Loss of intensity and diversity of noises in ecosystems reflects an alarming decline in healthy biodiversity, say sound ecologists
Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent action to halt environmental destruction, international experts have warned.
As technology develops, sound has become an increasingly important way of measuring the health and biodiversity of ecosystems: our forests, soils and oceans all produce their own acoustic signatures. Scientists who use ecoacoustics to measure habitats and species say that quiet is falling across thousands of habitats, as the planet witnesses extraordinary losses in the density and variety of species. Disappearing or losing volume along with them are many familiar sounds: the morning calls of birds, rustle of mammals through undergrowth and summer hum of insects.
Today, tuning into some ecosystems reveals a “deathly silence”, said Prof Steve Simpson from the University of Bristol. “It is that race against time – we’ve only just discovered that they make such sounds, and yet we hear the sound disappearing.”
“The changes are profound. And they are happening everywhere,” said US soundscape recordist Bernie Krause, who has taken more than 5,000 hours of recordings from seven continents over the past 55 years. He estimates that 70% of his archive is from habitats that no longer exist.
We are single handedly dooming our planet so a handful of people can be unbelievably wealthy. The vast majority of our resource expenditure is unnecessary. But the moment anyone stops the rat race means starvation, imprisonment, or execution. The human race is pitiful. I just hope we all can emancipate ourselves and bring humanity back in line with the reality of the situation.
Pretty confident the planet will be fine, maybe it’ll take 10 million years but it’ll thrive again, in some form.
What we are dooming is humanity, and honestly at this point it seems like we deserve what’s coming.
Yeah, who cares about all the animals we’re dragging down with us, as long as we’re not technically eliminating life itself it’s all good
there’s at least 15 billion hands. Maybe 15.5.
15.5 billion handedly destroying the planet so that fewer than a few thousand hands can have most of the wealth.
This implies every hand has an equal part in the destruction, which isn’t quite an accurate representation.
No individual cog chooses to make the machine run, or would given the choice, but cogs they are, all.
Capital will not rest until every cog is installed and generating the maximum amount of profit. Until of course, the cogs cease to be profitable. Then they will be discarded.
Are you calling indigenous people, who live as hunter gatherers, cogs in the machine? Or are you just not counting them?
I think there are some groups of people that get a pass when it comes to blame for the destruction of our planet. It’s a very insignificant amount of people in comparison to the total population, but they exist.
They’re not profitable, they will either be made profitable, or they’ll be removed. The lands they inhabit will be repurposed and stripped off all resources.
This is actively already happening. It’s happening right now, while you’re reading this.
The relentless pursuit of capital has no room for those that do not contribute.
But just think of how much profit will be made up until that last moment before the collapse!
The stock market really does feel like an unstoppable basilisk that will outlive us all. Society will collapse in some cataclysm and 200 years from now someone will turn the power back on and under the rubble they’ll find a ticker still imagining value continuing to rise.
We should start making vaults and move the rich into them, leave the rest of us outside to enjoy the world.