Ecological Armageddon....

[Dave]

Does it concern you about how terrible human beings are as 'stewards of the planet?'

We seem to be doing just massive amounts of destruction for profit.

I read yesterday, that 75% of winged insects have been wiped out, in the last three decades. Did you know that? Does it scare you?

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/19/europe/insect-decline-germany/index.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-armageddon-75-per-cent-plummet-a8008406.html

What about Elephants? Beautiful intelligent creatures. An elephant is killed every 15 minutes. Did you know that?

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-03-14/elephant-killed-every-15-minutes/

Do you feel detached as though there is nothing you can do about it, but would like to? I do.

This thing about 99.9% of all species going extinct anyway, seems a convenient excuse to me. Just to do nothing.

I find it terrible. I find a lot of things we do, in the name of science and profit absolutely horrific.

Beagle farms in the UK for instance.....the list is endless.

Where will it end? Whats wrong with us? Will man made greed wipe out all life one way or another?

Or do you just not give a monkeys? Thats seems to be the prevalent feeling. I hope Im wrong about that.

Whats your opinion? Does it feel like a losing battle? Or a battle we've already lost?

 

[crosslandkelly]

The battle is not lost, there are plenty of us fighting out there. I'd like to think that the tide is slowly turning.
The best way to hurt the corporate polluters is to hit them in their profits.
There are a lot of small ways an individual can help to do their bit. It may seem a bit simplistic, but this is good. https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/save-earth-top-ten.htm

 

[Dogoak]

I've been battling against it in my own way for 35 years, along with many others there is a resistance and awareness, sadly it's the minority.
Power, money, greed, self importance and ignorance are the prime issues, as a collective whole we should be ashamed of ourselves, we seem to be the species that need to become extinct

 

[TeeDee]

I've been battling against it in my own way for 35 years, along with many others there is a resistance and awareness, sadly it's the minority.
Power, money, greed, self importance and ignorance are the prime issues, as a collective whole we should be ashamed of ourselves, we seem to be the species that need to become extinct

Start of a whole new debate right there. Human Population Control.... Suggestions on whats right? views??? Could be a decent topic if approached maturely..

 

[daveO]

I try not to think about it but I do think about it a lot.

Sometimes you can justify the statistics though. Justify is probably the wrong word but bear with me. I'll take for example the common house sparrow. We're told that house sparrows are in trouble and have faced huge delines due to modernisation of farming methods. However when you look into this there is little in the way of data regarding what is a 'normal' sparrow population. Most of the data we have is from numbers counted when farming was wasteful and sparrows benefitted from the spilled grain etc and could well have had an inflated population level. What we're seeing now could be a return to normality rather than a worrying decline.

Same with winged insects. Was there a higher population due to agricultural methods before pesticide use became so widespread? Obviously some/most of the decline is due to habitat loss but not all. Dave Goulson writes some brilliant books the modern plight of bees and insects, well worth a read.

Some animals and plants are also completely reliant on human interference for their success as well.

These changes have only become a problem within a tiny span of our human timescale but it's hard to see a way back now without a total reset. Insects are very specialised and are hit the hardest by climate change. If the climate damage is already done and with little sign of being reversed then it doesn't look good for a lot of species. We're probably losing species now before they've even been discovered.

Over poplulation is still the elephant in the room (no pun intended). Without addressing that at a global level nothing will change. Try telling a developing nation that they have to limit their population growth so America can still enjoy living well above their global means.

 

[TeeDee]

Over poplulation is still the elephant in the room (no pun intended). Without addressing that at a global level nothing will change. Try telling a developing nation that they have to limit their population growth so America can still enjoy living well above their global means.

Just America?

 

[daveO]

Just America?

It was just an example. I used America (meaning the USA) as they're the leading consumer of global resources/capita for most things. It's a bit hard to say more without getting political.

 

[Robson Valley]

Planet Earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions which we can find easily in the fossil record.
Best estimates now claim that we are entering ME #6.

Another way to look at this is to consider the consumption of oxygen by industrialized countries.
Related to the area of green space where plants do photosynthesis and release oxygen.
As you might expect, all the big names are there.

 

[daveO]

Planet Earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions which we can find easily in the fossil record.
Best estimates now claim that we are entering ME #6.

Another way to look at this is to consider the consumption of oxygen by industrialized countries.
Related to the area of green space where plants do photosynthesis and release oxygen.
As you might expect, all the big names are there.

Don't forget that marine plants produce a huge proportion of the world's oxygen so that comparison might be misleading.

 

[Janne]

The Earth as such will adopt very nicely. Even if we kill off a large % of the wild life, new species will eventually emerge.

We as humans do loads of serious damage to Earth.
Global warming - we are accelerating a natural phenomenon. The Earth is still in the warming stage since the last Ice Age.
Some definitions of an Ice Age is that there is still ice covered areas left before the cold season starts.
We have not reached the 'Ice free' stage yet, and will not for many Millennia. But we are accelerating the melt.

In the past, Earth was far warmer and more humid, far higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The levels went down when the carbon was taken up by trees and plants and the Coal deposits were formed.

In worst case (for us) we will get there again.

But Life will go on, just not as we know it.

We will adapt, or vanish. The Earth does not care.

There is one thing we can do to slow down the global Warming. Plant trees, lots and lots of them.

And burn less fossil fuel. Go Solar, go Nuclear, go Wind power, go Geothermal.

Built eco friendly ( insulated concrete house slab, well insulated wooden houses).

I also read the report of the vanishing insects. My first question was - how much are the cars themselves killing? Imagine if cars did not kill one! single insect, surely that would make a huge difference in the number of insects?
Killling one single female insect early in the warm season = several future generations that year are wiped out.

 

[Robson Valley]

That's true. But on the land base, they no longer have enough "green" land to replace the oxygen they consume
so they are forced to use off-shore, ocean-produced oxygen as well.

 

[Janne]

Need more oxygen? Plant trees.
1: Carbon sink
2: Releases oxygen into atmosphere.

Do you have a garden? Plant a tree tomorrow. If every one of us on this forum that have a garden did that - several thousand of new trees. tons of Carbon taken out from the Atmosphere each year.

Plant an Apple or Pear tree. Good for Earth. Tasty too!
If you harvest 15 kilos a year = 15 kilos less that have to be transported and imported, using fossil fuels.

 

[daveO]

Built eco friendly ( insulated concrete house slab, well insulated wooden houses).

I also read the report of the vanishing insects. My first question was - how much are the cars themselves killing? Imagine if cars did not kill one! single insect, surely that would make a huge difference in the number of insects?
Killling one single female insect early in the warm season = several future generations that year are wiped out.

Here's another interesting point. Birds (and other creatures) are adapting very quickly to pick dead insects off cars and to collect stunned ones that are left on the road. Human activity and climate change now extend the breeding season for birds which in turn has an impact on bug life. Insects are generally very good at mass breeding as a survival mechanism but cars kill so indescriminantly that they eliminate the survival of the fittest mechanism.

I left in your other bit because concrete needs to be phased out in housing to be truely eco friendly. Eco thermal mass is hard to achieve in mass production though.

 

[Robson Valley]

The fact is, some countries are consuming more oxygen than their land base produces.

Trees are a mistake as they do only C3 photosynthesis. Others, grasses in particular, use a C4 mechanism
to pull vastly more carbon dioxide that just C3. In the Boreal Forest Biome, trees are best adapted to
the physical conditions. They are grown here as a fiber crop. No more, no less.

It's quite easily seen in the fossil record that Earth has experienced 5 mass extinction events.
It's also apparent that we are well on our way into ME #6.

 

[daveO]

The fact is, some countries are consuming more oxygen than their land base produces.

Trees are a mistake as they do only C3 photosynthesis. Others, grasses in particular, use a C4 mechanism
to pull vastly more carbon dioxide that just C3. In the Boreal Forest Biome, trees are best adapted to
the physical conditions. They are grown here as a fiber crop. No more, no less.

Trees do offer more carbon capture though in the long term. Horses for courses though. A good peat bog will hold more carbon than if you planted trees on there. Gases aside though there is a done of ecological repair work that could be done through very simple interventions as long as they're appropriate. Janne's point about growing food is a good one as there is a wider reduction in CO2 than just the respiration of the plants.

I'd be interested in how many trees members of this forum have planted. I imagine it's way above 1 per person. I've got at least 30 of you covered just in the last couple of years.

 

[Robson Valley]

Hey Dave0: Do grape vines count? I don't have room for more than 20 behind my house.
But, I've started cuttings and sold fewer than 300 over the past 5-6 summers.
As for real trees: 2 apple, 1 cherry, 5 Saskatoons (if you can call a 15' shrub a tree).

The superiority of grasses extends to their perennial nature, Mow it off every year. C4 is more effective than C3 alone.
Conifer forests are cut to the ground then totally replanted.

 

[santaman2000]

......Insects are generally very good at mass breeding as a survival mechanism but cars kill so indescriminantly that they eliminate the survival of the fittest mechanism......

I wish that were true. We can't seem to control Lovebugs; much less exterminate them. Every car kills thousands on a single trip of less than a hundred miles yet they continue to plague. The truth is that roadways only make small ribbons through insect areas:

Trees do offer more carbon capture though in the long term. Horses for courses though. A good peat bog will hold more carbon than if you planted trees on there.....

Yep. Sea algae and seaweed are also better at this than trees.

 

[Janne]

I do not know if there is a time delay in CO2 release, but all of Europe has now more trees on the whole area then well before the Middle ages.

Still, there are plenty of spaces that can be planted. Gardens, empty unused fields.

Now, I do not want to be political and throw stones in a glass house, but there are a handful of countries that are the baddies. No matter what the rest of the World does, if they do not change, it will get worse.
Of course, we have no right to demand they stop developing.
Unfortunately they use outdated, polluting, but simple technology.
Jumping from a Buffalo to a high tech, low polluting tractor is not possible. Dirty diesels are far cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. Plus easy to make.

Then of course we have pollution. Chemicals, plastic and such.

We humans are committing a slow suicide. And taking untold other species with us.

Peat bogs and the frozen parts of the tundra are huge C sinks, but they were not there at all times. Wonder how the climate was before the formation of those?

To minimize the impact of concrete ( is it one ton of C released for every ton of concrete poured?) it is quite important to use the aerated concrete. It insulates, and uses much less concrete.

 

[Janne]

In Canada you do not have much of the surface covered with roads and far less cars than in Europe.

it is not easy to grow more algae and sea weed in the oceans. How do you grow more without changing the balance?
Also, a tree can grow for hundreds of years, trapping more C every year. Then if it used as building material, store this trapped C for at least another 100 years.
Algae and sea weed have a short life cycle. They release all C after death and rotting. Short time C depository.

I wish that were true. We can't seem to control Lovebugs; much less exterminate them. Every car kills thousands on a single trip of less than a hundred miles yet they continue to plague. The truth is that roadways only make small ribbons through insect areas:

Yep. Sea algae and seaweed are also better at this than trees.

 

[Janne]

I try to be environmentally friendly, but know very well that I am one in the top layer of the worst offenders world wide.
Cars and boat that have huge engines. Big house built of thick, reinforced concrete. Fly long haul several times a year. Eat food that has been imported from around the World.

My C footprint is giant. Sorry!

But I do recycle, avoid using chemicals, eat Organic if I can.