FR version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Advertisement
Advertisement
⚡ Community Insights
Discussion Sentiment
52% Positive
Analyzed from 3433 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
#more#food#emissions#natural#things#don#world#species#change#fish
Discussion (110 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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.
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.
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)
Reading a thermometer is not really an advanced skill.
paper link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt2981
---
Editor Summary:
Body size and metabolic rate are intertwined, a factor that is especially important to understand with regard to animals that live in aquatic environments, where heat loss is related to water temperature. Payne et al. developed a method to estimate routine metabolic rate based on measures from tagged fish, and combined the estimates with published respirometry rates to create a dataset spanning the entire body size range of extant fishes. Using these data, the authors found a scaling imbalance between heat production and loss that affects especially large, mesothermic fishes in warm waters. This imbalance both explains the distribution of these fish in cooler waters and suggests a special sensitivity to warming waters. —Sacha Vignieri
---
Abstract:
Body size and temperature set metabolic rates and the pace of life, yet our understanding of the energetics of large fishes is uncertain, especially of warm-bodied mesotherms, which can heavily influence marine food webs. We developed an approach to estimate metabolic heat production in fishes, revealing how routine energy expenditure scales with size and temperature from 1-milligram larvae up to 3-tonne megaplanktivorous sharks. We found that mesotherms use approximately four times more energy than ectotherms use and identified a scaling mismatch in which rates of heat production increase faster than heat loss as body size increases, with larger fish becoming increasingly warm bodied. This scaling imbalance creates an overheating predicament for large mesotherms, helping to explain their cooler biogeographies. Contemporary mesotherms face high fuel demands and overheating risks, which is a concern given their disproportionate demise during prior climate shifts.
- if everyone on the entire planet went 100% vegan from tomorrow, will carbon emissions really go down by 60%?
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...
We need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.
For full clarity, it's also not the 100 biggest corporations that produce most emissions, but the 100 biggest companies. A massive amount of the global emissions are done by state-owned companies.
Unfortunately the United States is currently ruled by a death cult that sees any further push to renewables as capitulation to China and is dedicated to burning fossil fuels until they are fully gone.
See, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sbvp4ULD6GI
And while this part is less explicitly stated, I'm convinced they aren't ignorant of the devastating results of this policy, they just intend to profit off it rather than mitigate the harms, thus the stated interest in taking Greenland, Canada, etc.
They know things are going to get really bad, but they also know their own wealth will at least in the short term shield them from much personal exposure to the harm that will increasingly immiserate everyone else.
Food is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions[1]. I agree that it’s not realistic to assume this will be solved individually, more pressure needs to be put on these large corporations from governments, but the quickest way you or I can make our own (individually small, collectively large) impact is by cutting out meat from our diet (specifically beef[2]). We are end-consumers of those 100 largest corporations one way or another.
(Not a vegetarian/vegan btw. I’m not trying to shame, I’m certainly not perfect! I just wanted to share the info that it’s not someone else’s problem. We’re all in this together)
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?Commodi...
long term with a proper transition, probably not 60% but likely some lower double-digit percentage (maybe closer to 20?)
Sure, that stuff isn't of the same quality as food grown for human consumption, but putting livestock on a diet and diverting some of their food to human consumption would more than cover any shortfall from the missing meat
A lot of the changes to the waters is well outside human control... there's a huge balance of factors at play from the earth, moon and sun. We don't control these things... and to what impact we can/do, I'm not sure that anything we might do may not have unintended consequences that are materially worse.
We can definitely do some things, but the level of internalized and externalized guilt that people in and outside these discussions seem to carry and put on others isn't at all healthy in and of itself.
All of these things are firmly within our control.
You're in control after all.
edit: sarcasm aside... my entire point is that the guilt itself isn't healthy and does no good for anyone. Yes, there are things that can probably be done, but alarmism, blame and guilt cycles do nothing to help anyone.
I don’t see a way out except for stratospheric aerosol injection.
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 year.
I do volunteer, donate, and advocate and I won't use my extreme pessimism as an excuse not to engage. But in private, I mourn what is coming with little hope for substantial reduction in harm. If anything, those with power seem upset that we're not doing more to fasttrack catastrophe - if it's going to happen, may as well be the one to profit from it as much as possible before you're dead, the thinking seems to go.
I sometimes think about a post-industrial fantasy world where technology still exists, though minimally, and carefully applied to solve real problems humanity faces instead of selling FOMO or millions of "shiny things" that wind up in land fills so you can sell the new FOMO/shinything so some numbers on a spread sheet goes up.
All that said: you might enjoy the book Robot & Monk by Becky Chambers, if you're one to read fiction. It kind of depicts what you're describing as your fantasy.
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!)
I'm not going to point to a TV show about alcoholism to substantiate that. You don't need me to. It is also why manslaughter, though a lesser crime than murder, remains a crime.
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.
It is true humans are part of nature, but we are unique in our capacity for causal understanding and foresight. We are the only species that can understand the long-term consequences of our actions and actively choose to change course. If our ability to exploit is natural, our ability to act with foresight and restraint is equally natural. Framing the present-day destruction as a natural consequence of some "evolutionary law" to me is an "appeal to nature" fallacy that can be used to absolve both individual and collective responsibility.
Yes, this is perhaps a way (it seems far too presumptive to say "the way") planets with intelligent species evolve. We are perhaps entering the Great Filter, or one of them.
> Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this
Literally true, but I'd argue a semantic deflection. It doesn't engage with the core idea of the destruction of complex ecosystems that we are witnessing and commenting on.
That said and to the point: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works?
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.
Fuel is trickier and requires investments and a transition period, but a beef tax would be trivial, and there are infinite substitute goods available.
I've thought that it might be an idea for more states to require at least half of all beef and chicken to be imported into the state in at least half-carcass form. This would incentivize local farming, and local processing, reducing the more centralized processing and the environmental impacts could be further reduced in a lot of ways. That's just for meat.
Forcing insurance company accounting to average to single-payer modals and limit coverage combinations to no more than 3 choices across the nation could help with another part. Refactoring all federally funded insurance (medicare/medicaid/va/federal-employees) into a non-profit insurance corp that does likewise and any private company can also buy policies from would help to. Finally, establish "part time" work as no more than 10 hours a week averaged per 4 week window. Then require all employers to provide medical insurance for all workers that meets what the npo insurance provides.
The recent changes to USDA food guidelines are a step in the right direction, mostly... but there's still room to improve. Education in and of itself should improve dramatically. For that matter, actually having schools "make" most of their food instead of relying on premade/packaged goods would be a massive step in a right direction. Have every student participate in meal preparation at least a few hours a week as part of school work would help a lot.
I'd like to see some incentivization for more companies returning to a dividends model that includes employee profit sharing as part of said formula. I think this would do a LOT to shore up the middle class again.
Sorry, just went off on a total tangent... hitting reply anyway, but don't take anything too serious/deep... these thoughts are kind of always lingering in the back of my mind... I've just never been in a position to actually act on any of them politically.
None of this is to say don't mourn or long for any of this, but the show doesnt end, the charecters just change.
Natural world would be mostly fine one way or other, human beings might not survive though...
How nice. Us adults who have ruined the planet[1][2] and now we are lecturing the youngins about how to deal with this suckage.
With a bizarrely cherry narration. Did you know things are about to suck for you? Just your usual shameless state TV programming.
But we, with our particular national programming, are just supposed to act like we were just spoiled brats that now have to live without dessert post-dinner. The “dessert generation” indeed.
[1] Um akshually, we haven’t ruined the planet—the planet is just minerals! It doesn’t care. We are just ruining the foundation for our own comfortable exi— yeah no kidding.
[2] Like with Norwegian oil/gas extraction
They will move to different locations like they always have been for the past 400 million years. Sharks are older than trees, they can adapt to climate change better than anything alive right now.
They are moving to cooler waters but the cooler waters won't have the food supplies they need. So it's either stay where the food is and overheat or go to cooler water and starve.
For example, something is red, you touch it, get burned. You won’t touch it again.
Environmental harm unfortunately is precisely the opposite. Consequences arise on a very long arc, in some cases beyond even our lifetimes. We register problems like this only intellectually, and even that becomes clouded with politics.
So the problem is kind of inevitable unfortunately.