World Wildlife Falls By 58% in 40 years (bbc.com) 180
Global wildlife populations have fallen by 58% since 1970, BBC reports citing The Living Planet assessment by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF. The report adds that if the trend continues, the decline would reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020. The figures suggest that animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands are suffering the biggest losses. Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines. From the report: Dr Mike Barrett. head of science and policy at WWF, said: "It's pretty clear under 'business as usual' we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we've reached a point where there isn't really any excuse to let this carry on. This analysis looked at 3,700 different species of birds, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles - about 6% of the total number of vertebrate species in the world. The team collected data from peer-reviewed studies, government statistics and surveys collated by conservation groups and NGOs. Any species with population data going back to 1970, with two or more time points (to show trends) was included in the study.
Positive development (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Positive development (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure humans are edible too.
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Means more room for humans. We're succeeding as a species. I suspect it wont end well for us though.
I have no doubt that certain species are declining, but others are booming, and it's precisely because there's more humans. For instance, there's more deer [koryoswrites.com], black bears [nationalgeographic.com], raccoons [nypost.com], and coyotes [thedailyreporter.com], just to name a few.
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The abundance of one species does not a healthy ecosystem make. I have a friend whose family owns a 1700 acre island off the coast of New England. It used to support an enormous white tail deer population -- and not coincidentally it had a plague of ticks, because everything in nature is food for something else. You would not have wanted to visit there back in the 1970s because the tick problem was insane. Everyone in his family has had Lyme disease, which also feasted on the swollen deer population.
Then
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Means more room for humans. We're succeeding as a species. I suspect it wont end well for us though.
I don't see any reason to believe it will end badly, at least not for reasons related to this issue.
Homo Sapiens has proven to be an extraordinarily adaptable and successful species, a global superpredator, which has inevitably displaced many other species. The Holocene Extinction [wikiwand.com], which has been in progress for thousands of years, is the result. The rate of extinctions accelerated dramatically in the last few centuries, particularly as the human population has exploded.
However, in the last few decades
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I think that and similar humanity-caused, humanity-ending disasters are unlikely, but I am an inveterate optimist.
I misread that as "I am an invertebrate optimist."
Study bias? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying there's any intentional bias here, I'm just curious and posing the question. If the data was collected from a any study with multiple data points on population... is there a control factor for whether studies including population data in general are more likely to occur on species that are dwindling? If a species has no population issues to begin with, is it likely to have a study?
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I'm very sorry that you feel compelled to lash out for not real reason.
I had a question. I implied nothing, simply asked a question. Often the Slashdotters are better informed on many topics than I am, and usually a few folks dig into any given subject posted and really dive deep. Asking a question that this group might answer seems pretty reasonable for a discussion board.
Not everything is a conspiracy. Sometimes a question is just a question. Reading the attached article(but not the study) pointed ou
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I think we have a pretty good example of Poe's Law here
Mass Extinction Bad (Score:4, Informative)
I'm more worried about the current ongoing mass extinction than I am about climate change per se. (Yes, I realize that climate change is a major contributor to the mass extinction). Sea level rise is going to be catastrophic, but not an existential problem for human civilization. But our agriculture depends on a lot of non-human species (bees, for example). An agricultural collapse brought on by a combination of climate change and mass extinction would be an existential threat to humanity.
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Only honey bees are domesticated (some kinds). Others, such as bumble bees, are also major pollinators, and they're suffering badly.
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Extinctions, climate change, habitat loss... they're all just symptoms of the same underlying problem of too many people consuming too much stuff. For our own long-term survival we need to cut back on the consumption and reproduce less*. I know the economy will suffer and some people's standard of living will decrease but we have a pretty stark choice: make some sacrifices now and win long-term, or keep growing to extinction. And being a selfish bastard who values humans above all else I'm going to sugge
And human population icreased by 100% (Score:1)
in the same timespan. It's easy to deplore the numbers, but the actual decision on who exactly has to disappear to make room for a wild-life zoo - and why - is not so easy and can certainly not be avoided by dropping condoms form helicopters.
On the other hand, man is part of nature - and humans and his house-animals are not even included in the survey. Those should be worth a lot more than your random wild beast (for us, but slashdot [i]is[/i] a human website after all).
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Not if you are carrying out a study on Wildlife
Just blame man (Score:1)
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That's all they want everyone to know that its mans fault and if we don't just die and leave the planet, all hope is lost.
... or we could take some time to evaluate whether we're seeing a tragedy of the commons problem caused by actors chasing short-term goals. That's a solvable problem without extreme measures. But yeah, if you really believe that the only proposed solution is to wipe out humanity then I guess I can see where burying your head in the sand and pretending everything is fine seems like a sensible alternative.
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>> That's a solvable problem without extreme measures.
Not really. I think people/companies chasing selfish short term goals (i.e. moar $$$$ NOW!!!) at any cost, further enabled by the fact that corruption plays a major part in government, are both so fundamental to the current system that it would require close to a complete societal reboot to fix.
The fact that the polls are showing Hillary ahead is a very strong indicator that most average Americans don't even think blatant systemic corruption is a s
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It means nothing of the kind. It means the Republicans managed to choose a frothing madman as their candidate for the highest office in the land. This leaves sane people with no alternative but to hold their noses and vote for the only major-league candidate who isn't an ignorant, moronic bully with what appears to be a genuine mental health problem.
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Personally I would much rather take even an ignroant moronic bully than a divisively corrupt, evil psychopath like Hillary.
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Evidently you have proof nobody else has seen that Clinton is as you claim. Trump's failings are a matter of public record.
And if Clinton is "divisive", that's primarily because Trump's supporters are as fact-averse and divorced from reality as he is. Fortunately, they're a minority and will shortly be swept into the dustbin of history.
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> Evidently you have proof nobody else has seen that Clinton is as you claim.
Wow you have to be shitting me.
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Ah, forgive me. I didn't realize you were one of those conspiracy nutbars. Do you think maybe she's an alien lizard wearing a skin suit?
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She's not a lizard wearing a skinsuit, but she is a puppet wearing a pantsuit.
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Seen as you have obviously been living in a cave for the last 15 years, just watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I'm one of those liberals who has found it very interesting to question what people say everybody knows now and then. I hear a lot of things said about Clinton, and when I go to check up on them I find that there's really no good evidence behind them. It's gotten so bad that my automatic response to people saying seriously bad things about Clinton is to disbelieve it, because from experience that's probably the right move.
I've found that some people are willing to talk about the mountain of evidence ag
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> but aren't willing to point me at a pebble that supports their argument.
I've already posted plenty in other threads you have been on too, but you don't want a pebble, you want absolute unequivocal proof before you will even consider the possibility that Hillary is anything other than squeaky clean. Then knowing you from your other posts, you're just like many other libs here in that no matter what evidence there is, you would still come up with some excuse to not believe it.
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Ah, your telepathy must be strong.
I've been looking at pebbles. So far, I've mostly been running into things like the uranium deal with Russia, which is not really evidence of corruption. There is one incident from the 1970s or 1980s I'm not through investigating.
Clinton is not squeaky clean. There's bad things about her. My current judgment is that these don't matter all that much for the Presidency, and I expect her to be a good (not great) President.
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> There's bad things about her. My current judgment is that these don't matter all that much for the Presidency,
This boggles my mind. How could any sane person on the one hand say this person is corrupt, then on the other say she should be president?
This is bad. (Score:2)
Say what you will, but I don't like the way things are going in the broad perspective.
Yes, we are the dominant species. And yes that is cool.
But we need to start and act as responsible as we are. Right now we only have one planet and it's probably going to stay that way - any people moving to mars in 300 years probably will go to stay there. Just watching those old films of english colonial lords shooting tigers by the dozen just for the kicks or seeing japanese firms chopping down rainforests in the indone
Sounds like BS. How can you reliably measure this? (Score:1)
Aren't we're just taking up the best land/space? (Score:3)
Mix in our propensity for permanently altering various environments with invasive species or new chemicals to support the human race's growing need for food/energy, and you have a very potent force for mass extinction.
Modern development should change to live more within the natural background it's living within, to cohabitate with other animals.. Hopefully we'll figure that out soon.
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Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, that's more than a bit of exaggeration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
WWF has been accused by the campaigner Corporate Watch of being too close to businesses to campaign objectively.[31][32] WWF claims partnering with corporations such as Coca-Cola, Lafarge, Carlos Slim's and IKEA will reduce their effect on the environment.[33] WWF received €56 million (US$80 million) from corporations in 2010 (an 8% increase in support from corporations compared to 2009), accounting for 11% of total revenue for the year.[3]
11% is not insignificant, but it's not at the level of 'greenwashing their projects' of influence.
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A separate problem with this, though, and much harder to quantify -- is what this does to their reputation? Read somewhere that Greenpeace's mom & pop contributions went down, for example, as their board-room involvement went up.
Hard to say if that has ramifications on how effective they can be. Maybe they genuinely get more done with less funds this way.
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I am sick and tired of climate change being mentioned in every story with no evidence to back it up?
To me the solution to most problems is simple ... Less people!
What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Interesting)
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I've seen that movie. Charlton Heston was awesome. And hey, tasty, tasty Soylent Green. . .
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:4, Informative)
"Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines."
And since when was the BBC World News a clickbait site? Seriously you make fucking ridiculous claims for someone who obviously never even bothered to learn anything more then they think they know.
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Looking at how this study was constructed, I believe most of the reported decline is likely just selection bias.
They did no original data collection - they just reviewed existing data sources. Unfortunately, the existing data sources are from conservation movements. They do not care about the New York rat population (which is doing just fine), those organizations are trying to track the species that are struggling.
So if a species is struggling to survive, it was far more likely to be included in the repor
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Really? All of them?
Does it have to be all of them for there to be a problem we need to think about?
I confess your reasoning seems incoherent to me. You appear to be implying that if a single species would have gone extinct anyway it makes no difference how many wildlife populations people destroy.
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Well, we have messed up many places in a misguided attempt to save them, (History of Yellowstone) so yes, doing nothing may be better!
Err... "Doing nothing" in this case doesn't mean leaving nature alone; it means leaving human modification of nature alone.
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, yes. Humanity was at least partially responsible for a lot of the megafauna of the wildlife going extinct.
We wiped out lots of large animals already and now we're working on the smaller ones.
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
Sure, of course. But I think you're making a very large oversight by ignoring to recognize the rate of change over time. That's like saying there's no difference between a vehicle that accelerates from 0-100km/hr in 30 seconds from vehicle car that can do it in 2 seconds. Big difference. Rate of change matters. When you're trying to figure out where you are now and then calculating how far we're going to be in the future after a fixed period of time you're going to get very different results based on that figure. Then we can talk about scale, it's easier to affect the rate of change on something small like a 2-passenger car (or your backyard's ecosystem) than it is to affect the rate of change on a seafaring super tanker (or a continent's ecosystem). It's critical to keep everything in the proper perspective. If you don't, you're going to draw fundamentally flawed conclusions.
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Informative)
What about the fact that species die out all the time?
Wow, the level of ignorance here is ... astounding.
It's not species dying that's the issue. It's the *rate* that they're dying that's the issue.
I know that may be too difficult for you to understand, but go look here and learn:
http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
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It's not species dying that's the issue. It's the *rate* that they're dying that's the issue.
Well, really, the issue is that species we prefer are dying. We're not in any position to wipe out the biosphere; we're just making it less pleasant for ourselves. We're reducing diversity and reducing the number of species that we find it relatively pleasant to coexist with, and they'll be replaced by ones we aren't so fond of.
Species with longer reproductive cycles and smaller populations take longer to evolve, so when there's a sharp drop in biodiversity, it takes a relatively longer time, in evolutionar
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What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
You really don't see that humans are qualitatively different, both as an animal and as a phenomenon that affects the whole planet?
Humanity is certainly capable of continuing to exist for aeons, I mean we won't because we're going to do something stupid/fail to ever do something smart (obviously), but it's possible in a way that isn't possible for other species.
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Yes, species die out all the time. They do not, save during very extreme events, start dying out in the numbers being observed.
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What about the fact that species die out all the time? Like before we were here? Actually, some of them dying out are the reason we are here now! It happens. It will happen to us. It will suck when it is our turn, but it will still happen.
There have been long periods in evolutionary history where individual species are occassionally dying out, new ones are occasionally emerging, and the ecosystem is relatively stable.
What's being suggested here is something else. The idea is that we're looking at a mass extinction event, marked by a sudden, unstable transition in the ecosystem, where major chunks of the tree of life are wiped out. There's no reason to assume that we're on the part of the tree that survives, but if some humans do come thoru
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
If something is going to happen in the far future, i.e., after you're dead, it doesn't matter.
There was a saying in ancient Greece along the lines of A civilization grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in.
Your attitude is precisely the reason why extinction is beckoning us, but hey, you won't be around so who gives a fuck. Sadly, some of the rest of us have "consciences", which means that knowing full well that you're leaving a toxic wasteground behind when you die causes some cognitive dissonance while you're still actually alive.
So yeah, I guess I envy your shallow, mindless, selfish attitude. Bravo you.
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Now look at Greece. All their sayings really did them a lot of good.
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I reconcile my inherent selfishness with the long term good by planning to live 1000 years.
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Hey, if you're willing to put up with some extra work and expense now to make sure your last few centuries are comfortable, that's fine with me.
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If something is going to happen in the far future, i.e., after you're dead, it doesn't matter.
Please be Poe's Law, but this sort of thinking is half the reason we have climate problems (the other half being greed).
"If I can be comfortable, who gives a shit if the entire planet falls apart the day after I die? That's the next generation's problem."
#whywecanthavenicethings
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:4, Informative)
More economically advanced countries tend to have lower birth rates.
When they no longer need 8 or 10 kids to help out on the farm, that's when folks tend to start thinking about ways not to have so many of them.
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I think it's probably about the time they realize that they could afford another kid or they could afford a big-screen TV. IMHO a big-screen TV is the ultimate birth-control device.
Leaving aside the usual mindless cant about "government-subsidized litters" and other duckspeak assertions that are either no longer true or never were, there was actually a reverse baby-boom during the Reagan years to the extent that there are something like 3 million fewer people in the 19-40 age bracket right now than there was a decade ago or something along those lines.
In fact, if Trump builds his wall, the current US population growth rate would suffer the same fate as countries such as Japan, Italy and Russia, where the population is shrinking at a rate that they find alarming. Only the immigrants have kept the overall US population growing.
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Only the immigrants have kept the overall US population growing.
Citation needed.
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What rock do you live under?
http://www.google.com/ [google.com]
You can get the info straight from the Census Bureau, government, private, and academic analyses, etc., etc., etc. More citations than you can shake a stick at.
This isn't an "everybody knows", or "it sounds right, so it must be true", or "I can find a news site that supports my opinion". It's not a "smoking causes cancer" or "too much greenhouse gas causes AGW". It's cold hard numbers collected straight from the principals under US Law.
And this isn't Wikiped
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:4, Informative)
Um.
"lesser countries"?
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Um.
"lesser countries"?
Does the concept of ranking things bother you? Do you feel every country should be ranked the same, just to be more fair? Why, if I may ask? What is a country to you, other than just an administrative division of land with some local rules? Are you some kind of nationalist?
Countries like the US or most places in Europe are objectively better places to live than most countries in Africa. It's why so many people want to migrate there.
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Does the concept of ranking things bother you?
I think that implying that some people should be subject to eugenics programs because they don't live in the U.S. or Europe is pretty profoundly offensive, yeah. Extra points for giving the First-Worlders tax breaks at the same time.
Population growth is a huge problem, and it's a fact that most of it is taking place in the Third World, but it's also a fact that most of the resource consumption is taking place in the First World. The best way to stem population growth is via prosperity: middle-class people d
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I think that implying that some people should be subject to eugenics programs because they don't live in the U.S. or Europe is pretty profoundly offensive, yeah. Extra points for giving the First-Worlders tax breaks at the same time.
Calm down: he's saying both "greater" and "lesser" countries would be "subjected to the eugeneics programs" as you so inflammatory put it. Free condoms and tax breaks are both incentives to have fewer kids.
Granted, it would be more egalitarian to apply one or the other or both to both demographics.
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What do you mean "no evidence to back it up?" There are so many studies that indicate that increased temperatures are causing all sorts of disruptions in systems that varied around a threshold for so long. Mosquitoes in Hawai'i occur at higher elevations now, carrying diseases to endemic birds that are naive to these mozzies and the disease. Warmer temps have keep white-nose fungus alive in North American bats. There are plenty more examples, those were the only two that came to my mind in the moment. Maybe
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Without immigration the US population would be experiencing negative growth. Most European countries are the same. It seems the poorest countries do all the breeding. Imagine a program where you pay women in those poor countries to be sterilized. Give them enough money they can live in comfort the rest of their lives and you have a cold, inhuman solution to over population. In the rich countries people are too busy having fun to have children. I live and work in a middle class environment and hardly a
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Why don't we give out condoms to lesser countries and give tax incentives in wealthier ones? Face it. The reason for habit loss is economic as people need housing, food, and cheap products that produce toxins. Immigration problems wouldn't be an issue if Latin Americans and Africans could find work at livable wages. When over supply of labor hits you get a dump on demand.
In short: Because it doesn't work. Richer people are only richer because there are others who are poor; exploitation in one way or another - that is the bedrock on which Capitalism rests. If we somehow got rid of the poorest 75% of the world's population, just to take a number, one of the things that would happen would be that the bottom of the pile got a lot closer to where you are (if you didn't happen to be one the 75%); and who do you think it is that works hard at very low wages to produce the food, cl
Re: More condoms less climate change (Score:2)
I am not talking about eugenics.
I am talking about reality. Greed wins everytime with the free market.
The only solution is to alter supply to fix demand. Less kids means less problems as resources are limited. Having 1 kid per family helps everyone
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Reading is fundamental...
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I am sick and tired of climate change being mentioned in every story with no evidence to back it up?
Is that a question?
In any case, you're in good company on Slashdot. The prevailing opinon is one of high skepticism that humans adversely affect the environment/biosphere what-so-ever.
When I say skepticism, what I mean is denialism.
FWIW, there is no point in arguing. Motivated reasoning trumps all. I would love to find out that all the 'bad news' of the last few decades was a hoax. I'm just not intellectually cowardly enough to kid myself into thinking that.
Re: More condoms less climate change (Score:2)
So I can create conclusions based on bias hypothesis with no experiments?
How is that reality? Proof that 58% of species decline is caused by climate zones changing too quickly? Prove that each time there is a flood it MUST be climate change? I am sick of the bias!
It just adds ammo to the denialists otherwise.
Human activity we can prove. So less kids means less problems.
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People per se have almost no impact on climate. It's what people do and how much in aggregate they do it.
Environmentalists are often stereotyped as pessimists, but really most of the people I know who've dedicated their careers are optimistic that technology can address many environmental problems. Sure, they'd like to see the global population stabilized, or even somewhat reduced, because that makes the job of preserving the environment much easier. But they actually believe the sustainability problem c
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Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
Chastity is not the opposite of reproduction.
Contraception is the opposite of reproduction. Small yet important difference.
The problem is simply that religion still tries to shame sexual encounters outside of marriage and even outside of reproduction.
Imagine if the church went and told the believers that they had to be abstinent for five years after conceiving a child and that sharing yourself with someone without conception was actually pleasing god, I bet the religions would be gone in a hundred years tops.
In my opinion that reliance on population growth shows you, right there, that they are based on bullshit. If their holy scriptures made any sense to normally thinking people then they wouldn't rely so much on indoctrination in the families.
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Chastity is not the opposite of reproduction.
That's only been true since 1960 or so.
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Chastity is not the opposite of reproduction.
That's only been true since 1960 or so.
It's been true for 100s of years [wikipedia.org], likely 1000s [wikipedia.org]. Just because our sense of history generally is so short doesn't mean we're living in a unique era in everything we can do.
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The problem is simply that religion still tries to shame sexual encounters outside of marriage and even outside of reproduction.
Correction: Uneducated, religious people still try to shame sexual enjoyment - inside and outside of marriage - out of sex because of their own ignorance and fear.
Educated religious people, OTOH, like to have sex [theonion.com] as much as the atheist/agnostic next door. (Yes, it's a satire piece - but it makes a not-so-subtle point: we all like to fuck.) We use contraceptives if and when we wan
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Actually, a lot of religions DON'T promote fucking like rabbits. The Medieval Church, for one. You were simply supposed to go without UNLESS you were specifically attempting to conceive children. In fact, in some cases, even things like the rhythm method were condemned.
Fortunately back then, peasants needed lots of strong sons to work the farm and nobles have always been better at promoting "morality" than actually practicing it.
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Fortunately back then, peasants needed lots of strong sons to work the farm
There was also the matter of the high mortality rate. That was true until even the early 1900s when it was common enough to take a post-mortem [wikipedia.org] family picture with a deceased child [stevehuffphoto.com] that no one thought it odd.
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Back in the late Victorian times, people took post-mortem family pictures of everyone.
Not to argue the child mortality rate, but the two are only tangentially related.
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There have been sects of Christianity that didn't promote having children, and in fact promoted chastity. Unsurprisingly, they last only about a generation...
Fair point. However, the Shakers [wikipedia.org] did last much longer than one generation, although they effectively closed shop in 1957.
Re:More condoms less climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
There is overwhelming evidence that Climate Change is real. The problem isn't the evidence, but your refusal (for whatever reason) to accept it. It's the exact same attitude as anti-vaxxers or anti-evolution people. The evidence is overwhelming, yet instead of accepting that the evidence exists and adjusting their opinions accordingly, they double-down on their pre-conceived notions because of some kind of emotional investment in what they believe.
However, I agree with your main point. People need to stop fucking like rabbits. I see religion as being a serious factor in this, because most religions *insist* that people fuck like rabbits for "the greater glory of god" or some bullshit. The Catholic Church, for example, consider contraceptives to be Bad(tm).
We're eating this planet alive with our collective greed and self-obsession, and nobody seems to care. I hate to say it, but we *need* another world war to thin down the numbers.
We hand out condoms for free in many places in Africa affected by AIDS and most people refuse to use them and it has nothing to do with their religion. They have every incentive to avoid unprotected sex and stop producing children. Yet, they still do. Sure, while it's easy and mentally satisfying to simplify the problem and blame religion. The reality of the situation is far, far, far more complex. You have to dig into the fundamentals of human nature and begin to unravel the hundreds of reasons why groups of people make bad decisions. Cultural, psychological, economical, biological, etc. There are 1000's of factors and yes, religion is certainly mixed into that soup of reasons. Being greedy and self obsessive is definitely part of our programming, it's not easy to override our basic instincts.
Re: More condoms less climate change (Score:2)
Did I say it's not real?
Look a story about a hurricane is posted on slashdot and climate change is instantly and scientifically accepted without question.
The problem is too many people frankly
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No kidding. Wow.
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The exact same sentence on say, Ars, would have been massively upvoted.
No one has been banned from Slashdot because they had the wrong opinion on climate change. I have on Ars Technica. Ars Technica is the real echo chamber.
Further, I guess I'm not alone in getting tired of idiots using the same irrelevant cliched statements. Sure, there are people who still don't believe in climate change, but why always assume the other party such? Give consideration to others and maybe you'll get some in turn.
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There is overwhelming evidence that Climate Change is real. The problem isn't the evidence, but your refusal (for whatever reason) to accept it. It's the exact same attitude as anti-vaxxers or anti-evolution people. The evidence is overwhelming, yet instead of accepting that the evidence exists and adjusting their opinions accordingly, they double-down on their pre-conceived notions because of some kind of emotional investment in what they believe.
Given that the GP stated that he accepts [slashdot.org] that climate change is real, do you have any relevant to say?
However, I agree with your main point. People need to stop fucking like rabbits. I see religion as being a serious factor in this, because most religions *insist* that people fuck like rabbits for "the greater glory of god" or some bullshit. The Catholic Church, for example, consider contraceptives to be Bad(tm).
Religion bashing. Ok.
We're eating this planet alive with our collective greed and self-obsession, and nobody seems to care. I hate to say it, but we *need* another world war to thin down the numbers.
And a pointless diatribe about the imaginary loose morals of humanity which are again irrelevant. A lot of people care, but they also care about other things which are in conflict with reversing climate change, such as doing good by the people alive now.
The real problem with climate change is that it is not the only problem we have. So obsessively focusing on it at the expense of ev
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It's not just poverty. People in Orlando wouldn't be constantly having their dogs eaten by bears if they weren't developing into the Ocala National Forest. Florida is a post-automobile state and high-rise residences are the exception, not the rule. Pair that with the American Dream of owning your own detached home and you end up crowding the critters. You end up with alligators in your garage and bears in the garbage bins.
Some critters respond to encroachment by going extinct. Others respond by trying to ea
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"Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
The problem with tax credit for kids is because economists require never ending growth for their models to work. They'll all have to go back to the drawing board for 0 growth economies.
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Might want to look closer next time you fly over. You might notice the vast amounts of wilderness once you get away from the major coastal cities....
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Actually, the concept of Global Warming was initially championed by Margaret Thatcher [wheremy.com]. . .
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some animal parts have the potential to produce them
Only through the placebo effect.
What we have to do is convince the Chinese that parts of invasive species will give you a super-boner...