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Eight bird species are first confirmed avian extinctions this decade
- bippi 8y agoWhat's it going to take?
- mirimir 8y agoVery likely, it will take the collapse of human high-tech civilization, and substantial reductions in human populations and resource exploitation.
- snikeris 8y agoOn a long enough timeline, only human high-tech civilization will save the species of our planet.
- EliRivers 8y agoOr that of some non-human species. If humans check out, perhaps someone else will take a turn.
- jniedrauer 8y agoNo extant life is capable of building advanced technology except us. It would take a very long time for that to change. And there are no guarantees that we don't experience another catastrophic mass extinction event along the way that finally finishes us off. They would also be left with a world that has no cheap fuel sources or easily accessible raw materials. This may be the only chance our solar system will ever get at advanced civilization.
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- EliRivers 8y agoOn a long enough timeline. The kind of time that recycles continents. The kind of time that turns a small mammal into a dominant technological species. My point was that the OP assumed only humans can do it. I disagree. There's no law of physics preventing another species evolving and having a go, once humans vanish. In the meantime, while they're busy evolving, some cheap energy sources can be created for them. Plenty of time left before the sun changes too much.
- ForHackernews 8y ago> In the meantime, while they're busy evolving, some cheap energy sources can be created for them. That may or may not be true. The fossil fuel glut that helped humanity develop industrial technology was the byproduct of a pretty strange set of evolutionary and environmental circumstances: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01/07/the-fantastically-strange-origin-of-most-coal-on-earth/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01...
- TeMPOraL 8y agoBut honestly, who cares if a hypothetical far-future species of intelligent beings would evolve on Earth. We are humans, this is our civilization, and if we fuck this one up, we're checking out of the game. Even if we don't go extinct, it'll be many millennia before we're back at our feet. We have one chance here to build something qualitatively new and permanent in this universe.
- ForHackernews 8y agoIt may well be too late already. This article was originally posted in 2016, and things have gotten worse since then: https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos... If we wanted to have a genuine fighting chance of holding climate change to a safe level, the entire world would need to be on a war footing: rationing, mass revocation of driver's licenses, no coal power plants, anywhere. Nobody will stand for that, there's no political or economic will. Our grandchildren will curse us for hard lives we've bequeathed to them.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoI'm pretty sure my cats are just keeping me around because I can open the food can.
- mirimir 8y agoAnd because you're too big to kill. But if you die, they may eat you ;)
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- tremon 8y agoOur technological ability to destroy greatly outmatches our ability to preserve, and always has. I do not believe techological progress will save the day. Technology alone with not spontaneously generate more sustainable economics or more reponsible societies.
- snikeris 8y agoI disagree. When you're struggling to survive, you don't care what your trash fire is doing to the environment. Caring about the environment is a wealthy person's problem. Technology creates wealth.
- trukterious 8y agoSnikeris is snickety, but correct. In the long run, only technology and creativity could create better substitutes for burning wood and dung. For making furniture and other structures out of rainforest hardwood. Only technology will avert the next big meteor strike and the next super-volcano eruption (both otherwise inevitable, and both capable of wiping out a multitude of species, as has happened previously). Reversion to a primitive way of life could make matters worse, environmentally speaking. The attraction is based on guilt. It's a response to the alienation and nihilism we associate with modernity; a response to philosophical and spiritual problems rather than to environmental ones. So our duty remains not to prophecy doom but to work for a better world -- for all life.
- PeterisP 8y agoWood is a renewable resource - if the global population was (for example) a few million people, then building everything out of wood, clearcutting forests for farming and burning all the wood they'd need wouldn't be a problem; and without technology a high population can't be sustained. What's dangerous, however, is a mid-tech low-income high-population situation, which can only be a dystopia. High technology is a solution, stone-age technology can be a solution, but any semi-industrialized post-apocalyptic 'steampunk' will be worse than both high and low tech.
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- mirimir 8y agoYes, I suppose. The species saved will be humans, pets, livestock, crops, and whatever else is necessary, or can't be gotten rid of.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoThe looming cliff of possible extinction becoming visible. Of course at that point it's way past too late.
- redleggedfrog 8y agoYou can take solace in the nature of geographic time. Eventually humans will be gone and nature will replenish itself. Life finds a way.
- saiya-jin 8y agoIf you take even broader view, all life on Earth will die when our dying Sun expands itself and burn Earth. To me that's equivalent of life without meaning or purpose, but that might be just my narrow view. Also possible is - another species, probably if challenged enough will evolve to be smart enough to escape, colonize the galaxy or whole universe. But we still have a good chance! Let's not focus at what is broken, failed or doomed but rather what might give us better chance achieving this. It can be supporting some moral company (not necessarily SpaceX but possibly a good example), or not supporting one that is oblivious to environment and our future and has the only focus to make money at all costs. it can be just about being a good person to everybody out there. Tiny steps can lead to great future... maybe I am naive, but does it really matter in this specific topic? We have no clue about future, which decisions will be important and which not.
- jniedrauer 8y agoConsider that climate change caused by advanced civilizations may be "the great filter". The stars really are empty. We had a chance, but we failed just like all the others. Maybe life doesn't find a way.
- sebazzz 8y agoIntelligent life does not find a way. But what is the root cause? Why don't we care enough? Money?
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- PeterisP 8y agoA clear, imminent harm to our livelihood in this generation. A clear harm to someone else's livelihood (e.g. birds, or some people on the other side of the planet) or long-term harm to our descendants is clearly not considered sufficient as we all can see.
- titzer 8y agoWe're going over the cliff, it looks like. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/19/half-of-the-great-barrier-reef-coral-has-died-since-2016/#1ca2e1d45f9f https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/19/half-of-t... The planet is not taking kindly to our waste, pollution, poisons, and rampant destruction. We're knocking out the base of the foodchain that supports us. Sadhguru put it well: "One half of your breathing apparatus is hanging out there! If you experience this, do I have to tell you, don't cut the tree?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnmaD6Kl1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnmaD6Kl1g
- southerndrift 8y agoIf you burn all fossil fuel, you still have oxygen to breath. There were animals like sharks before trees even developed. Sooner or later, we will go all in on synthetic life. Apart from destroying a library of global process optima and beneficial molecules, why should we worry about destroying nature? If we can live on mars we can also live on a sterile earth. We stupidly destroy very expensive knowledge but we don't destroy life.
- Retric 8y agoWe don't currently live on Mars and don't have the ability to do so yet. At some point in the distant future we might be able to, but we could easily fail to get there by killing ourselves off before then. The problem is increasing risks. As you reduce biological diversity you decrease stability. We have already gone though two banana strains due focusing on small number of varieties. So, you might think humanity could survive with say a handful of plant species for example, but that starts the countdown to zero which will kill us off.
- s_kilk 8y ago> If we can live on mars We can't live on Mars, nor can we live on a sterile Earth.
- southerndrift 8y agoWe will be able to do so soon: * NASA Launches $1m Competition to Turn Mars CO2 into Sugar[1] Energy and food, what else would you need? When the threat of death becomes more pressing, more resources will be put into that research to synthesize all necessary nutritions. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17918909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17918909
- TheBeardKing 8y agoI used to think more laws would be the answer to so many enviromental issues, surpassing the effects of individual choice. But the habitat loss described in this article is mainly attributed to illegal logging, which means personal greed drives up the price on the black market for things such as rare animal and plant species and exotic woods. Maybe the penalties for contraband aren't high enough? Or maybe we should completely block the import of rainforest species of wood, regardless of whether it was legally harvested. Outside of a massive armed defense from illegal loggers, what can stop them?
- Retric 8y agoLaws are meaningless without enforcement. For now it's a simple tragedy of the commons with global benefit without global support. So, really what we can do is pay these countries to enforce the rules on the books and or create other incentives to protect these resources.
- ada1981 8y agoIf you care more about trees and birds than you do about the humans who are living in poverty who rely on illegal logging to survive, you won’t really create a system with the right incentives. Outside of that, I helped with a project that uses old cell phones to help triangulate loggers by listening to their saws, which can be helpful.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoAnd if we care about both ...? It's not just caring vs not being about people. If we destroy the environment the impact is on 8+ Billion people. 'The needs of the many...' and all that. I'm sure the market will fix it. /s
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYou read an awful lot into your parents comment that wasn’t said. They never suggested not to care about both, for example. They also said nothing about the market taking care of it.
- rezeroed 8y agoLooking up the cryptic treehunter, it seems it was only discovered end of 2014, so hopefully it's just being elusive.
- duncan-donuts 8y agoThe article says it was found in 2002 and hasn’t been seen since 2007. Where did you read that?
- tzs 8y agoFound an interesting article on an illegally traded Spix's maccaw, and the effort to return him home and find him a mate. https://www.audubon.org/magazine/november-december-2015/can-two-frozen-testicles-bring-back https://www.audubon.org/magazine/november-december-2015/can-...
- onewhonknocks 8y agoExtinction is a normal part of the process: "More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to have died out."
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYes, but there is a maximum sustainable pace of extinction, above which causes chain extinction.
- glup 8y agoWhat is unnatural is that the rate of extinction associated with human growth is comparable to other mass die-offs, like an asteroid hitting the earth. Given how little we understand these systems, we could easily end up among the casualties if there is large-scale ecological collapse.
- mikestew 8y agoThese types of arguments get so tiresome. "On a long enough timeline, the sun will explode and consume the earth." "True, but that still doesn't mean I'm going to let you set my house on fire."
- randyrand 8y agohow many new species are created a year? has this been studied?