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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbersWarning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers posted:The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. So yeah we're all gonna die.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 19:06 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 05:56 |
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At least if the cause is (largely) pesticides, there's the possibility of it being more quickly reversed if action is actually taken. I mean, fish stocks can bounce back pretty well if you stop fishing them, on a relatively short time scale, and presumably insects have the potential to bounce back even faster? fake edit: Tried to look up insect population growth, stumbled on an article from 2006 talking about how global warming could trigger an insect population boom.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 20:14 |
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A Buttery Pastry posted:fake edit: Tried to look up insect population growth, stumbled on an article from 2006 talking about how global warming could trigger an insect population boom. Oh it will certainly do both. But like with everything climate related, only the lovely both. So we'll lose ecosystem essential insect populations while also getting explosions of invasive species like the spread of the pine beetle. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/03/climate-change-sends-beetles-overdrive quote:Call it the beetle baby boom. Climate change could be throwing common tree killers called mountain pine beetles into a reproductive frenzy. A new study suggests that some beetles living in Colorado, which normally reproduce just once annually, now churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year. And that could further devastate the region's forests.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 20:21 |
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What the hell is there to do at this point? Early twenties, very little money and no authority. What can I do to be prepared?
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 22:37 |
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Telephones posted:What the hell is there to do at this point? Early twenties, very little money and no authority. What can I do to be prepared? Make a lot of money and keep it in a way that you can easily liquidate and won't get devalued to hell in the event of a market crash.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 22:40 |
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Telephones posted:What the hell is there to do at this point? Early twenties, very little money and no authority. What can I do to be prepared? Learn how your community will be impacted by the changes in the climate. Will you face floods, droughts, deforestation, etc?
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 22:45 |
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Telephones posted:What the hell is there to do at this point? Early twenties, very little money and no authority. What can I do to be prepared? Acquire skills that will remain in demand during interesting times, i.e. there will never be too many doctors or dentists regardless of how rapidly degrowth takes place. Also, build good relationships with local folks who have skills that will remain in demand during interesting times.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:03 |
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Telephones posted:What the hell is there to do at this point? Early twenties, very little money and no authority. What can I do to be prepared?
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:07 |
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there are always local not-for-profits that need any help they can get, even if it's just administration. most of the people counting bugs for the study covered in the guardian article were volunteers. i do wildlife rescue and reforestation, but tbh there's an endless amount of stuff you can do - disaster relief, national park maintenance, waterway clean-up, even protesting if you don't mind getting arrested/maced
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:09 |
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Telephones posted:What the hell is there to do at this point? Early twenties, very little money and no authority. What can I do to be prepared? Make peace with dying young.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:09 |
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VideoGameVet posted:Lots of pine bark beetles killing trees all over the place, the winters aren't killing them. Wow, this is probably some of the most depressing poo poo I have ever read. Arglebargle III posted:Seriously if you haven't see the new Blade Runner go see it, the nightmare future hellscape has been tastefully updated for ecosystem collapse. Seconding this. It's both beautiful and horrifying.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:11 |
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the problem obviously is that you won't get paid, but honestly we're getting to the point where it's better to be making friends with a couch you can crash on if yours gets flooded out than it is to be hoarding what little money the system will allow you to have
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:12 |
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alternately you could take to the desert on a horse with no name
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:20 |
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Oxxidation posted:Make peace with dying young. This is probably the best answer. Pick up an instrument, gently caress your girlfriend/boyfriend, read some great literature, do whatever it is the gently caress you've been wanting to do. Stop playing video games and buying useless poo poo you don't need, stop wasting time. This train is headed towards a wall and people you cannot influence are feeding the engine more coal.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:27 |
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Xeom posted:Stop playing video games and buying useless poo poo you don't need, stop wasting time. gently caress you dad! im an adult now and i can do whatever the HELL i want!
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:34 |
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VideoGameVet posted:China is the leading producer of solar panels, has signed onto the Paris Accords, and will probably dominate the EV market in a decade. Chinese solar panels are cheap and inefficient and are a byproduct of mercantalist trade policy more than far-seeing environmental policy, the Paris Accords require China to do literally loving nothing, and lol China can't even build a decent regular car. You're being had by the propaganda of a crypto-fascist autocracy.
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:36 |
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that's great but the world is still going to blame america for climate catastrophe the british got to rule the world for hundreds of years and as a result they're reviled as the face of murderous colonialism. the americans got to rule the world for about a hundred years and as a result they're reviled as the face of destructive consumerism. whether other countries pollute as much as america doesn't even factor. you were the biggest, you were the loudest, you got noticed and people are going to remember
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:45 |
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the old ceremony posted:that's great but the world is still going to blame america for climate catastrophe Nah, poo poo goes pear shaped and we nuke everything. Can't blame us if you aren't alive, savvy?
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# ? Oct 20, 2017 23:52 |
the old ceremony posted:that's great but the world is still going to blame america for climate catastrophe What's the point of this blame thing you've been going on about for pages? America's poo poo in a lot of ways, China's poo poo in others, and trying to tally up some sort of score just comes off as an attempt to feel superior. We're all going to burn the same.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:12 |
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if by "for pages" you mean three posts
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:16 |
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It's a recurring theme in here.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:18 |
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Fojar38 posted:Chinese solar panels are cheap and inefficient and are a byproduct of mercantalist trade policy more than far-seeing environmental policy, the Paris Accords require China to do literally loving nothing, and lol China can't even build a decent regular car. China is a Kleptocracy. And whatever gravitas the USA had over the Chinese has been trumped by our recent move to complete Climate denial. And trains. China has decent trains.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:26 |
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I'm sure that the atmosphere cares a whole lot about China saying the Correct Things while continuing to pollute the poo poo out of it.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:41 |
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can yo ufucking beleive china. jesus loving christ. they are SICK. look at those loving emissions. can't loving bleive it.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:42 |
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A Buttery Pastry posted:At least if the cause is (largely) pesticides, there's the possibility of it being more quickly reversed if action is actually taken. I mean, fish stocks can bounce back pretty well if you stop fishing them, on a relatively short time scale, and presumably insects have the potential to bounce back even faster? i'd bet money the main reason is habitat fragmentation and the follow-on extinction debt (the time frame is roughly right for this), with larger scale (rather than small scale like analysed in the study) land use change, climate change, and pesticides being smaller additional problems
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:42 |
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Fojar38 posted:I'm sure that the atmosphere cares a whole lot about China saying the Correct Things while continuing to pollute the poo poo out of it. No you see China is a bastion of climate change beca
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:44 |
VideoGameVet posted:China is a Kleptocracy. And the United States isn't?
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 00:50 |
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Welp. That's something I hadn't seen before. Honestly, we deserve what's coming.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 03:37 |
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This is really stressful. I can't believe it. Every few weeks I check in and see how hosed we are and, just gently caress gently caress gently caress we are so hosed. I can't imagine staring at these facts for a living.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 03:57 |
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Yep, we deserve to die. gently caress all humans.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 04:03 |
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VideoGameVet posted:Lots of pine bark beetles killing trees all over the place, the winters aren't killing them. This has been a thing in the western half of Canada for a couple decades now. Entire mountains of dead trees whenever you drive out on the highway, it's pretty brutal. On the bright side, that river's gonna dry up soon enough and it'll no longer be polluted when it's gone! And only like half a billion people rely directly upon it for their survival! No problem, they'll annihilate each other with nuclear weapons and it'll all be fine. I'm only half joking, I think a "small-scale" nuclear war would probably be less damaging to the planet than the status quo in the long run. Telephones posted:This is really stressful. I can't believe it. Every few weeks I check in and see how hosed we are and, just gently caress gently caress gently caress we are so hosed. If you don't have kids it's not so bad. I take a certain amount of comfort in knowing that my own inevitable mortality is simply freeing me from the doomed future of the planet; rather than denying me the inexhaustible bounties of the future of a never-ending and always-expanding humanity that might one day become as immortal beings that spread across the galaxy, or even the universe, in a never-ending journey of wonder and discovery. Now that that's off the table for sure, the burden of possibility has been lifted, and I can accept what's coming to me and everyone else much more peacefully than I could have in the past. The end of global human civilization is kind of a freeing thought if you look at it from the right angle. ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Oct 21, 2017 |
# ? Oct 21, 2017 04:12 |
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quote:. Engineers had built several dams on the river north of Delhi to provide drinking water for the capital and irrigation for the states of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Those states, India’s breadbasket, powered the 1960s “green revolution,” feeding the masses. The dams left little water in the river to flow to Delhi, whose population growth outstripped the city’s ability to treat sewage and wastewater. BORLAAAAAAUUUUG!
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 05:20 |
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Bourlag's not the drat problem, there's no reason the planet can't sustain the 9-10 billion population he helped create. And by that I mean there is a reason, it's just not a scientific one, it's political. He was a scientist, scientists are generally pretty politically naive and optimistic, especially in the 60s.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 06:10 |
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blowfish posted:i'd bet money the main reason is habitat fragmentation and the follow-on extinction debt (the time frame is roughly right for this), with larger scale (rather than small scale like analysed in the study) land use change, climate change, and pesticides being smaller additional problems ChairMaster posted:Bourlag's not the drat problem, there's no reason the planet can't sustain the 9-10 billion population he helped create.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 06:34 |
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If scientists knew anything about politics we wouldn't have any technology beyond the reach of the layman. Any antipathy or time spent cursing the name of a guy who figured out how to make more food would be better directed at the people who refused to hit the brakes on the road to destruction and the people who can't see beyond their own nation's borders to give a poo poo about the world at large. I say better in the sense of theory, in practice it doesn't matter what any of us say or think because we're not billionaires.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 06:57 |
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ChairMaster posted:And by that I mean there is a reason, it's just not a scientific one, it's political. He was a scientist, scientists are generally pretty politically naive and optimistic, especially in the 60s. I will forever blame Midgley for the baby boomers growing up brain-damaged. And he knew what the gently caress he was doing. He knew.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 07:09 |
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I can't imagine anyone would defend the guy who thought it was okay to breathe in lead fumes like a thousand years after we figured out that that's a good way to get brain damage.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 14:53 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 05:56 |
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But the paint is so much more vibrant.
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# ? Oct 21, 2017 17:18 |