Middle East

[Banditbandit]

[Edbear]

Nope, no difficulty with the idea that qualified people of whatever are predicting the end of the world, as stated they have been doing this for ages and even invented a special clock for the same. For some scientists science is their religion. What I am against is the common human failing of jumping on the band wagon.
Just because they are qualified people of whatever doesn't make them right and hasn't in the past. More likely they are not seeing the forest because they are too close to the trees. Just like we have a poster at work about all the stuff scientists have invented, scientist haven't invented shit, other people have just scientists discoveries to invent stuff. So likewise these scientist understand their science very well but don't expect them to be able to see their way out of the maze they built themselves, that will be a back yard tinker or a engineer or technician.

http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2008/...deforestation/

http://environment.nationalgeographi...deforestation/

You talk derogoratively of scientists? Are you the only one who really knows what is happening in the world? Do you have special information no-one else has, or are you just a dreamer?

[mashman]

You and many others, I'm afraid. But you're pushing water uphill with a rake if you think you have any show of stopping the saws and bulldozers in the Amazon, or the 20 or so Supercatchers in the oceans along with the thousands of "merely huge" fishing boats raping the seas.

People have been trying to stop bottom dredging for years.

Prove it in one country and the rest of the world will follow. That's usually the argument against what I purport as the solution. Prove it. So, I will, I just need funding. I'm not overly surprised that there are those who understand the fundamentals of "my society", however I am surprised at how many there are. They're from all walks of life. Another fundamental is that people will follow whoever is elected to lead them. Although I agree that the hardest part will be getting people to enter into the discussion in the first place. I guess it depends on what people would prefer and I'm confident that there's more of an army of "me" than there are of "them". Ironically it needs money and the will to make a fool of oneself. Given what's at stake, the risk is worth it and I'll happily be the idiot that pushes water uphill. Best thing about the slow push up is that it comes down extremely fast and changes the landscape beyond compare at exactly the same rate.

That sounds rude.

[Zedder]

You and many others, I'm afraid. But you're pushing water uphill with a rake if you think you have any show of stopping the saws and bulldozers in the Amazon, or the 20 or so Supercatchers in the oceans along with the thousands of "merely huge" fishing boats raping the seas.

People have been trying to stop bottom dredging for years.

Felling of the rainforest has been dramatically reduced (over 2/3) as has bottom trawling for fish (restrictions in place since 2004) as I wrote before, it's being worked on. Unfortunately, it all takes time. Do we have time? Who really knows? But it's not time to give up.

[george formby]

You and many others, I'm afraid. But you're pushing water uphill with a rake if you think you have any show of stopping the saws and bulldozers in the Amazon, or the 20 or so Supercatchers in the oceans along with the thousands of "merely huge" fishing boats raping the seas.

People have been trying to stop bottom dredging for years.

In the scheme of things the Supercatchers are just eye catching more than damaging. It's the hundreds of thousands of smaller boats doing the real damage. I notice krill oil being advertised on the telly for it's health benefits, a corner stone of all fish & cetacean populations, now in a bottle for $20. The many kg of bait fish required to add 1kg of weight to a farmed fish is just nuts too & they are screaming for more fish farms. Greedy bastards.

Have a fossick on the interwebs & read about the failure of mollusc farms (mussels, oysters) in Canada, ocean acidification is stopping them from growing shells. Scary shit!

Knew i should have stayed away from this thread, got the glums now.

[george formby]

Felling of the rainforest has been dramatically reduced (over 2/3) as has bottom trawling for fish (restrictions in place since 2004) as I wrote before, it's being worked on. Unfortunately, it all takes time. Do we have time? Who really knows? But it's not time to give up.

The amount of fish landed annually is still increasing. Our technology is getting better so we can fish almost anywhere now. I worked on a trawler in the Southern Ocean & it could swim a net too target specific schools & species of fish up & down the gullies in a trench 1500 mtr down from more than a 6 kms away. In 65 knot winds.... interestingly they could hold the net mouth a couple of feet off the bottom to prevent bull dozing the sea bed.
The computers on board could not only identify the species but also average size of fish & the weight of the school. The accompanying scientists freely admitted that even on such a state of the art boat, fishing "sustainably", all they got from their data was more questions.

[Zedder]

The amount of fish landed annually is still increasing. Our technology is getting better so we can fish almost anywhere now. I worked on a trawler in the Southern Ocean & it could swim a net too target specific schools & species of fish up & down the gullies in a trench 1500 mtr down from more than a 6 kms away. In 65 knot winds.... interestingly they could hold the net mouth a couple of feet off the bottom to prevent bull dozing the sea bed.
The computers on board could not only identify the species but also average size of fish & the weight of the school. The accompanying scientists freely admitted that even on such a state of the art boat, fishing "sustainably", all they got from their data was more questions.

Catch sharing, targetting new species to give exisiting ones time to rebuild and increased mesh sizes have all helped to manage the fish stocks more sustainably though.

[mashman]

Catch sharing, targetting new species to give exisiting ones time to rebuild and increased mesh sizes have all helped to manage the fish stocks more sustainably though.

Says who?...

[Zedder]

Says who?...

The aliens.

[Edbear]

Catch sharing, targetting new species to give exisiting ones time to rebuild and increased mesh sizes have all helped to manage the fish stocks more sustainably though.

No, these are small band-aid measures. If they want to stop the complete annihilation of all fish stocks within the next 40 years, as the interviewee on National Radio talked about the other day, they must stop catching fish now.

Same with the rainforests, it will take drastic action and extreme measures to make a real difference, not bits and pieces. The rate of illegal deforestation is of major concern as it is with fishing. Forming agreements and making laws is fine, but on this scale of operation the companies obeying the law and trying to act conservatively are outnumbered by those who rape and pillage indiscriminately, or at least exceed their quotas by many times over. Even the NZ Fisheries are finding sad examples of illegal fishing and catching out of and over quota.

As has been mentioned, it's not just the huge catcher boats it is the literally hundreds of thousands of smaller ones. All claim they need to fish for their livelihood and for increasing world food demands. Problem is, the Earth's resources are finite and running out as the Earth cannot replace or recover at anywhere near the rate at which the stocks are being exhausted.

Same with pollution, the Earth has amazing powers of recovery given a chance, sadly it is not being given that chance. The increasing world population is being exceeded by increasing demand for higher standards of living, leading to rapidly increasing production of goods and services at the expense of sustainability, both economically and environmentally.

People here and in much of the Western world, need to get out more and see the world for themselves. Go to Soweto, Jo'berg, or most African nations and cities and towns. Go to China and have a good look around, go to Europe. Go to the Asian nations and see beyond the tourist spots. Tour India and Pakistan. Go with eyes open. Go to the US and look at their financial situation, both Governmental and private.

We are genuinely in a paradise and insulated from most of the downside of the rest of the world here. Our lives are the exception, not the rule for living on this planet.

[george formby]

Catch sharing, targetting new species to give exisiting ones time to rebuild and increased mesh sizes have all helped to manage the fish stocks more sustainably though.

True, but that is only implemented by a few small national fleets. The big players, Norway, Spain, Indonesia & the Philippines could not give a stuff.

More or less as said by the Spanish captain of an Indonesian boat with a Filipino crew when, after being caught poaching he was asked what about the fish stocks? 'When we catch all of the fish here we will go somewhere else & catch all the fish"

[Edbear]

True, but that is only implemented by a few small national fleets. The big players, Norway, Spain, Indonesia & the Philippines could not give a stuff.

More or less as said by the Spanish captain of an Indonesian boat with a Filipino crew when, after being caught poaching he was asked what about the fish stocks? 'When we catch all of the fish here we will go somewhere else & catch all the fish"

Same attitude here with Paua poachers.

[mashman]

The aliens.

Them fuckers know everything... I have good teachers it would seem

[imdying]

None of these things are the problem. The problem is the number of people on the earth. Not been a problem when we've managed to oppress great numbers of them, but hundreds of millions are entering middle class and thus have an expectation to have access to all the things the middle class have access to. The earth will turn long after the people have gone though (fact: many millennia before the earth is consumed by the sun as it expands as it dies, removing us from the goldilocks zone, it will be uninhabitable by humans in any case).

If we keep the population size under control, and stop the petty bickering that prevents us from turning our minds to colonizing the galaxy, we'll be fine. The population size doesn't worry me personally too much though, I'll be long gone before it's so serious that governments are forced to act harshly... that and history has shown we'll have a nice little war to cull it back in any case (bit of a double edge there... our tech flourishes during those wars, which is unfortunately another thing we need).

[Zedder]

True, but that is only implemented by a few small national fleets. The big players, Norway, Spain, Indonesia & the Philippines could not give a stuff.

More or less as said by the Spanish captain of an Indonesian boat with a Filipino crew when, after being caught poaching he was asked what about the fish stocks? 'When we catch all of the fish here we will go somewhere else & catch all the fish"

There are trade and other sanctions able to be imposed (and are) under the Lacey Act for these ratbags.

Anyway stuff this, I'm going motorbiking!