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Is it really the biggest story in conservation? I would have guessed fixing the hole in the ozone layer would’ve held that spot.
The ozone layer hole situation is another great case study in something that was fixed by humanity being proactive.
ETA: This post I made here feels good to read but it’s not really true, unfortunately. Check out seefin’s post in this same thread for more info.
That is somethi8ng different than conservation, but is the other massive success story.
It is a massive success, primarily because by the time the Montreal Protocol was fully ratified it was more profitable to not use CFCs.
However, speaking as someone who lives at the bottom of the world in the country with the highest melanoma risk in the world we didn’t actually fix it. We stopped the holes in the ozone layer growing and saw some recovery, with the hole over the Northern Hemisphere predicted to close by 2030-ish and ours by 2060-ish, but it’s nowhere near fixed.
And since about 2013 we’ve seen a massive increase in CFC emissions again, so the Southern Hemisphere hole is probably pushing out to 2070-ish. Not that any scientific research has definitively stated that yet, it’s mostly non-committal. The majority of these new emissions have been traced to countries that didn’t have to get rid of those specific CFCs until 2010, so it’s a good indicator that those countries may view the Montreal Protocol differently in the new millennium than they did in the 80s. Or it indicates that it’s taking them longer to cease usage than predicted. Hard to tell really.
So to say “It’s fixed!” is a little hopeful. The problem still exists, and effects are still being felt, but there’s nothing you or I can do - hence the common narrative, especially in the North, that all the hard work was done in the 80s and we’re good now.
This is so interesting. I just got done posting a similar comment to snooggums, but I didn’t realize it was just a narrative. I went looking for some sources for the things you were saying and lo and behold… looks like it’s not as “fixed” as is commonly claimed!
Here’s NASA’s data on the hole(s).
And here’s an infographic I found:
I didn’t say it was fixed, I said it was a success.
As in the damage being done was minimized/stopped through a coordinated effort.
The VSCO girls want to know how the turtles are doing.
Humpback means so many things in this post.
Humpbacks are mormon? Looks like aquatic jump-humping to me.
Look at the bottom whales smug face
Why the fuck is anyone using twitter still?
At this point if you’re on twitter you support Nazis, plain and simple. The line was drawn and crossed.
X axis times out at 2019. I’m guessing this was before Elon read mein kampf
Social media platform addiction is a helluva drug.
Apparently, for quite a lot of people, its hard to quit when you’re so used to getting your fix, no matter how bad it fucks up your head, ruins your relationships with other peoole, no matter how much of a shitbag your dealer is.
Err… I mean…
-insert babbling infantilizing corpospeak about network effect and broad market trends-
That’s why the government should step in and ban it
We saved em just in time to see them die off again in the great Anthropocene. Drill baby drill, until we can’t support life in the Oceans or on the entire planet!
Hopefully, the volcanic vent bacteria will be able to reseed the planet…
Maybe we’ll get lucky and a whale probe will show up to deliver us post scarcity tech.
Exactly, only a temporary stay of execution
So if I tell enough people to eat shit?
Recycling!
That chart specifically says “sightings”. So does that actually mean there are more whales or does that mean there are more humans than ever and specifically more humans with cameras than ever before?
Not saying it’s lying I’m just curious if the wording is being used to be intentionally misleading or if the real data doesn’t look so peachy.
You got me curious and I wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing responses to this. I agree that public sightings would certainly be correlated with whale population, but it would have plenty of other compounding factors, so it’s a pretty poor way to estimate population.
The Internation Whaling Commission will do sighting surveys do get an actual population estimate. This is with groups of specific people going out in boats and/or planes to spot them and using those numbers to extrapolate population number with certain confidence intervals. I’m not sure how they do the extrapolation, but I can’t be bothered looking into it further.
I did also find this plot using population estimates, including a projection to 2030 (made in 2019)
I’m guessing we would have the capability to gather more accurate measurements, but there’s probably just no funding for that and the current sighting surveys are good enough for what we need…
More whale sightings is a good indication that there are more whales. Cameras have nothing to do with sightings.
Wait does “sightings” literally just mean someone says they saw a whale?
So that could just be one whale that got into a shipment of cocaine and went on a breaching spree. /s
I get that there’s not much incentive for people to lie about having seen a whale, but I feel like we have the technology to have a more accurate number than just “Ted said he saw one”.
Aren’t you the guy who started a flame war in the lemmy.ca instance for not understanding US/Canadian trade relations?
Yeah, I’d bet you probably don’t understand how more independent sightings of whales along their known migratory paths would point to higher numbers in their population. You don’t really understand numbers or history.
I didn’t intentionally start a flame war. I stated some facts and lightly insulted some Canadians and they all collectively lost their minds. That was a 1v50 scenario and I seemed to be the only one having any fun in there. Its a real shame they locked the thread.
And yes I am able to understand how more people saying they are seeing whales would lead scientists to believing there are probably more whales. I literally never said anything to contradict that.
All I said was that we as a species have better technology and could feasible come up with a way to get a much more accurate number than just trusting peoples word.
I never said it would be cheap or easy. Just that we could hypothetically come up with a better system than just trusting that Ted said he saw another whale.
28 day old account that’s posting hourly. I won’t even bother taking the bait.
Other people have already explained why you’re wrong in both the threads. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. Might I suggest reading some marine science methodology instead of arguing with Canadians about the economic crisis they’re facing. Unless you’re getting paid well for it, I suppose.
God damn y’all are really some of the worst types of people. You know I never really check anyones profile to see what type of comments they leave on other posts. I don’t check to see how old accounts are. I don’t go through and unlike everything they have ever said like an obsessed psychopath. I just comment and go. You people seem to be the petty and sad types. Multiple people from that Canada thread went to my profile and went back and disliked every single comment and post I’ve made in those 28 days lol. That is some basement dwelling loner behavior if I have ever seen it.
You’re all so condescending and holier than though all the time as well. Constantly talking down at people and insulting anyones intelligence who you disagree with in any way. It really is quite pathetic.
You think I’m actually so stupid that I think all the whales exist in a space the size of an Olympic swimming pool or something? No I clearly understand why they do things the way they have done them so far.
What you dense motherfuckers don’t seem to grasp is that I’m not pretending that I know any better. I was merely pointing out that we could hypothetically get more accurate information than the way they currently do it. That’s all. I don’t need to know anything about marine biology to know that using eyewitness testimony or “sightings” is so unreliable that it is generally the last thing lawyers will use because anything else is more credible evidence.
Wait does “sightings” literally just mean someone says they saw a whale?
Yes
I get that there’s not much incentive for people to lie about having seen a whale, but I feel like we have the technology to have a more accurate number than just “Ted said he saw one”.
You have zero understanding of the scale of the ocean.
… We have sensors along all of our coasts that can detect basically anything in the water. Obviously it’s mostly looking for submarines from enemy nations, but they routinely “spot” whales.
I feel like using literally any actual measurement tool would be better for data collection that just a bunch of people saying they saw one.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
I understand the ocean is vast, but it’s not like we are trying to count giant squids. These things come to surface all the time and they frequent areas often occupied with humans. We could absolutely have more accurate numbers than “sightings”.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
That photo shows two partly submerged Russian submarines in a port, so no waves. Those submarines are 73m long, so longer then a normal whale and the part above the water is also larger then your normal whale. In other words there is no way to spot a whale in the open ocean with satellites.
Yeah that’s not even close to the most powerful satellite that the US government has. They only allow public images to be shared with a resolution of ~25-30cm/Pixel if memory serves correctly. They have had much more powerful spy satellites for years now.
Now I am fully aware that those types of satellites would never be allowed to be “wasted” on silly things like counting whales, but again hypothetically if they really really wanted to they absolutely could use them to do that sort of thing.
You would probably want to tag several pods with physical trackers and then watch those whales with the satellite. After training it on that data for long enough you could hypothetically make software that spots whales surfacing and then sees what direction they are likely going and it can then start to guess where they think that same pod will pop up later using the data it gathered from those pods being tracked physically with trackers from before.
Obviously I am simplifying and hand waving away a ton of unbelievably complicated things but given enough time and money I think you could absolutely create a system that is able to track and count whales using satellites in a way that would likely be more accurate than any only human based counting method.
I feel like using literally any actual measurement tool would be better for data collection that just a bunch of people saying they saw one.
Cool, cool. You are wrong though. Science says you are wrong.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
No, we don’t have enough satellites to track every time a whale surfaces to breathe. Nor do we have the ability for satellites to know if it is the same whale.
Yeah… And they used to scramble peoples brains with an ice pick to try and fix people with depression. Then they learned there is a better way to do things. Science can always be improved. It’s incredibly naive to think the method with which we use to count whales currently could not also be improved or made more accurate in any way.
More sightings means more whales. It’s a concept similar to bird banding
I mean it seems economical, but I don’t know if it’s particularly scientific. Usually in science they want specific numbers. Values. Things they can measure directly.
What specifically constitutes a single “sighting”? What if a whale surfaces multiple times around the same group. How would they know if that’s multiple different whales breaching or just one whale that’s breaching multiple times? Either one of those scenarios seems like an opportunity for data to get skewed doesn’t it?
I’m not asking because I think I know any better. I am genuinely curious how they quantify a “sighting”.
Hey, I calls em like I sees em. I’m a whale biologist.
Meet Mushu! The whale that thinks she’s better than you!
For me it was Kony 2012
