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Re:Puffins are in trouble by lisper on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @10:52AM (#17868615)
Or we could just, you know, decide to have fewer kids.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by avip on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:04AM (#17868751)
Alternatively, we could decide to eat more puffins.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by dsfyu404ed on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @12:03PM (#17869276)
If anything this article makes me wonder if they're good to eat. Generally speaking sea birds are to poultry as coons, possum and skunk are to meat.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by fcbrooklyn on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @12:09PM (#17869332)
They're delicious, but you have to like game. Kind of like a really strong tasting duck, but hard to describe. Maybe a cross between duck breast and liver?

That said, they should probably slow down on the hunting until they've worked out what's going on.

Re:Puffins are in trouble by throwaway5752 on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:25AM (#17868932)
Seems like a pretty inappropriate topic to joke about, honestly. Species-level extinction and/or extirpation is a pretty grave matter, and is accelerating.

Based on my interests and background, I have very little faith that humanity appreciates the scale of the problem, how intractable it is to short term resolution, and potentially how many people globally could die as a result of it. For example, I think there's a really substantial probability that all people could die within 50 years, because of 1) where climate change is likely to hit worst 2) the desperate nature of famine 3) the number of nuclear armed states in those areas 4) the number of automated counterstrike mechanisms out there.

So, get your cheap laughs in about the puffins while you can.

edit: To support my negativity, I will just say look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17857964 to see how complicated something as trivial as building a house is... now, I cannot tell you how to avert global warming, but I can tell you that I have almost no faith at all any given poster here knows what is actually needed to successfully do a climate intervention or durable carbon sequestration program (materials, supply chain, technology, poltical coordination, etc). Another post on here notes we can't even agree to have fewer kids. It's very dire, and very few people seem to appreciate it. For example, the elected leader of the world's largest economy has already reversed policies that reduce CO2 emission and plans on reducing more, and has severely limited research on the subject.

Re:Puffins are in trouble by tim333 on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:42AM (#17869081)
[dead]
Re:Puffins are in trouble by lisper on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:16AM (#17868841)
> You first.

I am 54, married (just celebrated our 23rd anniversary), and childless by choice.

Your move.

Re:Puffins are in trouble by mattigames on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @10:54AM (#17868637)
If there is one thing humans can't clearly do is agree on something; so I'm afraid that is not an option, specially since the desire to have kids is one of the most hard-wired desires in sexual organisms.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by icebraining on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:07AM (#17868785)
the desire to have kids is one of the most hard-wired desires in sexual organisms.

And yet, Europe and Japan have plenty of childless people.

Re:Puffins are in trouble by lisper on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:02AM (#17868727)
If ever there was a self-fulfilling prophecy, that's it. There's a first time for everything. And in fact, there's a proven way to make people decide to have fewer kids: make them rich. People in more affluent societies generally choose to have fewer kids, to the point where the fertility rate in some places (Japan, Italy) is below the replacement rate. So it clearly can be done.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by Nib9fith on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:08AM (#17868787)
Wealth is just a proxy. What lowers the reproduction rate is higher living standards. And having all humans on current industrialized nation living standards with current methods of production certainly would not make things more sustainable.

If you want sustainability you either need fewer humans or clean up the entire supply chain. And the latter might just suffer from jevon's paradox.

Re:Puffins are in trouble by lisper on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:11AM (#17868811)
I didn't say it would be easy to get from A to B. But it's not impossible.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by Nib9fith on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:46AM (#17869117)
It's also possible that someone discovers a way to build a cheap commercial fusion power plant tomorrow. But we generally don't rely on these kinds of remote possibilities.
Re:Puffins are in trouble by jeandejean on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @11:01AM (#17868719)
That's just not true, people tend to desire less and less kids, a lot of people deliberately chose to have no kids, something that was unthinkable several decades ago.