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Birds Are Vanishing from North America

493 points by wiggles_md 7y ago

bsmitty5000 7y ago
This article doesn't mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it's clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. I wonder if there's a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats. Although, interestingly, the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population. It's hard to imagine humans taking the corrective solution here. My gut says we either continue on this road and completely destroy the natural world a la Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs, or we die out and the planet recovers on its own.
- technothrasher 7y ago
  > or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard. Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.
  - apocalypstyx 7y ago
    Saving ourselves for a little while. At the end of the end, no one outruns entropy.
  - aeternum 7y ago
    It's also unlikely that all humans would die out even from severe climate change given our current technology. You could say that saving the environment is just saving the current set of humans, or our modern way of life. It definitely sounds much less noble when put that way though.
    - outworlder 7y ago
      > It's also unlikely that all humans would die out even from severe climate change given our current technology. Up to a point, you could artificially sustain small populations (climate-controlled greenhouses and habitation). But there's a limit. We are not able to recreate the whole biosphere yet.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Which is all the reason to remember that, whatever we do, we absolutely cannot break our civilization's ability to maintain existing level of technology and improve on it. If we do break it, we're done. The Gulf Stream shutting down would be tough, but survivable. Global economy shutting down would be game over for humanity, preceded by unprecedented amounts of suffering. > You could say that saving the environment is just saving the current set of humans, or our modern way of life. It definitely sounds much less noble when put that way though. If you compare "our modern way of life" and the promises ahead to past millennia of humanity, it actually does sound very noble. I wouldn't wish medieval or ancestral life on my worst enemy.
  - lostconfused 7y ago
    "Ideal state" is inserted by your own bias. There are plenty of changes made by humans to the planetary system and some of them will be undone once humans are not around to maintain those changes.
    - Kiro 7y ago
      So what? What's the higher purpose?
      - jjuhl 7y ago
        Purpose? Ultimately there is none, of course. But short term there's the prolonged existence of our species.
  - amatecha 7y ago
    I would never use the phrase "ideal state", but rather "natural state". Though, even that is not quite accurate as humans are naturally-occurring too, but the things we do (and do to the planet) are not quite so "natural". While thinking that "the planet is worse off because of humans" is a judgement, I think it's not unreasonable to assert that innocent life forms all over the world suffer by our actions (more than they probably would have if we weren't here), and they are powerless to prevent that. I think this is what people are intuitively feeling a sense of when they say things like "or we die out and the planet recovers on its own".
    - rdiddly 7y ago
      In my ponderings on this, I tend to think of a "post-human state." If the influence of homo sapiens on a place or ecosystem were to decrease dramatically, and insofar as any place or ecosystem would tend toward anything resembling equilibrium rather than constant/continued change, most of them will probably stabilize around a discernibly post-human state, rather than the pre-human one that prevailed throughout most of our history until the industrial era. It's just the lowest-energy and most likely outcome. So like, all the kudzu, rats and other wacky species we've introduced here and there, would have a go. Though they might not all make it. Pretty much impossible to predict, because it's a chaotic system, but also because the effects of the heat we've introduced have only started to play out.
    - tgarv 7y ago
      I was actually wondering recently if there has ever been a huge spike in, say, a new species of algae or something, that caused a large change in the atmosphere. I know that what we're doing as a species isn't "natural", and we know better and could avoid it if we really wanted to, but it still had me thinking about what kinds of things the planet has gone through before that would have been alarming at the time if someone had been around to monitor it.
      - Donald 7y ago
        Species are created on geologic timescales. Human activity is, in comparison, instantaneously destroying biological diversity. Evolution simply doesn't have enough time to adapt species to the sort of exponential changes we're seeing in their environments.
  - ff317 7y ago
    +1 - I think the kind of marketing and messaging that makes environmentalism all about saving "the planet" and "the animals" and "the natural environment" really doesn't serve us well. A better strategic approach would be to highlight (with the right crafty messaging) that a very tiny statistical slice of earth's historical states and potential future states are any good at supporting large human populations comfortably like we do today, and our goal is preserving this state in our own self-interest. It's not environmentalism at all, it's human self-interest.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      Your approach will fail for the same reason than an ethical environmental appeal does. Enough humans who feel and fear their impending mortality are selfish and vindictive enough to obstruct change because they want to conserve whatever material comforts they have now and do not care about what happens to other people after they're dead. I would go so far as to say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled 'skeptics'.
      - socialist_coder 7y ago
        I don't disagree, but I also think it is important to note that what you are describing is baked into our entire economic system. Economic actors all acting rationally in their own best interest, which automatically filters out any long term multi-generational outlook. Capitalism is the root cause here.
        UnFleshedOne 7y ago
        That's a good point. Would be nice if vindictive people had to make an actual effort, instead of their position being the default path of least resistance.
        andrey_utkin 7y ago
        Following one's desires is baked into our biology, and economic system is just the consequence. Kittens don't know about capitalism but they follow their desires. Capitalism is just a mental framework which helps to satisfy one's desires in a big way without the need to kill people. Full socialism, while very interesting to many here, especially when it comes to the final happy picture, unfortunately involves killing lots and lots of people, as history shows us.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    > Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves I wonder, though... we know, for example, that bees pollinate plants, and that we need plants to be pollinated for our survival. But if the bees die out, we can figure out another technical way to pollinate plants - it might be a pain to carry out, and we might be kicking ourselves for not saving the bees before it got to that point, but it can be done. If it comes down to a matter of survival, humans a a species will figure out a way to get what needs to be done, done. You might say that saving the birds and the insects now is the "simpler" route than replacing them, but it's starting to look like you'd be wrong, and we're not going to have any choice but figure out how to keep the human race going without them.
    - yifanl 7y ago
      We haven't come close to solving the environment, whatever that means. If we had that solution on any scale, then almost by tautology, climate change wouldn't be a problem.
    - jacobolus 7y ago
      > If it comes down to a matter of survival, humans as a species will figure out a way to get what needs to be done, done. Don’t count on it. Human civilization depends heavily on trust and cooperation, and a large number of complex systems functioning which nobody completely understands and most people barely notice. The whole endeavor is quite fragile. Once basic systems start breaking down, people start starving and dying, and societies start to collapse, it can get real bad in a hurry. There have been plenty of past examples of large-scale societies collapsing into ruin, with the survivors fleeing or dying out.
      - Bjartr 7y ago
        Note that he said species and you said civilization. Civilization could crumble, worldwide populations of humans could crater to under a million, and the species could survive for another hundred thousand years. You're both correct, you're just talking past each other.
      - richardknop 7y ago
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  - gerbilly 7y ago
    > That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. If you want to know what the natural state for an area is, ask a native person from a population that has un uninterrupted culture, that is if you can find one. A native person I know often describes a discorded ecosystem by saying: "The land is sick." To equivocate and to claim all states are equally natural, is to deliberately miss the point. A healthy ecosystem—and most of us haven't ever seen one—is obviously healthy when you see it. It's a tautology to say that everything is natural. You could argue that plutonium and dioxin are natural, but without considering the concentration and distribution, it's meaningless semantics.
    - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      Chinese are "native people from a population that has un-uninterrupted culture". Not too great at preserving environment (reportedly improving lately I think). Idea of a "noble savage" is a myth that is about as racist as it's opposite.
      - krapp 7y ago
        >Chinese are "native people from a population that has un-uninterrupted culture". Didn't they interrupt their culture with extreme prejudice like fifty-odd years ago?
      - gerbilly 7y ago
        Don't sling epithets. My using the word 'native' was a proxy for a type of culture: a close to the land hunter gatherer lifestyle. You know one that would necessarily make them keen observers of their natural environment. I could have said aboriginal, but maybe you'll take offence to that too?
        UnFleshedOne 7y ago
        Ah, sorry, I didn't mean you are racist. Just the idea of noble savage. I should have been more careful with the wording. Re: hunter-gatherer lifestyle, my understanding that people leading that are merely unlucky (or lucky) ones who didn't domesticate enough plants and animals to settle down and go through a population explosion. They certainly have a lot of knowledge about local ecosystems because they depend on that knowledge for survival. But, a few successful domestications, some introduced species, few hundred years of nice weather and they will multiply and turn into the same kind of locusts the rest of humanity is. I think Maya or Aztec went through that. Hell, this was happening back when cyanobacteria was repeatedly wiping out life on earth before something figured out how to use oxygen. It is a general property of life -- consume and reproduce. We might eventually grow out of it (I see a lot of promise in regenerative agriculture for example), but chances are not certain.
  - RangerScience 7y ago
    It's not so much that I completely agree with your sentiment, than that I think this is an incredible way to phrase the issue. Likely more effective, and I think I'll try switching to it.
  - scoutt 7y ago
    > 'ideal state' There may not be an ideal state, but maybe parent is talking about reverting the damage we are producing. > Without us, the planet would just go on changing That's true, but at the same time it is not a valid excuse to keep making damage. Someone could argue that killing you today is OK since you'll eventually die. > Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less. You can also word it as 'destroying the environment is killing ourselves', that is more or less the same we hear every day.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    I strongly disagree. I don't believe in an natural ideal state, however I can distinguish between a planet with a large number of species living in a biologically diverse set of ecosystems; an a biologically impoverished planet with fewer species and biomes. I think it is fair to say that complexity and variety is a objectively good thing and that humanity's action causing a mass extinction event is objectively bad. That's not to say that mass extinctions or biome change will occur without us.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      I disagree and prefer a world with fewer species. Insects and birds going away is something I'm really happy about. For example, I hate mosquitoes and the noise birds make. Also not fond of birds defecating wherever.
      - inimino 7y ago
        Is this satire?
        Kaiyou 7y ago
        No, but you thinking it would be shows your biases/filterbubble.
        inimino 7y ago
        And you expecting it to be read straight shows yours.
        Kaiyou 7y ago
        I wrote it tongue in cheek, but I'm serious. Being surrounded by people that think like you makes me aware of that type of attitude.
      - inimino 7y ago
        Fortunately[1], those annoying birds and insects are going away[2] like never before! [1] for you [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator_decline Are humans starving to death also something you'd be really happy about? Because if insects and birds go away, who is going to pollinate all that shit you plant and expect to be able to eat? Also not fond of your cities and farms pouring your waste into the oceans wherever.
  - Ma8ee 7y ago
    > Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less. I disagree. I think nature has a value in itself, in all its complexity and beauty. I think few people would argue that if the Louvre was destroyed it wouldn't be considered a loss for the world and for humankind, or that we don't still lament the loss of the library in Alexandria. Of course, nothing of this matters from the perspective of the heath death of the universe. But that is a cynism that I consider juvenile.
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  It's pretty clear humans are fine with getting any given species down to populations as low as dozens so long as they don't completely go extinct.
- dec0dedab0de 7y ago
  ...we die out and the planet recovers on its own. I like to think that the point of humanity is to destroy as many genetic lines as possible, before going extinct ourselves. A trial by fire that weeds out all but the most resilient. Eventually evolving into new, even better intelligence.
  - pretendscholar 7y ago
    Evolution in the sense of natural selection is an incredibly brutal, dumb, and silly subtractive process. I urge my fellow hn commenters not to mistake this for some higher purpose or value. Its an easy mistake to make but the selection pressures that would leave some survivors of the Holocene implies no higher, better intelligence. Often it involves greedy local optimization. Roaches and rats for example are well suited to survive and although clever and resourceful they aren't exactly what might be thought of something that might lead to uberintelligence or something better than our evolutionary path.
    - dec0dedab0de 7y ago
      That's why I prefaced it with "I like to think" to indicate a sense of wistfulness
      - pretendscholar 7y ago
        Ah, one can hope.
  - hnick 7y ago
    Well, there are different types of resilient. Many domesticated animals and livestock will outlive their wild counterparts because they're useful to us - but the day we go, I'm not so sure how well they will do!
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  "I wonder if there's a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats" Bats have had a massive population dip in several areas in the americas, up to and including to the point where places bats hibernate to have been forbidden in an effort to stop the spread of a fungus ('White Nose Syndrome') that causes the bat to wake during hibernation, speeding its metabolism and causing it to starve itself. Several species have gone from common to endangered/critically endangered because of this. There's ongoing research as to how bats became more vulnerable to this existant disease- is it higher temps? Toxins?
- siempreb 7y ago
  Indeed, insect population decline was the first cause that came to mind, and then I read: > In addition to habitat loss, pesticides may have taken a toll. Which is also the main cause for insect population decline. I just cannot believe why governments still allow the use of pesticides, it is so damn wrong just for economic purpose.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Pesticides are necessary for current crop productions .. crops that go to growing fuel (ethanol), food starch and other things we have mass use of, but that are not going to be sustainable. Bee populations are suffering greatly and we needs those bees to grow a lot of our food. It doesn't help that bees are shipped in to places like the Almond farms in California, putting them in a lot of stress and hurting their colonies. Even though worker bees only live 2 ~ 4 weeks, the stress of transport does affect these pollinators. It would make sense the decline in insect populations affecting birds for sure. Pesticides aren't limited to areas around farms and most likely find their way far out into the environment. So if pesticides are the problem the question is, how do deal with the agricultural industry that depends on them? Is it possible to get our population to stop consuming as much crop based product and prevent more of the pesticides from entering the environment? Or is there a way to limit their effects?
- burtonator 7y ago
  If you'd like to help with this issue you can replace the plans in your yard with native plants. Most of the insects in your area CAN NOT eat the plants in your yard. That's one of the reasons they're planted - they look better and last longer. However, if insects can't eat them then there are less birds. HOAs will often fight you over this so you might need to educate them.
- notadoc 7y ago
  Loss of insects, likely combined with the huge increase in domestic cat populations. > continue on this road and completely destroy the natural world I'd generally agree with that dystopian line of thinking.
- ehnto 7y ago
  > a la Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs If I am not mistaken, Trantor relied on an external supply chain from other planets in the empire in order to survive. It struck me as enormously brittle at the time and indeed in the books.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  >This article doesn't mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it's clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. If you cast a wider net you'll see that this mass extinction goes beyond birds and insects to all living creatures including plant life. Year after year we destroy more and more of the forests and other natural places while saturating the earth with more and more of our garbage and synthetic trash and plastic that will never decay but will serve to poison the ecosystem we all depend on to survive. The vast majority of public concern is focused on, "global warming" which is only a tiny part of the damage we are doing. Anyone who even attempts to raise the issue of our massive overpopulation, which causes and exacerbates all of our environmental issues (as well as many of our social ones) is instantly castigated and derided as a lunatic or a Malthusian, while we add another billion people to our already shattered ecosystem. I pity the kids!
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs Trantor required continuous supply from 20 agricultural worlds to survive. Pretty much all necessities of life for trantorian were externally sourced, with the possible exception of water. Once that shut down after the 260 sack and the Imperial Family leaving for Neotrantor, population crashed from 40G to 100M.
- masklinn 7y ago
  Outdoor cats (both domestic and feral) don't help either.
- ptah 7y ago
  > the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population current administration is firmly behind even further decline: https://newfoodeconomy.org/neonicotinoid-ban-reversal-center-for-biological-diversity-trump-lawsuit-fish-wildlife-service/ https://newfoodeconomy.org/neonicotinoid-ban-reversal-center...
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  > or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. I think all these scenarios are unrealistic. If at all, and that is still a big if, only the vast majority would die. So hooray, I guess.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  > the planet recovers on its own. Like all those other planets without us, like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus,...
  - bognition 7y ago
    As far as we know those planets are devoid of life. Whereas the earth has been teaming with life for billions of years. During that time the earth has gone through thousands of extinction events with 6 mass extinctions (when upwards of 90% of all life went extinct). Our success (humans/mammals) is the result of one of those extinctions. So yeah, life has a strong foot hold on earth and it will continue to do so long after we're gone.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      Wouldn't you then be inclined to agree that planets being devoid of life is the natural state?
- ngvrnd 7y ago
  "... just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs, ... " Plug for "Girl's Last Tour" anime/manga.
shealutton2 7y ago
When the news broke that bugs were disappearing, this was the expected followup. Right? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insect-populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insec...
- whenanother 7y ago
  another issue is how preys of insects dying off is leading to more of the kind of insects that rely on humans, like disease spreading insects. i would not be surprised if zika or other disease are more widespread than being reported. and these corporations are trying to cash in by advertising gmo mosquitoes which have shown to not work. these mosquitoes are able to breed away the reproductive deficiency but now you are left with a franken bug out in wild reproducing like crazy.
fjabre 7y ago
Anytime someone brings up Monsanto they are downvoted because without pesticides humans cannot feed themselves apparently. And herbicides are for plants only so of course they have no effect on insects. /s
- Tepix 7y ago
  You're the only one who brought them up so far and you don't seem to have been downvoted.
  - fjabre 7y ago
    Thats true. Reddit seems to be more infested with the pro monsanto crowd. Many of their arguments sound very legitimate as in - try feeding the human race some other way type arguments. But then we must consider this ongoing mass extinction event which seems intimately tied to the use of pesticides and herbicides that apparently, according to the experts, are not harmful to unintended insect populations. It’s hard to know whats true and what isnt with all the misinformation being spread around.
    - mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
      It's not hard to know, just people being lazy to do their own research.
    - jjuhl 7y ago
      "try feeding the human race" - How about we reduce our impact on the planet by not feeding all of the human race? Reducing the number of humans on the planet seems like it would be a great first step in solving the overall problem.
      - uptown 7y ago
        Who do you suggest we kill?
        7y ago
spodek 7y ago
We're swimming in environmental problems. We can come up with makeshift solutions to many, but for solving them all, and not to suggest it's the only solution, but a part of anything comprehensive, is there any environmental problem that a smaller human population doesn't alleviate?
- jandrese 7y ago
  I prefer to keep "kill all humans" lower down on the list of possible solutions to environmental problems. Lets try some alternatives first.
  - astrodust 7y ago
    Nobody has to be killed, but if a handful of people were put in jail the world would be a dramatically different place.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      People are going to say you're persecuting them for their religion if you jail "quiverfull" parents.
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  - spodek 7y ago
    I don't understand the persistent misstating what lowering the population means. It's no secret we're all going to die. We don't need to kill anyone. As for alternatives, we've exhausted plenty. Growth, in particular, has failed. Stepping on the gas pedal is not slowing us down. When should we step on the brake? After we drive off the cliff feels too late.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      Check the rest of the thread, there is no shortage of people that mean it in exactly "the bad way".
tylerpachal 7y ago
(serious) Is there any hope? Its just one problem after another (probably because everything is linked). What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?
- mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
  Chances are slim to none. Once permafrost goes there is no stopping it. It's already starting to go...
- point78 7y ago
  Trim the world population
  - glogla 7y ago
    Overpopulation rhetoric is eugenics.
    - jjuhl 7y ago
      No it's not. There are too many humans on the planet. Reducing the number would lead to a more sustainable situation. That's just basic logic.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        "Reducing" (by means unspecified) sounds uncomfortably close to mass killing. Worse, the logic of the "climate action now" position is that we can't wait for 2050. That will be too late. Well, if you want to reduce the population by 2050, what concrete steps do you propose? (I know, you didn't say 2050. I think "action now" is inherent in the logic of your position, though.)
        isodude 7y ago
        Reducing could simple as not adding that many more all the time. Increasing the level of global education will have that effect in itself.
openmosix 7y ago
Birds aren't real! https://birdsarentreal.com/pages/the-history https://birdsarentreal.com/pages/the-history
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  No, just no. This is exactly how the flat earth thing took off - people passed it around as a laugh, but at some point someone wasn't in on the joke and really ran with it. If that stuff continues pretty soon people will be shooting birds because they think they are drones or something. Let's not propagate that insanity, even if you do find it funny.
  - chadcmulligan 7y ago
    by that logic, any satire should be rejected, a bit of a boring world.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      I guess we need to figure out where satire ends and crazy conspiracy theories begin. The difference seems to be with how often repeated and fervent the claim is.
      - chadcmulligan 7y ago
        > I guess we need to figure out where satire ends and crazy conspiracy theories begin how exactly? I remember when I was at Uni we used to joke about project echelon - the crazy conspiracy theory about the NSA recording everyones phone calls and storing them under Cheyenne mountain :-)
      - guerrilla 7y ago
        how about we teach epistemology and logic instead.
        SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
dpflan 7y ago
"Bird" is the word today: also on the front page now: > "The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018850
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boyadjian 7y ago
Yes, but in 50 years, North America population increased by 120 million. No pain, no gain.
jsonmez 7y ago
LOL NY Times... LOL, sure, sure guys I believe you now...
- chrisbro 7y ago
  Could always just read the underlying study, but I'm guessing you don't care too much about what it's saying, just who's saying it? https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DECLINE-OF-NORTH-AMERICAN-AVIFAUNA-SCIENCE-2019.pdf https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...
hyperion2010 7y ago
Since I almost never see it mentioned in any threads related to this subject, am I thrilled that the main article actually references Silent Spring. I remember growing up that people thought that we had somehow managed to avoid the future it portrayed, but no, we have not. Another generation and the purveyors of death are back selling the cure for other species some people haven't learned to live in balance with.
- bt848 7y ago
  People also think we avoided the future predicted by “The Population Bomb” but we didn’t.
  - guerrilla 7y ago
    People who are experts that is.
  - tengbretson 7y ago
    We obviously did.
    - sedachv 7y ago
      From Chapter 6 of the "Population Bomb," titled "What If I'm Wrong?": "To cover this contingency, I would like to propose an analogue to Pascal's famous wager… If I'm right, we will save the world. If I'm wrong, people will still be better fed, better housed, and happier,thanks to our efforts. Will anything be lost if it turns out later that we can support a much larger population than seems possible today? Suppose we move to stabilize the size of the human population after the "time of famines" at two billion people, and we achieve that goal by 2150. Suppose that in 2151 someone invents a machine that will produce nutritious food or anything else man wants in limitless quantities out of nothing. Assume also that in 2151 mankind decides that the Earth is underpopulated with just two billion people. Men decide that they want more company. Fortunately, people can be reproduced in vast quantities by unskilled labor who enjoy their work." And this quote from an earlier chapter: "What will be done with leisure time and money when all vacation spots are crowded beyond belief? Is it worth living in the Los Angeles smog for 50 weeks in order to spend two weeks in Yosemite Valley - when the Valley in the summer may be even more crowded than L.A. and twice as smoggy? What good is having the money for a fishing trip when fish are dead or poisonous because of pesticide pollution? Why own a fancy car in which to get asphyxiated in monster traffic jams?" Live in Los Angeles, can confirm.
monktastic1 7y ago
This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous. Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even spirituality), and the modern scientific metaphysics has no space for "miracles," so we don't have a coherent framework in which to talk about or even remind ourselves of this profound truth. Each of us is left to cobble something together for ourselves (and for the few people around us that we trust not to think we're crazy). I do think that psychedelics seem like one promising avenue. Perhaps they will help give us the inspiration to fill in this tragic blindspot. Edit: If the votes are any indication, then I was too hasty in calling this opinion unpopular. Perhaps more of us suspect this than are willing to say it out loud. Edit 2: On that note, I've been scared to share my own crazy take on this, but I'll just leave this here: https://www.lifeismiraculous.org https://www.lifeismiraculous.org
- blablabla123 7y ago
  I think the modern, post-religious intellectual discourse has not even space for metaphysics. Anything in this direction is considered mumbo jumbo. :-) Materialism probably hasn't reached its peak yet.
  - guerrilla 7y ago
    The history of metaphysics is people denying that they're doing metaphysics. Materialism and scientific realism in science and various forms of Platonism and structuralism in mathematics are just too prevalent for people to even notice them at this point.
    - monktastic1 7y ago
      Can't agree strongly enough. Even with meditation, where the whole point is (in a sense) to wake up to one's entire field of experience, people are generally unwilling to dig under their own metaphysical layers. They write this off as "oh, I don't do metaphysics." Yes, you do; you're just unwilling to face it. I updated my post above with a link to a first draft of a site where I go into a little more detail.
rblion 7y ago
This hurts to know. I know we are living through an extinction event but having numbers like these really make it sink in. I feed the birds in my backyard every day, it's a joy to observe the variety that live in just a small grove of trees. I have a tendency to always look up in the sky and take note of soaring birds of prey, they are awe-spiring to say the least.
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christophilus 7y ago
> Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development. This has been known for a while. I remember hearing a piece on NPR about this maybe a decade ago. The problem is actually that we have been working hard to reforest, and haven't left grassland. Everything is either forest, or developed, with very little in-between. One of the proposed solutions was to simply not mow 100% of your yard. Leave some bit of it unkempt. There's a local monastery that does this, and there are birds there that I haven't seen anywhere else in the area, so I think there's something to the strategy.
elliottkember 7y ago
I'm from New Zealand, which has a lot of birds, and I live in California. The forests here are eerily quiet, I hate it. Back home the birdsong in forests is deafening.
- tmp190914pn2 7y ago
  I'm from California but I live in New Zealand. The birds here are very noisy in the morning. It's almost plague levels of birds on my farm, of many many varieties (Aussie Magpie, spurwing plover, thrush, morepork, tui, kingfisher, swamp harrier, wood pidgeon, ducks, and others that I haven't identified yet or forgot about. There are even a few exotics that escaped the conservatory in town and decided to live here and breed. Not to mention the bees everywhere, both honey and bumble.
- peterashford 7y ago
  We're managing to make species go extinct at a great rate, too, unfortunately. Habit loss is probably the biggest issue
mhroth 7y ago
If anyone is interested in a fanciful take on reducing the world's population in order to save it, I can happily recommend Channel 4's two-season Utopia series [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnN3WMwDsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnN3WMwDsk
- guerrilla 7y ago
  Or watch Hans Rosling on how it's not a problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdJgEwMinM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdJgEwMinM
Yhippa 7y ago
This is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time. Birds are amazing. It's amazing to me that they are the descendants of dinosaurs and they're all around us. Their songs and plumage are beautiful to me. > Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development. This one I'm not totally sure is even related to climate change. I don't want to tell the person next to me to "stop trying to make a better life for yourself" so I'm not sure what the solution to this is right now.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- m463 7y ago
  They are basically the only higher form of wildlife everyone experiences on a daily basis, even in very urban environments. It's not until the suburbs with trees that you start seeing squirrels and larger animals.
  - weberc2 7y ago
    Chicago has squirrels everywhere except for the loop. And there are rats absolutely everywhere too! I imagine it’s similar in most US cities.
- MAGZine 7y ago
  Not that it is necessarily the answer—but things like buying organic (reduce pesticide use), planting flower varietals that can be homes to diverse insect populations, consuming less animal protein, can be a good start. Part of what I think we're seeing is that people are allowed to do whatever they want with their land without consideration for its wider impact on the environment. Just like we think that maybe destroying habitats by building dams, we should be cognizant of how and what we're doing to the environment with (especially) our farming practices.
- kiliantics 7y ago
  We could have a better life for ourselves without following the status quo and participating in the exponential economic growth that destroys ecosystems. We could just take back the majority of the world's wealth which has been concentrated in the hands of a few that are pitching us against each other in this economic rat race.
corndoge 7y ago
Stop putting your cat outside
ping_pong 7y ago
Trying to estimate the population of birds in North America between now and 50 years ago seems like it would have an error rate of at least 29%. Are the counting and estimation mechanism even anywhere close to similar?
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  You don't believe the number, so they could possibly be wrong, so it's not a cause for concern? That's a lot of jumps to make to get to the case where we don't have to worry. What techniques are they using to count and estimate the birds, and what objections do you take to their methods? Sadly I can't find out as the site is behind a paywall for me.
  - ping_pong 7y ago
    There's only one jump: I don't trust the data, so I'm not yet concerned by this click-bait title. In this day of clickbait titles, studies that are not reproducible, and suspect motivation for studies, the idea that we can calculate the total number of birds with an error rate of less than 30%, including the fact that some data is 50 years old, doesn't pass my smell test. I would prefer waiting for accurate data rather than panic over yet another headline that is not anchored in actual science and facts. For example, did they try to count the number of birds at the same time of the year both times? Do some birds have different multi-year migratory patterns leading to them being in different parts of the world? Did they try counting the birds twice using the same techniques but two different teams, and then compare the numbers? There are too many ways this calculation could fail for me to be trust this data point.
    - appleiigs 7y ago
      > The analysis, published in the journal Science, is the most exhaustive and ambitious attempt yet to learn what is happening to avian populations. > A team of researchers from universities, government agencies and nonprofit organizations collaborated on the new study, which combined old and new methods for counting birds. > Kevin Gaston, a conservation biologist at the University of Exeter > Hillary Young, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara > Scott Loss, a conservation biologist at Oklahoma State University > Kenneth V. Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at Cornell University and the American Bird Conservancy > Dr. Young, of the University of California, Santa Barbara > “If we have two data sets showing the same thing, it’s a home run,” said Nicole Michel, a senior quantitative ecologist at the Audubon Society who was not involved in the study. > Europe is experiencing a similar loss of birds, also among common species, said Dr. Gaston, of the University of Exeter. “The numbers are broadly comparable,” he said. So all these people are idiots and you know better?
tayo42 7y ago
reading things like this are so depressing, wish i knew how to help instead of like making your timeline a little more faster.
kaybe 7y ago
Everyone, join in the protests tomorrow! https://fridaysforfuture.org/events/map?c=+All+countries&d=Future&o=all https://fridaysforfuture.org/events/map?c=+All+countries&d=F...
habosa 7y ago
I went to Australia and spent a day hiking in the blue mountains. I remember thinking that the bird noises were so loud. Not just "huh listen to all the birds" but "it sounds like someone is pumping this in through speakers". Never heard anything like it in America. Maybe that noise level is just normal? I've only been doing meaningful hiking for the past ~10 years. Does anyone older than I am remember birds being much louder in the past?
hackbinary 7y ago
Bird populations are declining in the France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/catastrophe-as-frances-bird-population-collapses-due-to-pesticides https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/catastrophe-as... Britain: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-bird-numbers-species-declines-british-wildlife-turtle-dove-corn-bunting-willow-tits-farmland-a7744666.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-bird-numbers-sp... And also seabirds in Britain: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/20/seabird-colonies-face-catatstrophe-gannets-puffins-food-supply https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/20/seabird-...
root_axis 7y ago
The article mentions it briefly, but outdoor cats are also a considerable contributor to bird deaths. Feral cat colonies obliterate bird populations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdoor-cats-kill-between-14-billion-and-37-billion-birds-a-year-study-says/2013/01/31/2504f744-6bbe-11e2-ada0-5ca5fa7ebe79_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo...
- weberc2 7y ago
  TIL feral cat colonies exist...
tehjoker 7y ago
Bird up
hbarka 7y ago
Depressing. Plastics killing sea life. Pesticides killing bees. Now this? Canary in a coal mine.
25b183 7y ago
We are all linked/affected. First the insects, then the birds... eventually, humans. This is another truly disturbing story.
wildermuthn 7y ago
Some day our robotic overlords will thank us for preparing the world for them.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
People are quick to point out the lack of bugs and habitat, but are leaving out a big killer -- your damn cat. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-... (mostly feral cats... but your lil furball ain't helping)
- nicwolff 7y ago
  Wait a minute. That article says "outdoor cats killed somewhere in the ballpark of 2.4 billion birds in the U.S. per year". The NY Times article linked here says that the bird population decreased by "nearly 3 billion birds" over 50 years. So in 50 years about 120 billion birds were killed by cats, and only 117 billion replacement birds were born? Seems like if we killed the cats, we'd be overrun by birds!

493 points by wiggles_md 7y ago

This article doesn't mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it's clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. I wonder if there's a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats. Although, interestingly, the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population. It's hard to imagine humans taking the corrective solution here. My gut says we either continue on this road and completely destroy the natural world a la Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs, or we die out and the planet recovers on its own.

technothrasher 7y ago
> or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard. Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.
- apocalypstyx 7y ago
  Saving ourselves for a little while. At the end of the end, no one outruns entropy.
- aeternum 7y ago
  It's also unlikely that all humans would die out even from severe climate change given our current technology. You could say that saving the environment is just saving the current set of humans, or our modern way of life. It definitely sounds much less noble when put that way though.
  - outworlder 7y ago
    > It's also unlikely that all humans would die out even from severe climate change given our current technology. Up to a point, you could artificially sustain small populations (climate-controlled greenhouses and habitation). But there's a limit. We are not able to recreate the whole biosphere yet.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Which is all the reason to remember that, whatever we do, we absolutely cannot break our civilization's ability to maintain existing level of technology and improve on it. If we do break it, we're done. The Gulf Stream shutting down would be tough, but survivable. Global economy shutting down would be game over for humanity, preceded by unprecedented amounts of suffering. > You could say that saving the environment is just saving the current set of humans, or our modern way of life. It definitely sounds much less noble when put that way though. If you compare "our modern way of life" and the promises ahead to past millennia of humanity, it actually does sound very noble. I wouldn't wish medieval or ancestral life on my worst enemy.
- lostconfused 7y ago
  "Ideal state" is inserted by your own bias. There are plenty of changes made by humans to the planetary system and some of them will be undone once humans are not around to maintain those changes.
  - Kiro 7y ago
    So what? What's the higher purpose?
    - jjuhl 7y ago
      Purpose? Ultimately there is none, of course. But short term there's the prolonged existence of our species.
- amatecha 7y ago
  I would never use the phrase "ideal state", but rather "natural state". Though, even that is not quite accurate as humans are naturally-occurring too, but the things we do (and do to the planet) are not quite so "natural". While thinking that "the planet is worse off because of humans" is a judgement, I think it's not unreasonable to assert that innocent life forms all over the world suffer by our actions (more than they probably would have if we weren't here), and they are powerless to prevent that. I think this is what people are intuitively feeling a sense of when they say things like "or we die out and the planet recovers on its own".
  - rdiddly 7y ago
    In my ponderings on this, I tend to think of a "post-human state." If the influence of homo sapiens on a place or ecosystem were to decrease dramatically, and insofar as any place or ecosystem would tend toward anything resembling equilibrium rather than constant/continued change, most of them will probably stabilize around a discernibly post-human state, rather than the pre-human one that prevailed throughout most of our history until the industrial era. It's just the lowest-energy and most likely outcome. So like, all the kudzu, rats and other wacky species we've introduced here and there, would have a go. Though they might not all make it. Pretty much impossible to predict, because it's a chaotic system, but also because the effects of the heat we've introduced have only started to play out.
  - tgarv 7y ago
    I was actually wondering recently if there has ever been a huge spike in, say, a new species of algae or something, that caused a large change in the atmosphere. I know that what we're doing as a species isn't "natural", and we know better and could avoid it if we really wanted to, but it still had me thinking about what kinds of things the planet has gone through before that would have been alarming at the time if someone had been around to monitor it.
    - Donald 7y ago
      Species are created on geologic timescales. Human activity is, in comparison, instantaneously destroying biological diversity. Evolution simply doesn't have enough time to adapt species to the sort of exponential changes we're seeing in their environments.
- ff317 7y ago
  +1 - I think the kind of marketing and messaging that makes environmentalism all about saving "the planet" and "the animals" and "the natural environment" really doesn't serve us well. A better strategic approach would be to highlight (with the right crafty messaging) that a very tiny statistical slice of earth's historical states and potential future states are any good at supporting large human populations comfortably like we do today, and our goal is preserving this state in our own self-interest. It's not environmentalism at all, it's human self-interest.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    Your approach will fail for the same reason than an ethical environmental appeal does. Enough humans who feel and fear their impending mortality are selfish and vindictive enough to obstruct change because they want to conserve whatever material comforts they have now and do not care about what happens to other people after they're dead. I would go so far as to say that some of them take a perverse pleasure in the idea of everyone else being worse off, going by the number of facially specious arguments and overtly sadistic rhetoric deployed by many self-styled 'skeptics'.
    - socialist_coder 7y ago
      I don't disagree, but I also think it is important to note that what you are describing is baked into our entire economic system. Economic actors all acting rationally in their own best interest, which automatically filters out any long term multi-generational outlook. Capitalism is the root cause here.
      - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
        That's a good point. Would be nice if vindictive people had to make an actual effort, instead of their position being the default path of least resistance.
      - andrey_utkin 7y ago
        Following one's desires is baked into our biology, and economic system is just the consequence. Kittens don't know about capitalism but they follow their desires. Capitalism is just a mental framework which helps to satisfy one's desires in a big way without the need to kill people. Full socialism, while very interesting to many here, especially when it comes to the final happy picture, unfortunately involves killing lots and lots of people, as history shows us.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves I wonder, though... we know, for example, that bees pollinate plants, and that we need plants to be pollinated for our survival. But if the bees die out, we can figure out another technical way to pollinate plants - it might be a pain to carry out, and we might be kicking ourselves for not saving the bees before it got to that point, but it can be done. If it comes down to a matter of survival, humans a a species will figure out a way to get what needs to be done, done. You might say that saving the birds and the insects now is the "simpler" route than replacing them, but it's starting to look like you'd be wrong, and we're not going to have any choice but figure out how to keep the human race going without them.
  - yifanl 7y ago
    We haven't come close to solving the environment, whatever that means. If we had that solution on any scale, then almost by tautology, climate change wouldn't be a problem.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    > If it comes down to a matter of survival, humans as a species will figure out a way to get what needs to be done, done. Don’t count on it. Human civilization depends heavily on trust and cooperation, and a large number of complex systems functioning which nobody completely understands and most people barely notice. The whole endeavor is quite fragile. Once basic systems start breaking down, people start starving and dying, and societies start to collapse, it can get real bad in a hurry. There have been plenty of past examples of large-scale societies collapsing into ruin, with the survivors fleeing or dying out.
    - Bjartr 7y ago
      Note that he said species and you said civilization. Civilization could crumble, worldwide populations of humans could crater to under a million, and the species could survive for another hundred thousand years. You're both correct, you're just talking past each other.
    - richardknop 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gerbilly 7y ago
  > That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. If you want to know what the natural state for an area is, ask a native person from a population that has un uninterrupted culture, that is if you can find one. A native person I know often describes a discorded ecosystem by saying: "The land is sick." To equivocate and to claim all states are equally natural, is to deliberately miss the point. A healthy ecosystem—and most of us haven't ever seen one—is obviously healthy when you see it. It's a tautology to say that everything is natural. You could argue that plutonium and dioxin are natural, but without considering the concentration and distribution, it's meaningless semantics.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Chinese are "native people from a population that has un-uninterrupted culture". Not too great at preserving environment (reportedly improving lately I think). Idea of a "noble savage" is a myth that is about as racist as it's opposite.
    - krapp 7y ago
      >Chinese are "native people from a population that has un-uninterrupted culture". Didn't they interrupt their culture with extreme prejudice like fifty-odd years ago?
    - gerbilly 7y ago
      Don't sling epithets. My using the word 'native' was a proxy for a type of culture: a close to the land hunter gatherer lifestyle. You know one that would necessarily make them keen observers of their natural environment. I could have said aboriginal, but maybe you'll take offence to that too?
      - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
        Ah, sorry, I didn't mean you are racist. Just the idea of noble savage. I should have been more careful with the wording. Re: hunter-gatherer lifestyle, my understanding that people leading that are merely unlucky (or lucky) ones who didn't domesticate enough plants and animals to settle down and go through a population explosion. They certainly have a lot of knowledge about local ecosystems because they depend on that knowledge for survival. But, a few successful domestications, some introduced species, few hundred years of nice weather and they will multiply and turn into the same kind of locusts the rest of humanity is. I think Maya or Aztec went through that. Hell, this was happening back when cyanobacteria was repeatedly wiping out life on earth before something figured out how to use oxygen. It is a general property of life -- consume and reproduce. We might eventually grow out of it (I see a lot of promise in regenerative agriculture for example), but chances are not certain.
- RangerScience 7y ago
  It's not so much that I completely agree with your sentiment, than that I think this is an incredible way to phrase the issue. Likely more effective, and I think I'll try switching to it.
- scoutt 7y ago
  > 'ideal state' There may not be an ideal state, but maybe parent is talking about reverting the damage we are producing. > Without us, the planet would just go on changing That's true, but at the same time it is not a valid excuse to keep making damage. Someone could argue that killing you today is OK since you'll eventually die. > Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less. You can also word it as 'destroying the environment is killing ourselves', that is more or less the same we hear every day.
- Angostura 7y ago
  I strongly disagree. I don't believe in an natural ideal state, however I can distinguish between a planet with a large number of species living in a biologically diverse set of ecosystems; an a biologically impoverished planet with fewer species and biomes. I think it is fair to say that complexity and variety is a objectively good thing and that humanity's action causing a mass extinction event is objectively bad. That's not to say that mass extinctions or biome change will occur without us.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    I disagree and prefer a world with fewer species. Insects and birds going away is something I'm really happy about. For example, I hate mosquitoes and the noise birds make. Also not fond of birds defecating wherever.
    - inimino 7y ago
      Is this satire?
      - Kaiyou 7y ago
        No, but you thinking it would be shows your biases/filterbubble.
        inimino 7y ago
        And you expecting it to be read straight shows yours.
        Kaiyou 7y ago
        I wrote it tongue in cheek, but I'm serious. Being surrounded by people that think like you makes me aware of that type of attitude.
    - inimino 7y ago
      Fortunately[1], those annoying birds and insects are going away[2] like never before! [1] for you [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator_decline Are humans starving to death also something you'd be really happy about? Because if insects and birds go away, who is going to pollinate all that shit you plant and expect to be able to eat? Also not fond of your cities and farms pouring your waste into the oceans wherever.
- Ma8ee 7y ago
  > Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less. I disagree. I think nature has a value in itself, in all its complexity and beauty. I think few people would argue that if the Louvre was destroyed it wouldn't be considered a loss for the world and for humankind, or that we don't still lament the loss of the library in Alexandria. Of course, nothing of this matters from the perspective of the heath death of the universe. But that is a cynism that I consider juvenile.
pastor_elm 7y ago
It's pretty clear humans are fine with getting any given species down to populations as low as dozens so long as they don't completely go extinct.
dec0dedab0de 7y ago
...we die out and the planet recovers on its own. I like to think that the point of humanity is to destroy as many genetic lines as possible, before going extinct ourselves. A trial by fire that weeds out all but the most resilient. Eventually evolving into new, even better intelligence.
- pretendscholar 7y ago
  Evolution in the sense of natural selection is an incredibly brutal, dumb, and silly subtractive process. I urge my fellow hn commenters not to mistake this for some higher purpose or value. Its an easy mistake to make but the selection pressures that would leave some survivors of the Holocene implies no higher, better intelligence. Often it involves greedy local optimization. Roaches and rats for example are well suited to survive and although clever and resourceful they aren't exactly what might be thought of something that might lead to uberintelligence or something better than our evolutionary path.
  - dec0dedab0de 7y ago
    That's why I prefaced it with "I like to think" to indicate a sense of wistfulness
    - pretendscholar 7y ago
      Ah, one can hope.
- hnick 7y ago
  Well, there are different types of resilient. Many domesticated animals and livestock will outlive their wild counterparts because they're useful to us - but the day we go, I'm not so sure how well they will do!
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
"I wonder if there's a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats" Bats have had a massive population dip in several areas in the americas, up to and including to the point where places bats hibernate to have been forbidden in an effort to stop the spread of a fungus ('White Nose Syndrome') that causes the bat to wake during hibernation, speeding its metabolism and causing it to starve itself. Several species have gone from common to endangered/critically endangered because of this. There's ongoing research as to how bats became more vulnerable to this existant disease- is it higher temps? Toxins?
siempreb 7y ago
Indeed, insect population decline was the first cause that came to mind, and then I read: > In addition to habitat loss, pesticides may have taken a toll. Which is also the main cause for insect population decline. I just cannot believe why governments still allow the use of pesticides, it is so damn wrong just for economic purpose.
djsumdog 7y ago
Pesticides are necessary for current crop productions .. crops that go to growing fuel (ethanol), food starch and other things we have mass use of, but that are not going to be sustainable. Bee populations are suffering greatly and we needs those bees to grow a lot of our food. It doesn't help that bees are shipped in to places like the Almond farms in California, putting them in a lot of stress and hurting their colonies. Even though worker bees only live 2 ~ 4 weeks, the stress of transport does affect these pollinators. It would make sense the decline in insect populations affecting birds for sure. Pesticides aren't limited to areas around farms and most likely find their way far out into the environment. So if pesticides are the problem the question is, how do deal with the agricultural industry that depends on them? Is it possible to get our population to stop consuming as much crop based product and prevent more of the pesticides from entering the environment? Or is there a way to limit their effects?
burtonator 7y ago
If you'd like to help with this issue you can replace the plans in your yard with native plants. Most of the insects in your area CAN NOT eat the plants in your yard. That's one of the reasons they're planted - they look better and last longer. However, if insects can't eat them then there are less birds. HOAs will often fight you over this so you might need to educate them.
notadoc 7y ago
Loss of insects, likely combined with the huge increase in domestic cat populations. > continue on this road and completely destroy the natural world I'd generally agree with that dystopian line of thinking.
ehnto 7y ago
> a la Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs If I am not mistaken, Trantor relied on an external supply chain from other planets in the empire in order to survive. It struck me as enormously brittle at the time and indeed in the books.
StanislavPetrov 7y ago
>This article doesn't mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it's clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. If you cast a wider net you'll see that this mass extinction goes beyond birds and insects to all living creatures including plant life. Year after year we destroy more and more of the forests and other natural places while saturating the earth with more and more of our garbage and synthetic trash and plastic that will never decay but will serve to poison the ecosystem we all depend on to survive. The vast majority of public concern is focused on, "global warming" which is only a tiny part of the damage we are doing. Anyone who even attempts to raise the issue of our massive overpopulation, which causes and exacerbates all of our environmental issues (as well as many of our social ones) is instantly castigated and derided as a lunatic or a Malthusian, while we add another billion people to our already shattered ecosystem. I pity the kids!
masklinn 7y ago
> Trantor in Foundation, just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs Trantor required continuous supply from 20 agricultural worlds to survive. Pretty much all necessities of life for trantorian were externally sourced, with the possible exception of water. Once that shut down after the 260 sack and the Imperial Family leaving for Neotrantor, population crashed from 40G to 100M.
masklinn 7y ago
Outdoor cats (both domestic and feral) don't help either.
ptah 7y ago
> the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population current administration is firmly behind even further decline: https://newfoodeconomy.org/neonicotinoid-ban-reversal-center-for-biological-diversity-trump-lawsuit-fish-wildlife-service/ https://newfoodeconomy.org/neonicotinoid-ban-reversal-center...
raxxorrax 7y ago
> or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. I think all these scenarios are unrealistic. If at all, and that is still a big if, only the vast majority would die. So hooray, I guess.
Kaiyou 7y ago
> the planet recovers on its own. Like all those other planets without us, like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus,...
- bognition 7y ago
  As far as we know those planets are devoid of life. Whereas the earth has been teaming with life for billions of years. During that time the earth has gone through thousands of extinction events with 6 mass extinctions (when upwards of 90% of all life went extinct). Our success (humans/mammals) is the result of one of those extinctions. So yeah, life has a strong foot hold on earth and it will continue to do so long after we're gone.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Wouldn't you then be inclined to agree that planets being devoid of life is the natural state?
ngvrnd 7y ago
"... just one huge mega-city that fabricates all of its needs, ... " Plug for "Girl's Last Tour" anime/manga.

shealutton2 7y ago

When the news broke that bugs were disappearing, this was the expected followup. Right? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insect-populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insec...

whenanother 7y ago
another issue is how preys of insects dying off is leading to more of the kind of insects that rely on humans, like disease spreading insects. i would not be surprised if zika or other disease are more widespread than being reported. and these corporations are trying to cash in by advertising gmo mosquitoes which have shown to not work. these mosquitoes are able to breed away the reproductive deficiency but now you are left with a franken bug out in wild reproducing like crazy.

fjabre 7y ago

Anytime someone brings up Monsanto they are downvoted because without pesticides humans cannot feed themselves apparently. And herbicides are for plants only so of course they have no effect on insects. /s

Tepix 7y ago
You're the only one who brought them up so far and you don't seem to have been downvoted.
- fjabre 7y ago
  Thats true. Reddit seems to be more infested with the pro monsanto crowd. Many of their arguments sound very legitimate as in - try feeding the human race some other way type arguments. But then we must consider this ongoing mass extinction event which seems intimately tied to the use of pesticides and herbicides that apparently, according to the experts, are not harmful to unintended insect populations. It’s hard to know whats true and what isnt with all the misinformation being spread around.
  - mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
    It's not hard to know, just people being lazy to do their own research.
  - jjuhl 7y ago
    "try feeding the human race" - How about we reduce our impact on the planet by not feeding all of the human race? Reducing the number of humans on the planet seems like it would be a great first step in solving the overall problem.
    - uptown 7y ago
      Who do you suggest we kill?
      - 7y ago

spodek 7y ago

We're swimming in environmental problems. We can come up with makeshift solutions to many, but for solving them all, and not to suggest it's the only solution, but a part of anything comprehensive, is there any environmental problem that a smaller human population doesn't alleviate?

jandrese 7y ago
I prefer to keep "kill all humans" lower down on the list of possible solutions to environmental problems. Lets try some alternatives first.
- astrodust 7y ago
  Nobody has to be killed, but if a handful of people were put in jail the world would be a dramatically different place.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    People are going to say you're persecuting them for their religion if you jail "quiverfull" parents.
    - deleted 7y ago
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- spodek 7y ago
  I don't understand the persistent misstating what lowering the population means. It's no secret we're all going to die. We don't need to kill anyone. As for alternatives, we've exhausted plenty. Growth, in particular, has failed. Stepping on the gas pedal is not slowing us down. When should we step on the brake? After we drive off the cliff feels too late.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Check the rest of the thread, there is no shortage of people that mean it in exactly "the bad way".

tylerpachal 7y ago

(serious) Is there any hope? Its just one problem after another (probably because everything is linked). What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?

mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
Chances are slim to none. Once permafrost goes there is no stopping it. It's already starting to go...
point78 7y ago
Trim the world population
- glogla 7y ago
  Overpopulation rhetoric is eugenics.
  - jjuhl 7y ago
    No it's not. There are too many humans on the planet. Reducing the number would lead to a more sustainable situation. That's just basic logic.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      "Reducing" (by means unspecified) sounds uncomfortably close to mass killing. Worse, the logic of the "climate action now" position is that we can't wait for 2050. That will be too late. Well, if you want to reduce the population by 2050, what concrete steps do you propose? (I know, you didn't say 2050. I think "action now" is inherent in the logic of your position, though.)
      - isodude 7y ago
        Reducing could simple as not adding that many more all the time. Increasing the level of global education will have that effect in itself.

openmosix 7y ago

Birds aren't real! https://birdsarentreal.com/pages/the-history https://birdsarentreal.com/pages/the-history

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
No, just no. This is exactly how the flat earth thing took off - people passed it around as a laugh, but at some point someone wasn't in on the joke and really ran with it. If that stuff continues pretty soon people will be shooting birds because they think they are drones or something. Let's not propagate that insanity, even if you do find it funny.
- chadcmulligan 7y ago
  by that logic, any satire should be rejected, a bit of a boring world.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I guess we need to figure out where satire ends and crazy conspiracy theories begin. The difference seems to be with how often repeated and fervent the claim is.
    - chadcmulligan 7y ago
      > I guess we need to figure out where satire ends and crazy conspiracy theories begin how exactly? I remember when I was at Uni we used to joke about project echelon - the crazy conspiracy theory about the NSA recording everyones phone calls and storing them under Cheyenne mountain :-)
    - guerrilla 7y ago
      how about we teach epistemology and logic instead.
      - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

dpflan 7y ago

"Bird" is the word today: also on the front page now: > "The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018850

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boyadjian 7y ago

Yes, but in 50 years, North America population increased by 120 million. No pain, no gain.

jsonmez 7y ago

LOL NY Times... LOL, sure, sure guys I believe you now...

chrisbro 7y ago
Could always just read the underlying study, but I'm guessing you don't care too much about what it's saying, just who's saying it? https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DECLINE-OF-NORTH-AMERICAN-AVIFAUNA-SCIENCE-2019.pdf https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...

hyperion2010 7y ago

Since I almost never see it mentioned in any threads related to this subject, am I thrilled that the main article actually references Silent Spring. I remember growing up that people thought that we had somehow managed to avoid the future it portrayed, but no, we have not. Another generation and the purveyors of death are back selling the cure for other species some people haven't learned to live in balance with.

bt848 7y ago
People also think we avoided the future predicted by “The Population Bomb” but we didn’t.
- guerrilla 7y ago
  People who are experts that is.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  We obviously did.
  - sedachv 7y ago
    From Chapter 6 of the "Population Bomb," titled "What If I'm Wrong?": "To cover this contingency, I would like to propose an analogue to Pascal's famous wager… If I'm right, we will save the world. If I'm wrong, people will still be better fed, better housed, and happier,thanks to our efforts. Will anything be lost if it turns out later that we can support a much larger population than seems possible today? Suppose we move to stabilize the size of the human population after the "time of famines" at two billion people, and we achieve that goal by 2150. Suppose that in 2151 someone invents a machine that will produce nutritious food or anything else man wants in limitless quantities out of nothing. Assume also that in 2151 mankind decides that the Earth is underpopulated with just two billion people. Men decide that they want more company. Fortunately, people can be reproduced in vast quantities by unskilled labor who enjoy their work." And this quote from an earlier chapter: "What will be done with leisure time and money when all vacation spots are crowded beyond belief? Is it worth living in the Los Angeles smog for 50 weeks in order to spend two weeks in Yosemite Valley - when the Valley in the summer may be even more crowded than L.A. and twice as smoggy? What good is having the money for a fishing trip when fish are dead or poisonous because of pesticide pollution? Why own a fancy car in which to get asphyxiated in monster traffic jams?" Live in Los Angeles, can confirm.

monktastic1 7y ago

This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous. Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even spirituality), and the modern scientific metaphysics has no space for "miracles," so we don't have a coherent framework in which to talk about or even remind ourselves of this profound truth. Each of us is left to cobble something together for ourselves (and for the few people around us that we trust not to think we're crazy). I do think that psychedelics seem like one promising avenue. Perhaps they will help give us the inspiration to fill in this tragic blindspot. Edit: If the votes are any indication, then I was too hasty in calling this opinion unpopular. Perhaps more of us suspect this than are willing to say it out loud. Edit 2: On that note, I've been scared to share my own crazy take on this, but I'll just leave this here: https://www.lifeismiraculous.org https://www.lifeismiraculous.org

blablabla123 7y ago
I think the modern, post-religious intellectual discourse has not even space for metaphysics. Anything in this direction is considered mumbo jumbo. :-) Materialism probably hasn't reached its peak yet.
- guerrilla 7y ago
  The history of metaphysics is people denying that they're doing metaphysics. Materialism and scientific realism in science and various forms of Platonism and structuralism in mathematics are just too prevalent for people to even notice them at this point.
  - monktastic1 7y ago
    Can't agree strongly enough. Even with meditation, where the whole point is (in a sense) to wake up to one's entire field of experience, people are generally unwilling to dig under their own metaphysical layers. They write this off as "oh, I don't do metaphysics." Yes, you do; you're just unwilling to face it. I updated my post above with a link to a first draft of a site where I go into a little more detail.

rblion 7y ago

This hurts to know. I know we are living through an extinction event but having numbers like these really make it sink in. I feed the birds in my backyard every day, it's a joy to observe the variety that live in just a small grove of trees. I have a tendency to always look up in the sky and take note of soaring birds of prey, they are awe-spiring to say the least.

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christophilus 7y ago

> Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development. This has been known for a while. I remember hearing a piece on NPR about this maybe a decade ago. The problem is actually that we have been working hard to reforest, and haven't left grassland. Everything is either forest, or developed, with very little in-between. One of the proposed solutions was to simply not mow 100% of your yard. Leave some bit of it unkempt. There's a local monastery that does this, and there are birds there that I haven't seen anywhere else in the area, so I think there's something to the strategy.

elliottkember 7y ago

I'm from New Zealand, which has a lot of birds, and I live in California. The forests here are eerily quiet, I hate it. Back home the birdsong in forests is deafening.

tmp190914pn2 7y ago
I'm from California but I live in New Zealand. The birds here are very noisy in the morning. It's almost plague levels of birds on my farm, of many many varieties (Aussie Magpie, spurwing plover, thrush, morepork, tui, kingfisher, swamp harrier, wood pidgeon, ducks, and others that I haven't identified yet or forgot about. There are even a few exotics that escaped the conservatory in town and decided to live here and breed. Not to mention the bees everywhere, both honey and bumble.
peterashford 7y ago
We're managing to make species go extinct at a great rate, too, unfortunately. Habit loss is probably the biggest issue

mhroth 7y ago

If anyone is interested in a fanciful take on reducing the world's population in order to save it, I can happily recommend Channel 4's two-season Utopia series [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnN3WMwDsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnN3WMwDsk

guerrilla 7y ago
Or watch Hans Rosling on how it's not a problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdJgEwMinM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdJgEwMinM

Yhippa 7y ago

This is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time. Birds are amazing. It's amazing to me that they are the descendants of dinosaurs and they're all around us. Their songs and plumage are beautiful to me. > Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development. This one I'm not totally sure is even related to climate change. I don't want to tell the person next to me to "stop trying to make a better life for yourself" so I'm not sure what the solution to this is right now.

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m463 7y ago
They are basically the only higher form of wildlife everyone experiences on a daily basis, even in very urban environments. It's not until the suburbs with trees that you start seeing squirrels and larger animals.
- weberc2 7y ago
  Chicago has squirrels everywhere except for the loop. And there are rats absolutely everywhere too! I imagine it’s similar in most US cities.
MAGZine 7y ago
Not that it is necessarily the answer—but things like buying organic (reduce pesticide use), planting flower varietals that can be homes to diverse insect populations, consuming less animal protein, can be a good start. Part of what I think we're seeing is that people are allowed to do whatever they want with their land without consideration for its wider impact on the environment. Just like we think that maybe destroying habitats by building dams, we should be cognizant of how and what we're doing to the environment with (especially) our farming practices.
kiliantics 7y ago
We could have a better life for ourselves without following the status quo and participating in the exponential economic growth that destroys ecosystems. We could just take back the majority of the world's wealth which has been concentrated in the hands of a few that are pitching us against each other in this economic rat race.

corndoge 7y ago

Stop putting your cat outside

ping_pong 7y ago

Trying to estimate the population of birds in North America between now and 50 years ago seems like it would have an error rate of at least 29%. Are the counting and estimation mechanism even anywhere close to similar?

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
You don't believe the number, so they could possibly be wrong, so it's not a cause for concern? That's a lot of jumps to make to get to the case where we don't have to worry. What techniques are they using to count and estimate the birds, and what objections do you take to their methods? Sadly I can't find out as the site is behind a paywall for me.
- ping_pong 7y ago
  There's only one jump: I don't trust the data, so I'm not yet concerned by this click-bait title. In this day of clickbait titles, studies that are not reproducible, and suspect motivation for studies, the idea that we can calculate the total number of birds with an error rate of less than 30%, including the fact that some data is 50 years old, doesn't pass my smell test. I would prefer waiting for accurate data rather than panic over yet another headline that is not anchored in actual science and facts. For example, did they try to count the number of birds at the same time of the year both times? Do some birds have different multi-year migratory patterns leading to them being in different parts of the world? Did they try counting the birds twice using the same techniques but two different teams, and then compare the numbers? There are too many ways this calculation could fail for me to be trust this data point.
  - appleiigs 7y ago
    > The analysis, published in the journal Science, is the most exhaustive and ambitious attempt yet to learn what is happening to avian populations. > A team of researchers from universities, government agencies and nonprofit organizations collaborated on the new study, which combined old and new methods for counting birds. > Kevin Gaston, a conservation biologist at the University of Exeter > Hillary Young, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara > Scott Loss, a conservation biologist at Oklahoma State University > Kenneth V. Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at Cornell University and the American Bird Conservancy > Dr. Young, of the University of California, Santa Barbara > “If we have two data sets showing the same thing, it’s a home run,” said Nicole Michel, a senior quantitative ecologist at the Audubon Society who was not involved in the study. > Europe is experiencing a similar loss of birds, also among common species, said Dr. Gaston, of the University of Exeter. “The numbers are broadly comparable,” he said. So all these people are idiots and you know better?

tayo42 7y ago

reading things like this are so depressing, wish i knew how to help instead of like making your timeline a little more faster.

kaybe 7y ago

Everyone, join in the protests tomorrow! https://fridaysforfuture.org/events/map?c=+All+countries&d=Future&o=all https://fridaysforfuture.org/events/map?c=+All+countries&d=F...

habosa 7y ago

I went to Australia and spent a day hiking in the blue mountains. I remember thinking that the bird noises were so loud. Not just "huh listen to all the birds" but "it sounds like someone is pumping this in through speakers". Never heard anything like it in America. Maybe that noise level is just normal? I've only been doing meaningful hiking for the past ~10 years. Does anyone older than I am remember birds being much louder in the past?

hackbinary 7y ago

Bird populations are declining in the France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/catastrophe-as-frances-bird-population-collapses-due-to-pesticides https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/catastrophe-as... Britain: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-bird-numbers-species-declines-british-wildlife-turtle-dove-corn-bunting-willow-tits-farmland-a7744666.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-bird-numbers-sp... And also seabirds in Britain: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/20/seabird-colonies-face-catatstrophe-gannets-puffins-food-supply https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/20/seabird-...

root_axis 7y ago

The article mentions it briefly, but outdoor cats are also a considerable contributor to bird deaths. Feral cat colonies obliterate bird populations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdoor-cats-kill-between-14-billion-and-37-billion-birds-a-year-study-says/2013/01/31/2504f744-6bbe-11e2-ada0-5ca5fa7ebe79_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo...

weberc2 7y ago
TIL feral cat colonies exist...

tehjoker 7y ago

Bird up

hbarka 7y ago

Depressing. Plastics killing sea life. Pesticides killing bees. Now this? Canary in a coal mine.

25b183 7y ago

We are all linked/affected. First the insects, then the birds... eventually, humans. This is another truly disturbing story.

wildermuthn 7y ago

Some day our robotic overlords will thank us for preparing the world for them.

blaser-waffle 7y ago

People are quick to point out the lack of bugs and habitat, but are leaving out a big killer -- your damn cat. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-... (mostly feral cats... but your lil furball ain't helping)

nicwolff 7y ago
Wait a minute. That article says "outdoor cats killed somewhere in the ballpark of 2.4 billion birds in the U.S. per year". The NY Times article linked here says that the bird population decreased by "nearly 3 billion birds" over 50 years. So in 50 years about 120 billion birds were killed by cats, and only 117 billion replacement birds were born? Seems like if we killed the cats, we'd be overrun by birds!