Why put a number on it? Every number so far has been wrong. Can we agree on the negative impacts of humans on an environment conducive to humanity without putting obviously wrong timings on predictions? I bet your intention is to provoke urgency but to most people it just causes an eye roll because it's not true, whereas the underlying ideas are true.
Very much agree. It's a pretty common mistake to bundle real information with obviously wrong details and lose credibility. Especially in the eyes of people looking for a reason to discredit the argument.
You have sailed past the point. There were so, so many cod it was hard not to catch a bunch. That isn’t a metric, it’s an indicator that most likely meant vast unseen numbers. The tip of the iceberg is a metaphor for a reason, though it may become an anachronism within our lifetimes.
I think their point is that discounting the time estimates is more a constant shifting of the window of what we expect more than them being de-facto incorrect. They’re more off by degree (e.g. an XX% reduction vs complete extinction) than being worthless. As the example points out a large reduction can be very similar to an annihilation it’s just that we are only used to what we know so we constantly shift what is normal.
Evolution of small things like algae and the krill which feed on it and feed the whale is quite fast. Single celled organisms reproduce on the scale of 20 minutes and hold immense amounts of genetic diversity in their populations to facilitate the success of a better adapted line almost immediately. Additionally, they are adept at horizontal gene transfer from other well-adapted organisms.
This would be great news if the whale literally only required krill to survive, but complex megafauna have complex needs, so the ability of krill and other small creatures to evolve is largely irrelevant in a discussion regarding the ability of megafauna to survive. This is especially true if you read TFA and see that the whales already adapt to eat different things as necessary.
It could easily become this fast or even faster, if we would just stop worrying so much about "playing god" and focus instead on getting good at this job. We don't have much time for this either, as AI is on the trajectory to take over that mantle in the next decade or three, whether we like it or not.
But seriously, we may not have much choice. Natural evolution stopped being able to adapt to environmental changes after it created us; genetic engineering is essentially the only way to make biology adaptable enough again.
The next question is which traits to do you choose and the next question is which traits are better, because choices will imply ordering, and then you open a big can of worms that last time killed millions of people. So maybe there's other ways to avoid doom that didn't create doom last time we went down the path.
Unpopular opinion for obvious reasons, but probably the only realistic one apart from just witnessing one extinction after another. Pollution and climate change aint going anywhere until we elevate whole world to the level of say western Europe.
But since we humans are pretty arrogant with our wisdom and lack long term patience, I can see many ways where well-intended meddling can end up in catastrophe overall.
Imagine you killed off all of humanity save for a couple people in Muncie, IN. How long until the next Shakespeare or Einstein emerges? Better yet, a properly heterogeneous culture?
I hope we create whalegemma (similar to dolphingemma) so we can explain to them how to co-exist better with humans (e.g. avoid this area during their whale hunting season, travel to this area if you get sick or tangled in rope).
…while not changing anything about our behavior, you mean. Because we were never ignorant of how to do better; we just couldn’t accept even any inconvenience, any obstacle to our “growth”.
>There is a federal law that prohibits people from communicating with dolphins.
>It’s called the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Signed in 1972 by President Richard Nixon, the federal law was created to protect marine mammals from being hunted, harassed, captured or killed.
>In a sense, talking to or communicating with dolphins could qualify as harassment under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
>There are two levels of harassment, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Harassment at one level is considered “any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance that has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild.”
>On another level, harassment is defined by the NOAA as “acts having the potential to disturb (but not injure) a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by disrupting behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”
> Bursting from their enormous lungs at over 300mph (483km/h), a humpback whale's blow can rise up to 7m (23ft) into the air.
Pick a lane BBC.
But this is great news. Also the fact that whales "transport huge amounts of nutrients across the globe" (linking to [1]) is fascinating. The role of whales in sucking up critters in one place and pooping them out elsewhere being a fundamental dynamic that drives global ocean ecosystems... just chefs kiss
It's not just the BBC, it's the UK as a whole. Miles per hour or deeply entrenched for speeds but for measurements we use meters. The same for weight, we weigh people in stone but we weigh everything else with grams.
I remember reading about whales returning to an area they hadn't been in for decades and people were worried about them eating all the local fish, but in fact their faeces enriched the local ecosystem from the ground up, leading to more fish. It's a bit like the counter-arguments to the lump of labour fallacy.
Apparently they also measurably affect the vertical water mixing. Fish need dissolved oxygen to breathe, so they don't normally venture past the thermocline. And their fins are also vertical, so they don't cause a lot of vertical water movement.
But whales routinely dive deep, and their tail fin is _horizontal_ and it creates powerful updrafts.
Another organism that affects mixing is apparently jellyfish.
Super Groups usually don't turn out as good as they sound like they should. One or two good songs over the course of multiple albums at best.
Exactly. Asia comes to mind. Even its best song wasn't so great.
There must have been so much unseen behavior when there were millions more whales in the ocean. Here's hoping that we can see more
Given the current trajectory of whale populations, 'we' probably won't be seeing that. Maybe in many generations of humans.
Well, the population growth probably isn't linear, so maybe?
Warming will kill off most of the systems these animals depend on within 30 years.
Why put a number on it? Every number so far has been wrong. Can we agree on the negative impacts of humans on an environment conducive to humanity without putting obviously wrong timings on predictions? I bet your intention is to provoke urgency but to most people it just causes an eye roll because it's not true, whereas the underlying ideas are true.
Very much agree. It's a pretty common mistake to bundle real information with obviously wrong details and lose credibility. Especially in the eyes of people looking for a reason to discredit the argument.
cod fishing boats used to have to be wary of the catch being so big that it would tip the boat.
We have no real frame of reference for what we've already lost.
Of course we do, you just gave an example. In fact if we truly didn't, then there would be no problem.
You have sailed past the point. There were so, so many cod it was hard not to catch a bunch. That isn’t a metric, it’s an indicator that most likely meant vast unseen numbers. The tip of the iceberg is a metaphor for a reason, though it may become an anachronism within our lifetimes.
I think their point is that discounting the time estimates is more a constant shifting of the window of what we expect more than them being de-facto incorrect. They’re more off by degree (e.g. an XX% reduction vs complete extinction) than being worthless. As the example points out a large reduction can be very similar to an annihilation it’s just that we are only used to what we know so we constantly shift what is normal.
And will give way to many which thrive or evolve to thrive in hotter climates?
In human time scales, the species which thrive will tend to be the adaptive generalists. Evolution takes time.
It's gonna take a minute (on a geological timescale) for the ecosystems to be able to reliably sustain megafauna again.
Given that we support megafauna today, could you explain why? Legitimately asking, since I don't see a reason they couldn't adapt just as well.
Because evolution is slow and the climate change is going fast.
Evolution of small things like algae and the krill which feed on it and feed the whale is quite fast. Single celled organisms reproduce on the scale of 20 minutes and hold immense amounts of genetic diversity in their populations to facilitate the success of a better adapted line almost immediately. Additionally, they are adept at horizontal gene transfer from other well-adapted organisms.
This would be great news if the whale literally only required krill to survive, but complex megafauna have complex needs, so the ability of krill and other small creatures to evolve is largely irrelevant in a discussion regarding the ability of megafauna to survive. This is especially true if you read TFA and see that the whales already adapt to eat different things as necessary.
Humpbacks have a highly specialized feeding mechanism. They only prey on krill and small fish.
The food chain really is sun -> algae -> krill (and sometimes small fish) -> humpback whale
In recent years we’ve learned that humpbacks are generalist feeders with a wide variety of feeding strategies adapted to different kinds of prey.
Humpbacks will switch between Krill (their staple in many regions) and small schooling fish (herring, sand lance, anchovies, etc.).
But they don’t eat large fish, squid regularly, or anything like seals - so they’re not “generalists” in the broad, anything-goes sense.
That's just one view of the stack and isn't a systems view. Other things support and interact with those other things.
>but complex megafauna have complex needs
Like what? Emotional support dolphin?
Evolution has been found to be happening 2-4 times faster than the rate earlier thought: https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/2022/may/articles/fuelofev...
We would need 1000x faster, so that doesn’t really change anything.
It could easily become this fast or even faster, if we would just stop worrying so much about "playing god" and focus instead on getting good at this job. We don't have much time for this either, as AI is on the trajectory to take over that mantle in the next decade or three, whether we like it or not.
But seriously, we may not have much choice. Natural evolution stopped being able to adapt to environmental changes after it created us; genetic engineering is essentially the only way to make biology adaptable enough again.
The next question is which traits to do you choose and the next question is which traits are better, because choices will imply ordering, and then you open a big can of worms that last time killed millions of people. So maybe there's other ways to avoid doom that didn't create doom last time we went down the path.
Unpopular opinion for obvious reasons, but probably the only realistic one apart from just witnessing one extinction after another. Pollution and climate change aint going anywhere until we elevate whole world to the level of say western Europe.
But since we humans are pretty arrogant with our wisdom and lack long term patience, I can see many ways where well-intended meddling can end up in catastrophe overall.
Sure, in a few million years.
Not at the pace of change we’ve chosen to accept, no.
It’s game over for a very long time
Imagine you killed off all of humanity save for a couple people in Muncie, IN. How long until the next Shakespeare or Einstein emerges? Better yet, a properly heterogeneous culture?
What do the dolphins think about it?
I hope we create whalegemma (similar to dolphingemma) so we can explain to them how to co-exist better with humans (e.g. avoid this area during their whale hunting season, travel to this area if you get sick or tangled in rope).
There is a group that is attempting to communicate with whales by training a transformer based model on whale sounds.
https://www.projectceti.org/
https://www.projectceti.org/blog-posts/when-text-hides-text-...
It's just a pity we couldn't figure out how to better coexist with whales.
We know how, but we choose not to.
The same goes for most of our ecological problems, really.
If asked the question, most people would choose to, I believe.
They wouldn’t pay a nickel more for gas to save their own kid.
…while not changing anything about our behavior, you mean. Because we were never ignorant of how to do better; we just couldn’t accept even any inconvenience, any obstacle to our “growth”.
Erm, it's illegal to talk to dolphins: https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2026/04/02/is-it...
No it isn't and that clickbait article doesn't say it is.
What makes it a clickbait article?
>There is a federal law that prohibits people from communicating with dolphins.
>It’s called the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Signed in 1972 by President Richard Nixon, the federal law was created to protect marine mammals from being hunted, harassed, captured or killed.
>In a sense, talking to or communicating with dolphins could qualify as harassment under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
>There are two levels of harassment, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Harassment at one level is considered “any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance that has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild.”
>On another level, harassment is defined by the NOAA as “acts having the potential to disturb (but not injure) a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by disrupting behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”
It’s going to be prog rock, isn’t it?
no, i think they're just going to start a podcast.
Yes officer, this one right here.
Not necessarily. Look at the Gorillaz.
Migaloo is joining Humphrey the Whale's team in SF forming a super team
The water goes all the way up to 11
their music's making waves
Alright, who pissed off Aquaman this time?
It was in the heat of the moment.
Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_progressive_rock_super...
holy units batman
> Bursting from their enormous lungs at over 300mph (483km/h), a humpback whale's blow can rise up to 7m (23ft) into the air.
Pick a lane BBC.
But this is great news. Also the fact that whales "transport huge amounts of nutrients across the globe" (linking to [1]) is fascinating. The role of whales in sucking up critters in one place and pooping them out elsewhere being a fundamental dynamic that drives global ocean ecosystems... just chefs kiss
[1] https://www.nature.com/research-intelligence/nri-topic-summa...)
It's not just the BBC, it's the UK as a whole. Miles per hour or deeply entrenched for speeds but for measurements we use meters. The same for weight, we weigh people in stone but we weigh everything else with grams.
We even weigh different kinds of drugs differently. So I'm told.
I remember reading about whales returning to an area they hadn't been in for decades and people were worried about them eating all the local fish, but in fact their faeces enriched the local ecosystem from the ground up, leading to more fish. It's a bit like the counter-arguments to the lump of labour fallacy.
I think the BBC policy is to provide every measurement in both types of unit.
Ordering is inconsistent.
They use MPH in the UK.
Their hours are pegged to the hogshead, and are about 3 seconds shorter than American hours.
The US use of units is worse than the UK.
Said from a proudly metric country, New Zealand, where everyone knows their weight in kilograms and height in feet and inches.
at least it's not stones
The metric system is the tool of the Devil! My Tesla gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
Apparently they also measurably affect the vertical water mixing. Fish need dissolved oxygen to breathe, so they don't normally venture past the thermocline. And their fins are also vertical, so they don't cause a lot of vertical water movement.
But whales routinely dive deep, and their tail fin is _horizontal_ and it creates powerful updrafts.
Another organism that affects mixing is apparently jellyfish.
Animals do these things. Bears eat berries and then poop out the seeds, complete with fertilizer. It happens up and down the food chain.
It's the Entmoot of the sea.
They may gather up for a protest. See the whale north of Germany who seems unable to swim away.
He got away eventually right ?
They are going to save us from that XXIII century probe, right
Perhaps they're forming a delegation to decide what to answer to that thing coming from space? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV%3A_The_Voyage_Hom...
Seriously though, we have Star Trek IV to thank in no small part for this amazing humpback comeback success story. Live long and prosper!
So long and thanks for all the fish, perhaps.
Hopefully they are building an army to conquer the planet.
Or they pack up to leave.