil entered the ecosystem. Sounds like it's in the process of leaving the ecosystem though those natural systems that don't care. I certain don't expect it to stick around for a thousand years, given that the gulf has a lot of oil enter the ecosystem naturally. If oil wasn't being digested or buried, there'd be a vast amount of it in the gulf depths already.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday January 26 2021, @09:15PM
Dealing with AGW is not about whether nature will adapt (it will, as you say), but whether humanity can adapt, and how painful that adaptation will be.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @09:32PM
"There is no scientific consensus that life is important for the planet."
- Professor Hugo Farnsworth
A scientist!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @09:49PM
For only $19 per month, you can help save the European Wolf from extinction.
And we'll send you ribbon with a picture of a wolf that you can proudly wear on your lapel to prove how superior you are.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday January 24 2021, @06:50PM
We don't need fewer people, we just need to do a much better job managing the resources we have. Unfortunately, that just doesn't seem to be possible with many human cultures, because they're too greedy and too intent on owning personal cars and having huge houses widely separated from each other. Of course, not everyone lives like Americans, but it seems that in most places, when they become wealthy enough (like China), that's the ideal they aspire to, and it simply isn't possible for everyone on the planet to live like that.
As for nature, sure, pockets of nature will survive in the places that are too radioactive for humans to live, and where the land isn't turned into desert (desertification is a big problem now too: the Sahara is growing, as are other deserts), and if humans go extinct it'll eventually bounce back, but as humans we're generally concerned with our own survival and well-being, and there doesn't seem to be a way for us to do this any more without experiencing civilization collapse.