4 ms·

It's funny we think we are an "advanced" civilization, yet we have no real time diagnostics of the status of our biosphere. It's really creepy how little basic

by fsloth 8y ago

It's funny we think we are an "advanced" civilization, yet we have no real time diagnostics of the status of our biosphere. It's really creepy how little basic research apparently is going on into "boring" ecological factors. This insect apocalypse is like you suddenly notice you are missing an arm and a leg and have no idea what happened to them. Any professionals in um... ecological metrics here? To an outsider it seems there are like three people on the planet who are concerned about the quantifiable properties of our biosphere and only one of them got part time funding.

voqv 8y ago
For some reason we as humanity have been living really well for the last 50 years and, without thought, we imagine it's just going to stay like that.
- addicted 8y ago
  But even that is misleading. A small fraction of humanity has been living really well. And it’s increasingly apparent they have been able to do so by essentially pushing the costs of their actions to future generations.
  - vokep 8y ago
    No. Almost everyone is living "really well" compared to 100 years back. The lowest low is higher than it was before.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    "living really well" is highly subjective, >5 billion people now have a mobile phone connection, according to GSMA data. Per https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/13/5-billion-people-now-have-a-mobile-phone-connection-according-to-gsma-data/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/13/5-billion-people-now-have... That alone should be an indication people are living quite different now than just 10 years ago.
- crispinb 8y ago
  Even 'living well' isn't quite right. By and large, we have swapped out physical for psychological suffering.
  - voqv 8y ago
    What I meant is, for an unprecedented in human history amount of people life is not poverty, dirt, disease and death at 40. But you're right, just like the observation below, we (this amount of people) also offload our suffering onto the environment and even onto some of those people living in poverty.
growlist 8y ago
Makes me think of Buckminster Fuller's World Game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game I guess the problem is that similar to indicators of climate change there would likely be massive methodological argument, some of it legitimate, some of it mendacious, bogging the thing down so much as to destroy its usefulness.
- fsloth 8y ago
  I'm talking just raw numbers like you get in a weather forecast. The fact that politics would happen is not really an explanation of anything. Politics happen in everything people do - at some level.
porpoisely 8y ago
Using the kardashev scale, we aren't even a level 1 civilization and nowhere close to be an advanced one. We might destroy the ecosystem and ourselves because we reach the first level of the kardashev scale. It's simply human hubris to think we are an advanced civilization and our pride may be our downfall.
dgudkov 8y ago
>we are an "advanced" civilization I wouldn't call a civilization "advanced" if 3 generations ago it had a vague idea about electricity and flush toilets.
karandodia 8y ago
The funding issue has hamstrung scientists for decades and limited our data to a very small pool, but the trends are increasingly clear: we're well into the 6th mass extinction event. See https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... and https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/animal-decline-living-planet-report-conservation-news/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/animal-de.... On a more positive note, a few folks I know are in the early stages of an ambitious attempt to regenerate a bioregion: https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/we-are-regenerating-an-entire-bioregion-1f1ce7cb29b7 https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/we-are-regenerating-an-entire.... The hope is that this kind of work—developing models of ecosystems rooted in complexity science that expose key leverage points—can be refined through experimentation in Costa Rica and extended to increasingly dissimilar bioregions.

by fsloth 8y ago

voqv 8y ago

For some reason we as humanity have been living really well for the last 50 years and, without thought, we imagine it's just going to stay like that.

addicted 8y ago
But even that is misleading. A small fraction of humanity has been living really well. And it’s increasingly apparent they have been able to do so by essentially pushing the costs of their actions to future generations.
- vokep 8y ago
  No. Almost everyone is living "really well" compared to 100 years back. The lowest low is higher than it was before.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  "living really well" is highly subjective, >5 billion people now have a mobile phone connection, according to GSMA data. Per https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/13/5-billion-people-now-have-a-mobile-phone-connection-according-to-gsma-data/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/13/5-billion-people-now-have... That alone should be an indication people are living quite different now than just 10 years ago.
crispinb 8y ago
Even 'living well' isn't quite right. By and large, we have swapped out physical for psychological suffering.
- voqv 8y ago
  What I meant is, for an unprecedented in human history amount of people life is not poverty, dirt, disease and death at 40. But you're right, just like the observation below, we (this amount of people) also offload our suffering onto the environment and even onto some of those people living in poverty.

growlist 8y ago

Makes me think of Buckminster Fuller's World Game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game I guess the problem is that similar to indicators of climate change there would likely be massive methodological argument, some of it legitimate, some of it mendacious, bogging the thing down so much as to destroy its usefulness.

fsloth 8y ago
I'm talking just raw numbers like you get in a weather forecast. The fact that politics would happen is not really an explanation of anything. Politics happen in everything people do - at some level.

porpoisely 8y ago

Using the kardashev scale, we aren't even a level 1 civilization and nowhere close to be an advanced one. We might destroy the ecosystem and ourselves because we reach the first level of the kardashev scale. It's simply human hubris to think we are an advanced civilization and our pride may be our downfall.

dgudkov 8y ago

>we are an "advanced" civilization I wouldn't call a civilization "advanced" if 3 generations ago it had a vague idea about electricity and flush toilets.

karandodia 8y ago

The funding issue has hamstrung scientists for decades and limited our data to a very small pool, but the trends are increasingly clear: we're well into the 6th mass extinction event. See https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... and https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/animal-decline-living-planet-report-conservation-news/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/animal-de.... On a more positive note, a few folks I know are in the early stages of an ambitious attempt to regenerate a bioregion: https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/we-are-regenerating-an-entire-bioregion-1f1ce7cb29b7 https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/we-are-regenerating-an-entire.... The hope is that this kind of work—developing models of ecosystems rooted in complexity science that expose key leverage points—can be refined through experimentation in Costa Rica and extended to increasingly dissimilar bioregions.