|
Got a question. I have a patch of space that's doing nothing but holding mulch in my backyard in north Texas. What kind of plants or shrubbery should I put in there come this spring for some kind of friendly bug life? I am horrible at getting plants to stay alive.
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2019 23:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 08:01 |
|
|
No plant can hold back the tide of hot climate death. Have you considered adopting bugs instead?
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 01:15
|
|
|
at least let me enjoy some butterflies along the way, maybe even a hummingbird
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 01:47
|
|
|
Kunabomber posted:at least let me enjoy some butterflies along the way, maybe even a hummingbird lol better enjoy them while you can. I remember when there would be little swarms of butterflies around where I lived during the summer. Now I feel lucky if I see one or two during that time of year.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 02:05
|
|
|
Same. Lightning bugs, too. I don't remember the last time I saw one. gently caress. I feel sad now. For real, extension schools are really good for local plant stuff: https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/blog/2015/08/06/top-100-plants-for-north-texas/ https://wateruniversity.tamu.edu/media/1082/native-adapted-plants-final-6-14.pdf
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 03:05
|
|
|
Kunabomber posted:Got a question. I had an uncle that threw his garbage out a window into a pile in his backyard and there were always lots of bugs there hth
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 03:19
|
|
|
see that's the kind of do-nothing environmentalism i can get behind
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 03:44
|
|
|
Kunabomber posted:at least let me enjoy some butterflies along the way, maybe even a hummingbird California's Monarch butterfly population dropped 84% from last year, friend. https://jezebel.com/research-finds-californias-monarch-butterfly-population-1831618697 Embrace death, this world is ending.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 03:53
|
|
|
How are u posted:California's Monarch butterfly population dropped 84% from last year, friend. If life survived the earth being turned into a snowball, and the Permotriassic Extinction, and the PETM, it can survive this. The world is not ending. Something else will evolve eventually.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 04:10
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:If life survived the earth being turned into a snowball, and the Permotriassic Extinction, and the PETM, it can survive this. The world is not ending. Something else will evolve eventually. Eventually, life and evolution will stop on this earth, forever. Same as it would have without us. The long term fate of yet another doomed rock out of the uncountable trillions of them isn't important. What matters are the (relatively) near term impacts to us, our families, and our habitat. And those things all look hosed.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 04:21
|
|
|
I would only hope that my children can grow up to be prosperous moisture farmers rather than impoverished moisture farmers. I'll probably have a kid this year. My two options, according to this thread are: 1. Kill myself for the wrong I have done. 2. Kill myself as a carbon offset. Personally, my inclination is to do what I can personally and politically to make some sort of difference, e.g. my home electricity is 100% renewable, I don't waste poo poo, I live in a dense city, I don't eat much meat, I don't drive, and I will raise my child to be an environmental engineer or hydrologist with at least You're Next-level killing skills, but I don't know if that's enough. Is any of this enough?
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 04:50
|
|
|
Insanite posted:I would only hope that my children can grow up to be prosperous moisture farmers rather than impoverished moisture farmers.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:01
|
|
|
Morbus posted:Eventually, life and evolution will stop on this earth, forever. Same as it would have without us. The long term fate of yet another doomed rock out of the uncountable trillions of them isn't important. What matters are the (relatively) near term impacts to us, our families, and our habitat. And those things all look hosed. I look at it in the completely opposite way. The long term fate of this rock is the only thing that's important. What a waste it would be if life in its ineffable multitudes were simply doomed to cease, and the universe, as far as we know, were to continue, blind and dumb, with nothing sentient ever to look upon its creation and plumb its mysteries. Why do you, looking at the depth of this entirely preventable existential crisis, feel so assured of our extinction? That is not an acceptable conclusion to me. I refuse to accept that. As far as we know -- absent the miracle that the Culture were to lift its interdict upon us tomorrow and reveal itself -- intelligent life in the universe is extremely rare. That means that, absent us, our planet will be doomed to extinction in a billion years, with no guarantee that anything intelligent will ever re-evolve to succeed us. That's an intolerable fate, when so much of the universe's energy and resources are available to an intelligent race, to create a bountiful and joyous existence for as long as thermodynamic differentials exist. Don't be so content to accept human extinction. We cannot allow ourselves to go extinct, because we must not. Only an intelligent race can safeguard the existence of all other forms of life. We only have one shot at this.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:02
|
|
|
Admiral Ray posted:3. Donate to organizations that teach sex ed/safe sex/incel technologies. Or just Planned Parenthood. I assure you that I donate to many family planning and incel organizations. (No, really. Well, not the incel part.) I know and donate to Planned Parenthood. I know _of_ Pathfinder. If anyone has any other good family planning orgs to suggest, I'm into that. Insanite fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jan 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:09
|
|
|
Well... it's kind of a long shot, but you could try moving to a lower carbon-emission per capita country, maybe somewhere in the developing world. I plan on doing that myself at some point once I've saved up enough for financial independence. Nowadays you can get internet and deliveries pretty much anywhere, and one of the added bonuses of living in a developing country is that your savings will last you far longer due to the lower cost of living.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:13
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:I look at it in the completely opposite way. The long term fate of this rock is the only thing that's important. What a waste it would be if life in its ineffable multitudes were simply doomed to cease, and the universe, as far as we know, were to continue, blind and dumb, with nothing sentient ever to look upon its creation and plumb its mysteries. Why do you, looking at the depth of this entirely preventable existential crisis, feel so assured of our extinction? That is not an acceptable conclusion to me. I refuse to accept that. I think you're maybe getting the opposite meaning of what I intended, which is probably my fault. My point is that either worrying about or taking solace in the long term geological fate of the plant absent human civilization is meaningless. Nature left to itself has only one destiny. Instead, human society is what matters. And as far as that goes, we need to worry about the short term (~tens to hundreds of years) foreseeable horizon and how it affects us. In that context, things like mass insect die offs and other near term ecological catastrophes that could wreck human society really do constitute "the end of the world", irrespective of whether or not life on earth will continue without us. Morbus fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Jan 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:24
|
|
|
Insanite posted:I would only hope that my children can grow up to be prosperous moisture farmers rather than impoverished moisture farmers. You just have to kill two people for every kid you have
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:30
|
|
|
Admiral Ray posted:incel technologies
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:44
|
|
|
you need to kill 10 boomers or 2 gen-x'rs to collect the 80 human-year-credits for your child
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 05:50
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:I look at it in the completely opposite way. The long term fate of this rock is the only thing that's important. What a waste it would be if life in its ineffable multitudes were simply doomed to cease, and the universe, as far as we know, were to continue, blind and dumb, with nothing sentient ever to look upon its creation and plumb its mysteries. Why do you, looking at the depth of this entirely preventable existential crisis, feel so assured of our extinction? That is not an acceptable conclusion to me. I refuse to accept that. I utterly agree. It doesn't matter long term if we kill 99% of life on the planet so long as we get off the planet and take earth life with us, from a purely biological survival/ultimate preservation point of view. Intelligent life is probably extremely rare, and the only evolutionary pathway for life to ever leave a gravity well that I can see. However, we are nowhere close to being able to permanently move out of the gravity well. And while we are stuck down here there is absolutely the chance that we will suffocate in our cradle if we destroy our environment before we have reached a level of technology where we could live or do all our polluting/industry outside the gravity well. Maybe climate change is the catalyst that gets us there. Maybe climate change permanently destroys our chances before we ever get there, due to exploiting the environment too much too fast. We are in no way decoupled from a nature and we absolutely can kill ourselves - or at least any chance of technological advancement - through irresponsibility, greed and stupidity. Not to get too philosophical about it, but maybe that's a Great Filter right there. If the civilization is too greedy, too stupid and too irresponsible it never gets out of the gravity well. And so the universe is protected from exploitation from locusts. I don't know, I'll won't be alive to see the answer to that one.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 10:22
|
|
|
I can't wait for science to extend the human lifespan to 200 years so I can pollute forever. Hey, I deserve it!
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 10:47
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:I utterly agree. It doesn't matter long term if we kill 99% of life on the planet so long as we get off the planet and take earth life with us, from a purely biological survival/ultimate preservation point of view. Intelligent life is probably extremely rare, and the only evolutionary pathway for life to ever leave a gravity well that I can see. Watch out, last time I posted this I ate a sixxer. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 12:49
|
|
|
I've been busy with work and job applications and such recently and stopped paying attention to climate change news. This 40% above expectation ocean warming was a pretty rude snap back to reality! The experience did provide some insight as to why the general public probably isn't properly treating climate change as a major existential threat. On top of all the fossil-fuel industry propaganda, people are busy and it's difficult to really engage with a complicated issue that is still fairly abstract. We're just not smart enough to keep on top of our lives, everyday political issues AND these big complicated problems created by our increasingly complex global society (or at least I'm not).
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 17:58
|
|
|
In brief I feel that the question of whether we are planet bound or space faring species is real. I also think it is an artificial dichotomy. We have to both learn to live in what is functionally a closed thermodynamic system and solve the question of the gravity well (which functionally begins to open the system). They are inextricably linked. Whether likely or not I mostly choose to live into a future where we are working to solve this dilemma without enslaving or eliminating the majority of the human population and life systems. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t. It will sound impossible to many, but I feel that unseen and unimaginable futures can emerge as we are conditioned by and correlate to the new geological era we have wrought. In the process those identified with the Holocene, and the final expressions of that, will ferociously and violently attempt to cling to the power and radically inequitable ways of being in their death throws. They may kill all of us, they may not. I organize my life in this way as best I can and seek to collaborate with others in community doing the same. I don’t want to contribute to ideologies of disposable planets. I do not wish to participate in the enslavement of most for the benefit of a few. I reject Hobbesian and Baconian propositions of nature as hostile... and I choose to live as if there is a way through, even while knowing that way, if it exists at all, is extremely narrow. Currently I see no meaningful alternatives to this choice.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 18:13
|
|
|
We are stuck on this rock together.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 18:20
|
|
|
We're not locked in here with the climate... The climate is locked in here with us
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 18:46
|
|
|
No matter how bad we make it here it’s still orders of magnitude less effort to reverse the damage than to reach, colonize and terraform an entirely new-to-us planet I’m fine with being a single planet species so long as it’s a really good planet and we have (had) that already
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 18:47
|
|
|
Martian posted:We're not locked in here with the climate... The climate is locked in here with us The dreaded Greenhouse Effect Somehow this basic principle of science doesn’t get much attention anymore even when talking about climate change
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 18:48
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:Hmm... well, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so there's a big abundance of local thingies to choose from, I guess. The local university would probably be the University of California, Berkeley. Go join the environmentalist groups trying to get the refineries shut down. They're bad for the climate and also send 15,000+ to the hospital in a "routine emergency." Its win-win.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 19:11
|
|
|
Shifty Nipples posted:We are stuck on this rock together. At least we have all of this CO2 to keep us company.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 19:20
|
|
|
CmdrRiker posted:At least we have all of this CO2 to keep us company. Grab an armful to keep warm at night.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 19:54
|
|
|
COMPAGNIE TOMMY posted:No matter how bad we make it here it’s still orders of magnitude less effort to reverse the damage than to reach, colonize and terraform an entirely new-to-us planet The planet is not going back to the level of abundance and biodiversity we had prior to the industrial revolution. Not within the lifespan of the human species, at least. Our greatest achievement will have been to eradicate every species we evolved with, and many which predated us entirely, before landing on top of the corpse pile ourselves. Fitting, given the inherent bloodthirst of mankind.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 19:58
|
|
|
COMPAGNIE TOMMY posted:No matter how bad we make it here it’s still orders of magnitude less effort to reverse the damage than to reach, colonize and terraform an entirely new-to-us planet Terraforming was never a realistic approach to human colonization of space. Extra-terrestrial human colonies should logically be orbital (or lagrange) space-station based. Elon Musk's mantra of an interplanetary species is so dumb. Temaukel fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jan 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 20:05
|
|
|
Temaukel posted:Terraforming was never a realistic approach to human colonization of space. Extra-terrestrial human colonies should logically be orbital (or lagrange) space-station based. Agree, at least we should spread ourselves around our own solar system with all the benefits that might bring as well as the longevity and technological potential a interplanetary civilization might have. That opens up a lot of possibilities. But at the same time, that's a far away off and even debating colonization or terraforming at our current technological and political stage is just dumb. We can only terraform our own planet to make it worse, why the hell would we have the technology and/or political will to do anything about any other planet. No, we're stuck right where we are and that is all the reason you need to care about climate change and sustainable technological progession as a civilization. Even to the most sci-fi brained, we obviously need a lot of time on the scale of hundreds of years before we ever approach the kind of technology and political unity involved in leaving our gravity well, and this means we need to protect and preserve our biodiversity as much as possible, or we lock ourselves out of that bright future for damned sure.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 20:48
|
|
|
gently caress futurists and gently caress this bullshit childish science fiction fixation on abandoning the planet being the end goal of human civilization. You grew up on Star Trek fantasies of endless technological development and endless growth, but the dreams these artists and writers showed your impressionable young selves were fueled by a culture high on fossil fuel fumes. A civilization that honestly thought there was such a thing as free lunch. It's time to grow up. The Great Filter is that interestellar civilizations are actually impossible. Get bent. Find a new quasi-ideal for your life, maybe one actually concerned with the tribulations of the human condition within the context of its limits, rather than hoping said limits will technomagically disappear one day. Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jan 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 22:33
|
|
|
Let's all be mad dirt farmers for the next 600,000 years.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 22:40
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:gently caress futurists and gently caress this bullshit childish science fiction fixation on abandoning the planet being the end goal of human civilization. You grew up on Star Trek fantasies of endless technological development and endless growth, but the dreams these artists and writers showed your impressionable young selves were fueled by a culture high on fossil fuel fumes. A civilization that honestly thought there was such a thing as free lunch. G O D BLESS
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 22:42
|
|
|
Again... artificial dichotomy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 22:55
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:Let's all be mad dirt farmers for the next 600,000 years. Pretty sure a plot point in one of Peter F. Hamilton's sci-fi novels is that the uber-powerful precursor race did exactly this and achieved great satisfaction from it. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 23:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 08:01 |
|
|
Orbital stations get much better scenery views anyway. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2019 23:26
|
|