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How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoConclusion: "The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100 years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays." "A chemist who saved the whales has not merited a Wikipedia entry. His name was P. S. Landis and he was a researcher at Mobile Oil." A really interesting piece IMO.
- tedunangst 15y agoA bizarre conclusion IMO. "Only in the 1980s, a chemical solution to this problem was found." At that point, the whales had already been saved. The chemist may have saved automatic transmissions, but the whales were already good by that point.
- tyng 15y agoSomeone should create a wikipedia entry for P. S. Landis as "inventor and the man who saved Sperm Whales"
- ohyes 15y ago'Delayed extinction of.' Sperm whales are not 'saved' yet.
- rdl 15y agoHe also was involved in creating Mobil 1 synthetic oil, which is one of the better synthetic motor oils out there. You could make the argument that better motor oil allows cars to stay on the road longer, reducing demand for energy/materials to make new cars, or increasing the number of affordable, reliable used cars for less wealthy (or more frugal) people to drive. Plus, some improved fuel economy (due to engine being in better repair longer), so less CO2 emissions.
- _THE_PLAGUE 15y agoWhaling needs to be brought back. Sperm whales are prevalent once again, so controlled harvesting of them should be possible just like hunting deer or anything else. This creates jobs, and contributes to finding renewable energy sources. Furthermore, because without whaling sperm whales have no predators they are getting abundant and taking up too much of the marine ecosystem's food supply. We need to limit their numbers for our own survival. Jobs. Energy. Marine food supply. For all these reasons we need to restore whaling, and we need to do it now.
- tyng 15y agoSo you think human should be playing God?
- _THE_PLAGUE 15y agoIt is not playing God to hunt to get the resources we need, like, say, hunting buffalo for their meat and fur. That is just survival. We need the whale oil, so hunting them is no more playing God than is hunting buffalo. I do not see a problem here.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoActually, sperm whales are still considered endangered, e.g. by http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=A02T http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/profile/speciesProfile.ac.... If you have any reliable sources that we "need to limit [sperm whales'] numbers for our own survival", please cite them.
- VMG 15y agoSadly science can't beat the stupidity of Traditional Chinese Medicine: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/wildlifetrade/traditionalchinesemedicine.html http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/wildlifetrad...
- srean 15y agoSperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long. They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspective. From the biological point view what is interesting is not only how they manage to hold their breath for so long but also how they manage to avoid/survive the bends (decompression sickness).
- plq 15y agoWhat is the gibberish between 31.000 and 36.000 feet supposed to mean? Just an oversight?
- JonnieCache 15y agoIt's the invented script from the Cthulhu mythos by the gothic horror writer HP Lovecraft. Cthulhu slept at the bottom of the sea, before being awakened by man or something. I don't know, I haven't read it. That's what the big scary monster thing to the left of the script is. It's a big part of geek culture, it made its way into D&D, and via that into everything else.
- rsanchez1 15y agoThat's a very interesting infographic. Is the pixel at 15,000ft supposed to be a scale representation of the Alvin? And, Cthulu? WTF?
- jamesbkel 15y agoA quick addition to the awesomeness of sperm whales: part of the reason they dive so deep/long is to hunt giant squid. While a sperm whale vs. giant squid battle has never been observed, there are multiple counts of sperm whales with scars that are from squids and in some cases almost certainly from giant squid.
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- rsanchez1 15y agoIt boggles the mind why the car companies lobbied to keep whale hunting when their numbers were already so low. They wanted a few more years of automatic transmission working at then-current levels, and then what? The same mass transmission failures that happened, only without anymore whales left. Poachers are similarly mind boggling. Instead of leaving a viable population to harvest more animal parts (not saying it's OK, just for the sake of argument), they hunt down every last animal then move on to other animals. Oh, and if automatic transmission had never been invented, maybe people would actually know how to drive.
- bdunbar 15y agoPoachers are similarly mind boggling. Instead of leaving a viable population to harvest more animal parts ... they hunt down every last animal then move on to other animals. Poaching makes sense to the poacher. Take a guy I might or might not be related to. When he was growing up his family was dirt-poor and rural. Taking game out of season meant the difference between eating and starvation. Hard on the deer, if you have a lot of people like that, granted. But laws and conservation and 'think about next year' don't mean much when your family needs to eat today.
- borism 15y agoyeah, two guys all of us might or may not be related to... one have domesticated deer, offered good conditions for it to breed (protected it from other predators including hunters like himself) and then he and his children prospered off their cattle... the other one just hunted his food to extinction... guess who's children have survived to tell the story?
- bdunbar 15y agothe other one just hunted his food to extinction All of mine - and your - ancestors have done just that. They found new sources for food or they didn't become our ancestors. I get what you are saying about hunting one's food to extinction, how it's a bad idea. Do you get what _I_ am talking about when I say that poachers don't _care_ about tomorrow, that they are do poor and desperate that today is all that matters?
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoI expect we'll see a similar process with using animals for food. As our scientific knowledge increases, and as our needs increase, synthetic meats will become more and more attractive, eventually leaving us all meat-eaters who do not harvest animals. Complex systems remind me of a theater set up for a complex play. Hundreds of ropes hang down from the ceiling. Somebody is always pleading us with us to pull rope A to make B happen. Very rarely does pulling rope A actually make B happen (and nothing else) But we still like thinking things are simple like that.
- Lagged2Death 15y agoOne could even argue that it's already happened. Modern breeds of food animals are more or less "synthetic meats." They're much more efficient at converting feed into flesh than any natural animal is, and they'd have no chance of surviving in the wild.
- borism 15y agoI sure hope that's not what OP meant...
- Lagged2Death 15y agoI'm sure it's not.
- timwiseman 15y agoI think in the long term, you are right. But according to the ArsTechnica summary at http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/why-meat-from-a-petri-dish-is-still-a-long-way-from-the-supermarket.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/why-meat-from-a-... that may be quite a long term.
- cq 15y agoSad how there's no discussion of the economy that enables stuff like this to happen. "Why were people so cruel and evil?" is a stupid question; it's not about cruelty or being "evil". It's about money. Don't expect people to be moral in this economic system. Morality is a weakness in a capitalist society, and you'll go out of business if you bring morality into a competitive business ecosystem. This is why we need to change the rules of our economic system, if you care about morality. Moreover, sure P. S. Landis "saved the whales", but he didn't do it to save the whales, he did it to generate an enormous amount of profit for Mobile Oil, and was paid for it handsomely.
- philwelch 15y agoCan you name an economic system that doesn't have similar flaws? Economic systems only usable by hunter-gatherers don't count, unless your real argument is with civilization rather than capitalism.
- nickpinkston 15y agoDistributism has some interesting properties of socialism / capitalism, but would still have killed the whales probably... "The Venus Project" guys believe they can do this, but it just seems like a human enslavement program masked as human empowerment.
- dexen 15y agoLet me reverse that question for you: Can you name an ecosystem (as in, natural system) that doesn't have similar flaws? A predator predates on its prey as long as feasible. When prey is overhunted, some of the predator population dies out (negative feedback, if you will), or the predator adopts (behavior or genome) to use alternative food sources, or to better utilize the resource. Nothing new to see here, move along ;-) Not that I approve of predatory use of natural resources; we humans sure should know better. Just please don't make it sound unnatural.
- Lagged2Death 15y agoWhen prey is overhunted, some of the predator population dies out (negative feedback, if you will) ... please don't make it sound unnatural. I think it's OK to characterize human interaction with the ecosystem as unnatural. Feedback loops like the one you mention work OK for cheetahs and gazelles. Too many cheetahs leads to too few gazelles leads to skinny cheetahs and eventually to fewer cheetahs, etc. But that happens because one is the food for the other; the amount of predation is directly related to the current populations of both, and the amount of predation also has an impact on the future of predation. Consider an alternate history scenario: No replacement for sperm whale oil was ever found. Sperm whales were hunted entirely to extinction to keep those big American cars rolling. When the whale oil ran out for good and all, Americans all learned to drive stick. Impact on human population of the planet: none. Impact on the rapaciousness of future generations: questionable. Feedback loops (as opposed to straight-line cause and effect) closed or otherwise in evidence at all: zero. Human interaction with the ecosystem is fundamentally different from the interactions that arise between the other actors within it. Demand for sperm whale oil had virtually nothing to do with the number of humans alive on the planet, and the amount of whale oil left in the world had no impact on the demand for cars, either. With no reciprocal connection, there are no levers for a feedback loop to even take hold of. One might even say that what separates humans from animals, in the grand scheme of things, is our ability to escape from the feedback loops the rest of the ecosystem is in the thrall of, or even to escape from the feedback loops the rest of the ecosystem is.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoThis is humiliating to us as a race of sentient species. If we still badly need sperm oil, why don't we work to inject the relevant genes into some bacteria and get our oil in any quantities we want to? Or reproduce the process in any other way (synthesis, cell culture).
- tedunangst 15y agoSure, I'll just hop into my time machine and teach the scientists from the 70s all about gene splicing...
- guard-of-terra 15y agoWe still need those kinds of lubricants, they're just aren't available now except for emergency cases.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoInteresting, but gives too little credit to the anti-whaling campaigns: it certainly was no accident that whaling was forbidden as soon as that became economically feasible.
- sliverstorm 15y agoThe stipulation is that whaling was forbidden as soon as nobody needed whale oil.
- tedunangst 15y agoWhich is a crock of shit considering there's an entire decade that occurred after the whaling ban and before the introduction of synthetic oil.
- joejohnson 15y agotl;dr The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100 years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays.
- losethos 15y agoGod is just. God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\SWIFT.TXT second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther trials, I had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity. After some further discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of striking each other's hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk before him ------------ The question on justice is... is it equal to dammage inflicted on others or what was going through the shrink's head? I'd like to think the shrink has lived through hell. God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\BIBLE.TXT nd swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are. 8:22 And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. 8:23 And I will put a division between my people and thy people: to morrow shall this sign be. 8:24 And
- feralchimp 15y agoIn case you didn't, spare a few minutes and read through the comments on the original article. Excellent stuff in there, particularly from the OP.
- sliverstorm 15y agoThat's a sharp irony, to think the anti-whaling community of the 60's and 70's was driving around with whale oil in their cars! I wonder if they had any idea?
- Tichy 15y agoI wonder how much driving they did, though. Personally, I have always avoided cars and environmental impact is one of the major reasons. Of course I still benefit from cars, I am aware of that (goods get transported by cars, which I then consume). Just saying that some environmentalists actually also avoid driving.
- sliverstorm 15y agoAre anti-whale hunters actually environmentalists though? I mean, is opposing the hunting of whales an environmental thing? I always figured they were more of the animal rights category, and while some people might be both, animal rights != environmentalism.
- owensmartin 15y agoGreat piece of history. I think the author's conclusions are flawed though. He writes: > Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays. That may be true for the whales themselves, but there were indeed regulations passed on automobiles in the 1970s due to the oil shock: > In the 1970s, the car companies were required to develop engines working at higher temperatures to comply with lower emissions and improved efficiency and that changed the regime for the tranny fluids. Suddenly, the car companies did not need to lobby any more. So it was government action regarding auto emissions that wound up propagating into saving the whales. Perhaps that was not among the intended consequences, but we also can't claim that the change was simply due to "market forces."
- 1010010111 15y agoThe automatic transmission does not cause a species' extinction. People's actions cause extinctions. The title is perhaps revealing about how we think and how we rationalise or justify our actions.
- tomkinstinch 15y agoIn the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, candles made from spermaceti were used as standard photometric illuminants. They burned more brightly than even today’s paraffin candles, and could be made in a reproducible way [1]. NASA used spermaceti as a binder for joining iron particles to acetate for longer-lasting data storage tapes [2], and one author indicates that it was used more recently as a lubricant on the Voyager probe and the Hubble Space Telescope[3]. It's a sad story about our (over) exploitation of the seas, but very interesting history. I wonder if any research has been done on producing cetyl palmitate via recombinant DNA synthesis. Imagine having a vat of E. coli or yeast producing it. As the article mentions, jojoba oil is a decent substitute. I use jojoba around the house to fix squeaky hinges, etc. 1. http://books.google.com/books?id=DI4AAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=spermaceti+candle+of+photometric&source=bl&ots=yiUz8ijAo5&sig=BykhaviaR_BKIMKhMXwZC_q4GH4&hl=en&ei=qMi9Tq_qFYHb0QH25dS2BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=spermaceti%20candle%20of%20photometric&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=DI4AAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA183&#... 2. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5971/1322.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5971/1322.full 3. http://books.google.com/books?id=y2zXTivayCQC&pg=PA344#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=y2zXTivayCQC&pg=PA344#v...
- ScottBurson 15y agoby the 1950s automatics were the preferred transmission Feh. Never owned one of the contraptions, myself.
- shoesfullofdust 15y agoNixon's bold stance(?!) predates P.S. Lang's invention of a synthetic replacement by a number of years. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3731 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3731 Of course, he could never use the term "sperm whale". But this is what led to the Endangered Species Act that granted the whales a reprieve. Lang's invention was only a reaction to this. It's still a good read.
- jdietrich 15y agoWhale-oil related trivia: A huge number of recordings have been lost due to the whale oil ban. Magnetic audio tape was made using whale oil as a binder, to help adhere the magnetisable oxide particles to the tape. The first non-whale binders turned out to have very poor long-term durability, causing the oxide to fall off in clumps. Most archivists 'bake' these tapes at low temperatures, to improve the oxide adhesion for just long enough to make a copy.