Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

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Whatever anyone thinks about whaling, that article from The Guardian has a clear agenda of taking things out of context. It just says "Norway has announced a 28% increase" in year-over-year whaling.

That's true, but compare that to historical values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorwegianWhaleCatches.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway#/media/File:...

It's pretty telling that they're not opting to tell you that it's a gradual ramp-up which is still around 1/2 of what they were doing in the 1980s.

The larger context here is that in 1992 Iceland, Norway et al. partially split off from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and formed their own North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO)[1].

Whaling quotas are now at an impasse where these countries decide them unilaterally, because the members of the IWC won't even have the discussion of what would be a reasonable science-based quota.

I have yet to see any suggestion that the whales being hunted in the North-Atlantic by these countries are threatened by these whaling practices. An large year-over-year increase on a relatively small quota tells you nothing. You need to look at how large the total stock is, how long it takes to renew etc.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Marine_Mammal_C...

I was under the impression that most of the push back on whaling is because whales are intelligent/sentient.

It's like asking someone what they think a reasonable, science based quota for murdering people is. You're not gonna find a lot of room to negotiate when that's the belief

That's a slippery slope. Cows are intelligent, and have emotions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA8dAnlD51o

It is, but whales are pretty close to the top of that slope. If you elected not to kill any animals due to probable sentience, the short list would probably look like dolphins, elephants, and whales.

Wouldn't numerous apes that operate in groups that seem like simple societies, some of which have been seen passing down traditions like very simple tool use, make the list?

Yeah, don't eat those too.

Crows? Not that I'd _want_ to eat them.

Can confirm, have tried to cook up a crow over the campfire for giggles, and it was not something I'll do again.

Yes, and technically dolphins are whales so maybe the list is more like whales, elephants, and great apes.

The descriptions of the treatment & suffering of orangutans in Borneo reads a lot like historical accounts of invading armies, replete with murder, cruelty, rape, and ripping babes from the arms of mothers.

It is indeed a slippery slope, but it's much easier to have whales on the not kill side when they do things like pass the mirror test

I mean ... it slopes down to vegetarianism. I like meat, but a world without meat doesn't sound like hell or anything.

Probably not what you meant, but I have kind of an aversion to the phrase "slippery slope", as I think people use it to imply that we shouldn't consider a point because we might not like all the ramifications.

If it turns out all the things I eat are writing ballads about how sad it is that they all get eaten, I'd rather know than not.

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