http://www.scotsman.com/news/education/scots-research-finds-fish-evolving-to-evade-nets-1-3849689
Damn I hope this is right; Swim faster little fishy. I just love the Law of Unintended Consequences :fap:, don't you? Eventually huge numbers of people may starve to death because we turbo-charged the fish stocks, and what is not to love about that :(
Quotewhat is not to love about that
Are you saying it's a bad thing that humans will have selective pressure to get better at fishing?
Quote from: Acosmicist on August 05, 2015, 01:58:28 PM
Quotewhat is not to love about that
Are you saying it's a bad thing that humans will have selective pressure to get better at fishing?
Getting better at fishing is just that tired old trope the Arms Race in a different light anyway. We need better solutions not just faster ways of doing the same old things. Of course YMMV
Quote from: MMIX on August 06, 2015, 12:22:46 AM
Quote from: Acosmicist on August 05, 2015, 01:58:28 PM
Quotewhat is not to love about that
Are you saying it's a bad thing that humans will have selective pressure to get better at fishing?
Getting better at fishing is just that tired old trope the Arms Race in a different light anyway. We need better solutions not just faster ways of doing the same old things. Of course YMMV
The key word here was *better*, whether we give up at actually going out and fishing, find a new approach, or just domesticate them.
Seeing as how the ocean is mostly empty now except for vent worms and jellyfish, we should probably concentrate on domesticating fish.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on August 06, 2015, 05:50:01 AM
Seeing as how the ocean is mostly empty now except for vent worms and jellyfish, we should probably concentrate on domesticating fish.
We'll have to catch them first :wink: but that sounds like a good solution to me.
eta Also there is a fortune to be made for anyone who can work out wtf to do with jellyfish
If we could just ease up on our determination to view absolutely everything as a resource to be used up as fast as possible, fish stocks would probably rebound pretty quickly. Hell, with decent fishing management combined with habitat restoration we could probably even restore the salmon and eel runs.
Instead, we have this absurd situation of death by a thousand paper cuts, with street runoff the largest contributor to ocean pollution, huge dead zones caused by ag runoff, enormous warm water patches pushing massive droughts in growing regions, and everyone too stupidly myopic to look at more than one problem at a time to see how they all fit together.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 06, 2015, 03:34:20 PM
If we could just ease up on our determination to view absolutely everything as a resource to be used up as fast as possible, fish stocks would probably rebound pretty quickly. Hell, with decent fishing management combined with habitat restoration we could probably even restore the salmon and eel runs.
Instead, we have this absurd situation of death by a thousand paper cuts, with street runoff the largest contributor to ocean pollution, huge dead zones caused by ag runoff, enormous warm water patches pushing massive droughts in growing regions, and everyone too stupidly myopic to look at more than one problem at a time to see how they all fit together.
And, I know it isn't a particularly popular view in some quarters, but while there are currently diminishing resources of
fish, fowl, and good red herring there always seems to be an unlimited quantity of people. That is one thing the world surely isn't short of - people. And until we start to look seriously at social alternatives in which our comfortable 21st c lives are not supported on the backs of slave labour; most, if not all of them conveniently hidden in places where we don't need to look at them, whole other continents for preference, it doesn't look as though there will be any improvement. And market capitalism, that wonderful system where the market element is manipulated at government level to ensure that the market not only doesn't but in reality
can't operate as the theoreticians say that it should/could. And we are living in a system that is predicated on infinite and perpetual growth of both the size of the population and the size of the world economy to maintain standards of living and fuel continually rising prosperity? More Law of Unintended Consequences there than you could shake a stick at. I reckon that when that shit hits the fan people are going to look back to the dark ages with nostalgia. [/old fart]
In other words, yes you nailed it Nigel
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 06, 2015, 03:34:20 PM
If we could just ease up on our determination to view absolutely everything as a resource to be used up as fast as possible, fish stocks would probably rebound pretty quickly. Hell, with decent fishing management combined with habitat restoration we could probably even restore the salmon and eel runs.
Instead, we have this absurd situation of death by a thousand paper cuts, with street runoff the largest contributor to ocean pollution, huge dead zones caused by ag runoff, enormous warm water patches pushing massive droughts in growing regions, and everyone too stupidly myopic to look at more than one problem at a time to see how they all fit together.
We'll be at 8 billion people soon. That's 16,000,000,000,000 calories per day. It's 24,000,000,000 pounds of human shit per day. I have NO idea how much car exhaust or waste heat from air conditioning and refrigeration.
The root cause problem is poverty. Poverty and insecurity make people breed. More people means more poverty and insecurity. We dug this whole at the end of world war II (before then, but that's when we automated it), and I am unsure what the hell can be done about it.
Poverty isn't a cause, its an effect. Our system is in overdrive, it needs excess; it needs the "overs", over consumption, overpopulation, overproduction, etc etc. "Everything in moderation" might be the recommended course of action for the individual but the system's demands are immoderate; breed breed breed, consume consume consume.
Quote from: MMIX on August 06, 2015, 08:19:32 PM
Poverty isn't a cause, its an effect.
Not even gonna get into this.
Why?
Quote from: MMIX on August 06, 2015, 04:44:36 PM
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 06, 2015, 03:34:20 PM
If we could just ease up on our determination to view absolutely everything as a resource to be used up as fast as possible, fish stocks would probably rebound pretty quickly. Hell, with decent fishing management combined with habitat restoration we could probably even restore the salmon and eel runs.
Instead, we have this absurd situation of death by a thousand paper cuts, with street runoff the largest contributor to ocean pollution, huge dead zones caused by ag runoff, enormous warm water patches pushing massive droughts in growing regions, and everyone too stupidly myopic to look at more than one problem at a time to see how they all fit together.
And, I know it isn't a particularly popular view in some quarters, but while there are currently diminishing resources of fish, fowl, and good red herring there always seems to be an unlimited quantity of people. That is one thing the world surely isn't short of - people. And until we start to look seriously at social alternatives in which our comfortable 21st c lives are not supported on the backs of slave labour; most, if not all of them conveniently hidden in places where we don't need to look at them, whole other continents for preference, it doesn't look as though there will be any improvement. And market capitalism, that wonderful system where the market element is manipulated at government level to ensure that the market not only doesn't but in reality can't operate as the theoreticians say that it should/could. And we are living in a system that is predicated on infinite and perpetual growth of both the size of the population and the size of the world economy to maintain standards of living and fuel continually rising prosperity? More Law of Unintended Consequences there than you could shake a stick at. I reckon that when that shit hits the fan people are going to look back to the dark ages with nostalgia. [/old fart]
In other words, yes you nailed it Nigel
You are dead-on. Problem is, the closest thing to a clue that I have about solving the basic problem of overconsumption based on growth. It worked for a long time because we had a lot of planet to grow INTO, and Western colonialism essentially views people as commodities so the poor and exploited weren't seen as a problem.
But we don't have anything left to grow into, and our rampant consumption has broken the ecological cycle we rely on to survive.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on August 06, 2015, 07:15:05 PM
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 06, 2015, 03:34:20 PM
If we could just ease up on our determination to view absolutely everything as a resource to be used up as fast as possible, fish stocks would probably rebound pretty quickly. Hell, with decent fishing management combined with habitat restoration we could probably even restore the salmon and eel runs.
Instead, we have this absurd situation of death by a thousand paper cuts, with street runoff the largest contributor to ocean pollution, huge dead zones caused by ag runoff, enormous warm water patches pushing massive droughts in growing regions, and everyone too stupidly myopic to look at more than one problem at a time to see how they all fit together.
We'll be at 8 billion people soon. That's 16,000,000,000,000 calories per day. It's 24,000,000,000 pounds of human shit per day. I have NO idea how much car exhaust or waste heat from air conditioning and refrigeration.
The root cause problem is poverty. Poverty and insecurity make people breed. More people means more poverty and insecurity. We dug this whole at the end of world war II (before then, but that's when we automated it), and I am unsure what the hell can be done about it.
If people have access to education and options, they have fewer children. Hell, women with access to birth control will have fewer children, poverty be damned. But with education and options comes the expectation of development, electricity, cars, large houses with private bedrooms. And the first world consumes more, uses more resources, than all of the impoverished combined. So we need more than ending poverty, we also need to embrace a middle-class standard of living that doesn't involve rolling in excess.
Or, rather, we needed to about 50 years ago. It's too late now.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 07, 2015, 02:26:42 AM
Or, rather, we needed to about 50 years ago. It's too late now.
I hope you are wrong about it being too late, but it certainly looks like we are rushing blithely towards a cliff atm :(
You are dead right about education though. That has to be our "last, best, hope". But it needs to be the sort of education that changes unhelpful behaviours like the public campaigns 50 odd years ago [over here anyhow] that made it social unacceptable to go out and get drunk and than drive home. Does drink driving still happen, hells yes; but overall social attitudes towards it have changed markedly.
The optimist in me says it never too late, the pessimist says that it is so far past late that it really isn't funny, the realist says that the longer it is before we look seriously at the underlying causes of things like poverty and ecological degredation the more people are going to be damaged in the process of trying to survive our profligate history.
@Dok Howl: Btw I wasn't saying that what you said about poverty as a driver for population growth was wrong, just that poverty in turn is being driven by other factors which are of a higher order, and that you can't "fix" poverty without addressing those underlying structural problems/issues, I should have been clearer on that.
I hope I'm wrong too.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 07, 2015, 03:22:12 PM
I hope I'm wrong too.
"Shit in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up fastest."
- JR "Bob" Dobbs
Quote from: Doktor Howl on August 07, 2015, 09:30:24 PM
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 07, 2015, 03:22:12 PM
I hope I'm wrong too.
"Shit in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up fastest."
- JR "Bob" Dobbs
PRETTY MUCH, YEP. :horrormirth:
I'm rooting for science. There's no fucking way in hell humanity is going to wise up and change a few simple habits. Humanity is way too fucking dumb to do that and by many accounts it's too fkin late anyhow. So either we figure out some funky new technological solution to bring this dying planet back to life or the problem corrects itself.
I'm good either way. We all live happily ever after or I get to take the piss out of a few billion dumbstruck and dying primates who emphatically poo poo'd any plans that prioritised a breathable atmosphere over cheap flights to Tenerife
There's not going to be any sciencing our way out of this.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 09, 2015, 04:53:39 PM
There's not going to be any sciencing our way out of this.
Then it's our duty to do shit before it all comes crashing down. No whimpering in steerage. Everyone up on deck, drink bourbon, dance until you pass out, or the band goes under. Whichever happens first.
My hope for the best case scenario includes bad famines. Bad, real real bad famines. And an escalation of xenophobia, with a lot of people killing other people because they're trying to move from famine-ravaged regions to regions that are still fertile. Followed by a total paradigm shift because all of a sudden it will become very clear that if we can't keep enough people alive we will lose ALL of our infrastructure, very rapidly.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 09, 2015, 10:24:07 PM
My hope for the best case scenario includes bad famines. Bad, real real bad famines. And an escalation of xenophobia, with a lot of people killing other people because they're trying to move from famine-ravaged regions to regions that are still fertile. Followed by a total paradigm shift because all of a sudden it will become very clear that if we can't keep enough people alive we will lose ALL of our infrastructure, very rapidly.
There are two methods of dealing with famines & shortages. The most common one, xenophobia, is the losing proposition.
Australia will do what it always does - pay other countries to take the immigrants. And then, when those countries refuse, it will just take them over and resettle them there anyway.
Historically minded people will appreciate the irony, but that will be about the only positive.