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Australia wildfires: 500M animals and plants killed as glaciers turn black
- sitkack 7y agoShould use drones to harvest the meat ASAP.
- dbuder 7y agoOh come on over, I'll feed you some bushfired koala, this is a case where the best punishment fits the crime is giving him exactly what he asked for.
- sitkack 7y agoThis is the most ethical choice, the animals are already dead and treated much better than factory farms. Their flesh will rot in the fields, it should feed people and not bacteria.
- smohnot 7y agoFor those specifically worried about the 500 million animals dead in the wildfire, note that we kill 3 billion land animals and fish a DAY for meat (https://sentientmedia.org/how-many-animals-are-killed-for-food-every-day/ https://sentientmedia.org/how-many-animals-are-killed-for-fo...). Of course there are many many other terrible things about this wildfire (including the fact that we may have endangered some species)
- skummetmaelk 7y agoSize matters. If sardines count into the 3 billion it doesn't really say much. Similarly if insects count in the 500 million estimate. It would be more appropriate to report the loss of biomass or at least the average animal size.
- chongli 7y ago.
- pvaldes 7y ago> If our goal is to reduce the number of animal lives taken for meat The problem is that this shouldn't be our goal. Is neither a realistic goal, neither would be necessarily a desired outcome. Big animals have parasites also. You kill a cow and also millions of simbionts in the cow's gut but nobody cares. You make a modern soy field and kill everything. All green and all hairy and all winged things. All is killed except soy. Is the typical new age religious nonsense that ends in a dead end. Is not possible to do anything in this planet without stepping over some creature. Is full of life and life fills the gaps all the time. Is the quality and diversity what counts, not the amount of new rats that we can fit in the same space. Some species evolved to fix that and other not. Some are keys, sustainers or big modificators of the ecosystem, and other not.
- Finnucane 7y agoBut it takes more feed to make one pound of beef than one pound of chicken.
- ratboy666 7y agoMaybe not true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232323/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232323/
- nradov 7y agoWe also kill billions of animals a day for plants. Harvesting crops kills a lot of insects, small mammals, and reptiles. Most of them are so small that farmers never even notice, but those animals are dead all the same. So if you want to criticize meat eating then you'll have to find a better reason than just number of animal deaths.
- crazygringo 7y agoSo... that's half an animal per person per day? That seems like... a lot. Until you look at the article, which suggests that the high number is largely due to huge numbers of tiny krill and anchovies caught in fishing nets. So while perhaps technically accurate... it's not like half a pig or half a chicken is being killed per person per day.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoThere's a huge difference between killing animals specifically bred to be killed and killing wild animals.
- lonelappde 7y agoWhat difference? Which is worse? And when a predator eats a prey, is that bred to be killed or wild?
- carapace 7y agoI'm not sure of the point you're trying to make, but FWIW consider this: "Earth's LAND MAMMALS By Weight" https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ > [[A graph in which one square equals 1,000,000 tons. Dark grey squares represent humans, light gray represent our pets and livestock, and green squares represent wild animals. The squares are arranged in a roughly round shape, with clusters for each type of animal. Animals represented: Humans, cattle, pigs, goats (39 squares), sheep, horses (29 squares), elephants (1 square). There are other small, unlabeled clusters also. It is clear that humans and our pets & livestock outweigh wild animals by at least a factor of 10. ]] {{Title text: Bacteria still outweigh us thousands to one--and that's not even counting the several pounds of them in your body.}}
- lunchbreak 7y agoThe actual study says 480 million animals affected - not killed. Classic broken telephone - https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/476533-university-study-as-many-as-480-million-animals-feared-affected-by https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/476533-univers... "That's not to say that the 480 million have all died as a consequence of the fires because some things are going to be mobile — birds will fly away and come back," Dickman added. "Some reptiles, like lizards, would perhaps go underground," he continued.
- gonzo41 7y agoThe firestorm is running around 800C and melting cars, so i think those affected animals are on their way out :(
- benologist 7y agoI think this illustrates the heat quite nicely - https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ej04lo/a_car_in_australia_whose_aluminum_rims_have_melted/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ej04lo/a_car_in_austr...
- cromulent 7y agoThey did also say "the true loss of animal life is likely to be much higher than 480 million" though. https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/01/03/a-statement-about-the-480-million-animals-killed-in-nsw-bushfire.html https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/01/03/a-stateme...
- Sharlin 7y agoOn the other hand, if you were to count invertebrates, the death toll is likely to be in the billions.
- tus88 7y agoNo one will mourne the deaths of billions of blowflys.
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- dgellow 7y agoThe CO² impact, and active fires, are visible almost live on windy.com. Both CO² and active fires layers: https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration-cosc?cosc,-33.046,136.890,5,m:cCAakiI https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration-cosc?cosc,-33.046,13... Heatmap of active fires: https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-fires?fires,-33.046,136.890,5,m:cCAakiI https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-fires?fires,-33.046,136.... Crazy to see this. (Central Africa also seems to have crazy fires, but I don't see any news on this https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-fires?fires,-2.592,19.248,4 https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-fires?fires,-2.592,19.24...)
- lostlogin 7y agoVisibility has been low (5-10km), the sunsets impressive and the moon has been red in New Zealand, thousands of KM away.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoRe: Africa, keep in mind that a lot of fires are natural and / or controlled; natural fires should not be interfered with, because that'll cause a buildup of shrubs and other easily flammable material that will only burn more and harder the next year.
- dgellow 7y agoThanks, I didn't know.
- ehnto 7y agoIn Australia, we normally have the resources to have controlled burns throughout the year to reduce available fuel and keep the wild fires smaller and controllable. The government chose to pull back funding for our fire services, which resulted in reduced controlled burnoffs and an increase in the amount of fuel available for fires in high risk areas. Once the fires did kick off, we also had fewer appliances and equipment to fight them. This is partly a natural disaster, partly a failure of a civilization to protect itself.
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- hydgv 7y ago>Nature Conservation Council ecologist Mark Graham told parliament: “[Koalas] really have no capacity to move fast enough to get away [from the flames]. Seems like natural selection to me lol someone was so irked by this small dose of truth that he proceeded to downvote all of my past comments
- edhelas 7y agoTo stay under +2°C in 2100 we need to reduce our CO² emission to ~2T/year of CO² per human. We are at 15T/year in the US and ~10T/year at the OECD. We are currently aiming at +4°C or more. Doind a Paris-NewYork (one way) is 1.3T of CO² emitted. The effort that we all have to do is huge. And we need to to it NOW (CO² stay ~2 century in the atmosphere, everything emitted only add-up). We can't do business as usual, that's over. Let's talk, let's act.
- Filligree 7y agoWhat we need to do is figure out how civilization can survive in a 6 degree warmer world. I'd take it if I could get it, but I've given up hope of achieving anything lower.
- cagenut 7y agoFYI to anyone else reading, this is the other side of science-denial coin, the doomer side. The most authoritative reports (ipcc ar6 and sr15) show us probably landing in the low 4's in a "BAU" scenario. However those scenarios are widely acknowledged as no longer plausible, as the cost curves of three things: wind, solar, and batteries have invalidated several of the assumptions about future growth in coal and oil demand. Scientifically speaking we are on target for something over 2C but below 4C. Keep in mind that what we're seing today (puerto rico, california, australia) is 1C. 2C will be terrifying, so the news that we will likely not break 4C is very very mild comfort. Its just that anyone talking about 5, 6, etc is negative-spiraling in a way unsupported by the research and current economics.
- carapace 7y ago> is negative-spiraling in a way unsupported by the research and current economics. Are you sure? (I'm a "doomer" I admit, but I think the science is there.) From Dr. Gwynne Dyer – "Geopolitics in a Hotter World" – UBC Talk Transcribed (Sept. 2010) https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/ https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo... > All of these numbers are fairly fuzzy, but what happens around 2 degrees is that the natural–the consequences of the warming trigger natural processes that contribute further to the warming (positive feedbacks as they are called) in which the permafrost melts and releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere; in which the surface waters of the oceans become so warm they can no longer contain all of the carbon dioxide they absorbed earlier–high school physics, right? Warmer water can contain less dissolved gas. Buy yourself a beer and you’ll see what I mean: if you don’t drink it, it goes flat as it warms up. > So, all of those feedbacks kick in around 2 degrees and then you’ve lost control, to the point where you may not be able to stop the warming process, even if you stop all of your own emissions.
- karma993 7y agoKarma
- Zenst 7y agoWonder what the Butterfly effect of this will be. We all know the chaos theory butterfly effect of if a butterfly flaps its wings, well. Certainly less chaos at play with a large fire on this scale and its global impact. Which makes you wish Gerry Anderson's vision of International Rescue was real. Alas we still have a legacy response World with a focus upon combat armies over medical/disaster response armies. Climate change affects us all and I can't recall a year without some disaster of fire/flooding/eruptions or other weather/climate related effect of extreme that indirectly affects us all. The climate does not know about country borders, and any solution equally needs to be a borderless appraoch by all. I know we have the UN, but its remit is so broad in many respects and the political beuracracy that entails, slows and distracts from issues like this that any response is never timely or as you would expect. Imagine if globally we didn't have country pride and ego's in the way when it came to dealing with such disasters. After all, whilst this is a fire in Australia, the effects will in various forms, be felt by all across the globe. Alas not as directly accountable as people like and hard to measure, but it will have an impact. After all, if a butterfly wing flap can cause a storm across the other side of the globe - then I'd say a fire the size of a small country is going to have a much larger impact and with less chaotic uncertainty about it. Sad thing is, if the climate was a weapon owned by one country, you can bet the rest of the World would of got its act together. After all, we have NATO for dealing with a far lower threat, indeed, if firefighting had a military sized budget - there would be no fires.
- hilbert42 7y agoThe Australian bush has always burned periodically—full stop! It always has—full stop! Whether in recent years the risk of bushfires has increased or not because of global warming is essentially irrelevant to the argument. In fact, the recent bushfires in mainly Eastern Australia are long overdue (which goes contrary to the global warming argument—no, don't put words in my mouth by suggesting that I'm a denier, I'm just stating a fact). First, let me say that I do have some understanding and experience in such matters: decades ago when I was a young kid in primary school I stood on a hill overlooking the township of Leura in the Blue Mountains of NSW and watched a raging bushfire tear through the township burning down over 100 houses in about an hour. It is hard to describe or paraphrase neither the emotion that I felt then nor the experience I gained from witnessing the conflagration. Living in a bushfire-prone area, I've seen many fires like it over the decades. It taught me a salient lesson about how truly dangerous and idiosyncratic bushfires can be—unpredictably, brick houses would often burn down whilst weatherboard ones would often be spared, and the fires would often unexpectedly gobble up ones out in the open whilst leaving houses with many trees and undergrowth in their yards or nearby. Second, I've had to fight bush fires to save property, it's hot, horrible and extremely dangerous work. The key issues are these: - It can take many decades for a truly major bushfire to reoccur in a given location. For example, the recent fires in the Jamison Valley in the Blue Mountains of NSW burned through bushland that has not seen a major fire for over 50 years. Over such a long time, the undergrowth becomes thick, it's a tinderbox just waiting to ignite, and on the first truly hot day or lightning strike off it goes. - Fire fighting in national parks miles from houses and other property is usually a waste of time (as I've just witnessed in the Jamison Valley where the water bombing was essentially useless (the fires progressed unhindered into more uninhabited national parkland despite ongoing efforts) and the cost of the fire-fighting helicopters was enormous for essentially nought effect). Fire fighting efforts would be more effective if they concentrated on protecting townships and populated areas. Nevertheless, gung-ho fire fighters have to be seen doing something even if it is useless. - Unfortunately, as truly major fires only repeat every 50 or 60 years, these fire fighters don't have a firsthand memory of past events—simply: corporate memory of past fires is lost from one major fire to another and thus it usually results in stuff-ups which can be serious, loss of live etc. as we've tragically seen again in the recent Australian bushfires. (Remember, loss of life in bushfires in Australia is tragically common.) - Residents in fire-prone areas often have short memories, they grow trees in inappropriate places and the tree-hugging councils make things worse as they will not take action to remove a dangerous fire situation. For example, near Echo Point in the popular tourist area of Katoomba (near where the fire was burning in the Jamison Valley) only a few weeks ago I personally witnessed the terrible situation of weeds and undergrowth right near housing and population centres that should have been removed by the Council. After all, fires are nothing new to that area but Council has done SFA about removing the fire threat. - If fire fighting is overly successful in national parks and reserves, it can make the situation much worse for when the big one comes [which it inevitably will] as the fire will be much more intense. Instead of just burning the leaves of the trees it'll also kill them—great 400-year+ trees that have survived many a previous fire are now gone forever! It's damn stupid to do this! - For those of you not in Australia who think I've lost my senses by saying this, you need to keep in mind what I said at the beginning—the Australian bush must burn periodically to survive. The seeds of many trees, Banksia for instance, only germinate after a fire has opened their seedpods. The aim should be to allow this to happen on a natural cycle whilst still protecting life and property. Unfortunately, the Australian people are like ostriches with their heads in the sand, decade after decade they continue to fuck-up fire management to the nth degree and they do so at the risk to life and property. Finally let me note that Californians are not much better. Why they have let the Australian eucalypt, which burn like incendiary torches due to being full of inflammable eucalypt oil, overrun their state simply defies any reasonable logic that I can think of. Moreover, eucalypts, like many introduced species, grow like weeds in California (when I first went there both the size and the leafiness of the eucalypts amazed me). Unlike Australia where the eucalypt is native, Californians have a choice. It seems to me they ought to eradicate them, if for no other reason than in the interests of safety.