
How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct - mike_esspe
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/347646.html
======
srean
Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple
records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long.

They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times
deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale.
To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic
<http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg> The jpg needs to be magnified to get the
perspective. From the biological point view what is interesting is not only
how they manage to hold their breath for so long but also how they manage to
avoid/survive the bends (decompression sickness).

~~~
jamesbkel
A quick addition to the awesomeness of sperm whales: part of the reason they
dive so deep/long is to hunt giant squid. While a sperm whale vs. giant squid
battle has never been observed, there are multiple counts of sperm whales with
scars that are from squids and in some cases almost certainly from giant
squid.

~~~
JonnieCache
They find giant squid beaks inside sperm whale stomachs too.

~~~
mbell
Interestingly this, combined with scars is really the only way we know how big
giant squid can get. The largest that has been actually observed or caught is
really quite small in comparison to the sizes indicated from sperm whale data.

~~~
mbell
I should add that this topic made me take a second look at giant squid data
(what can i say, i think they are really interesting creatures). It does
appear that large giant squid have been found dead but never seen alive or
caught. Those seen in a well documented manor or caught have been around 25ft
in length max, while the expected maximum size is around 60ft with the largest
dead specimen being about 59ft long, although that was in 1878 so i don't
consider it overly reliable data.

------
DanielBMarkham
I expect we'll see a similar process with using animals for food. As our
scientific knowledge increases, and as our needs increase, synthetic meats
will become more and more attractive, eventually leaving us all meat-eaters
who do not harvest animals.

Complex systems remind me of a theater set up for a complex play. Hundreds of
ropes hang down from the ceiling. Somebody is always pleading us with us to
pull rope A to make B happen.

Very rarely does pulling rope A actually make B happen (and nothing else) But
we still like thinking things are simple like that.

~~~
Lagged2Death
One could even argue that it's already happened. Modern breeds of food animals
_are_ more or less "synthetic meats." They're much more efficient at
converting feed into flesh than any natural animal is, and they'd have no
chance of surviving in the wild.

~~~
borism
I sure hope that's not what OP meant...

~~~
Lagged2Death
I'm sure it's not.

------
VMG
Sadly science can't beat the stupidity of Traditional Chinese Medicine:
[http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/wildlifetrad...](http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/wildlifetrade/traditionalchinesemedicine.html)

------
tomkinstinch
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, candles made from spermaceti
were used as standard photometric illuminants. They burned more brightly than
even today’s paraffin candles, and could be made in a reproducible way [1].

NASA used spermaceti as a binder for joining iron particles to acetate for
longer-lasting data storage tapes [2], and one author indicates that it was
used more recently as a lubricant on the Voyager probe and the Hubble Space
Telescope[3].

It's a sad story about our (over) exploitation of the seas, but very
interesting history.

I wonder if any research has been done on producing cetyl palmitate via
recombinant DNA synthesis. Imagine having a vat of E. coli or yeast producing
it.

As the article mentions, jojoba oil is a decent substitute. I use jojoba
around the house to fix squeaky hinges, etc.

1\.
[http://books.google.com/books?id=DI4AAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA183&#...](http://books.google.com/books?id=DI4AAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=spermaceti+candle+of+photometric&source=bl&ots=yiUz8ijAo5&sig=BykhaviaR_BKIMKhMXwZC_q4GH4&hl=en&ei=qMi9Tq_qFYHb0QH25dS2BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=spermaceti%20candle%20of%20photometric&f=false)

2\. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5971/1322.full>

3\.
[http://books.google.com/books?id=y2zXTivayCQC&pg=PA344#v...](http://books.google.com/books?id=y2zXTivayCQC&pg=PA344#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
pbhjpbhj
Conclusion:

"The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant
ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100
years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became
possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role
in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning
international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays."

"A chemist who saved the whales has not merited a Wikipedia entry. His name
was P. S. Landis and he was a researcher at Mobile Oil."

A really interesting piece IMO.

~~~
tedunangst
A bizarre conclusion IMO. "Only in the 1980s, a chemical solution to this
problem was found." At that point, the whales had already been saved. The
chemist may have saved automatic transmissions, but the whales were already
good by that point.

------
jdietrich
Whale-oil related trivia: A huge number of recordings have been lost due to
the whale oil ban. Magnetic audio tape was made using whale oil as a binder,
to help adhere the magnetisable oxide particles to the tape. The first non-
whale binders turned out to have very poor long-term durability, causing the
oxide to fall off in clumps. Most archivists 'bake' these tapes at low
temperatures, to improve the oxide adhesion for just long enough to make a
copy.

------
owensmartin
Great piece of history. I think the author's conclusions are flawed though. He
writes:

> Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these
> developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties,
> moratoriums, and other chest beating displays.

That may be true for the whales themselves, but there were indeed regulations
passed on automobiles in the 1970s due to the oil shock:

> In the 1970s, the car companies were required to develop engines working at
> higher temperatures to comply with lower emissions and improved efficiency
> and that changed the regime for the tranny fluids. Suddenly, the car
> companies did not need to lobby any more.

So it was government action regarding auto emissions that wound up propagating
into saving the whales. Perhaps that was not among the intended consequences,
but we also can't claim that the change was simply due to "market forces."

------
shoesfullofdust
Nixon's bold stance(?!) predates P.S. Lang's invention of a synthetic
replacement by a number of years.

<http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3731>

Of course, he could never use the term "sperm whale". But this is what led to
the Endangered Species Act that granted the whales a reprieve. Lang's
invention was only a reaction to this. It's still a good read.

------
feralchimp
In case you didn't, spare a few minutes and read through the comments on the
original article. Excellent stuff in there, particularly from the OP.

------
JoachimSchipper
Interesting, but gives _too_ little credit to the anti-whaling campaigns: it
certainly was no accident that whaling was forbidden as soon as that became
economically feasible.

~~~
sliverstorm
The stipulation is that whaling was forbidden as soon as nobody needed whale
oil.

~~~
tedunangst
Which is a crock of shit considering there's an entire decade that occurred
_after_ the whaling ban and _before_ the introduction of synthetic oil.

------
tyng
Someone should create a wikipedia entry for P. S. Landis as "inventor and the
man who saved Sperm Whales"

~~~
rdl
He also was involved in creating Mobil 1 synthetic oil, which is one of the
better synthetic motor oils out there.

You could make the argument that better motor oil allows cars to stay on the
road longer, reducing demand for energy/materials to make new cars, or
increasing the number of affordable, reliable used cars for less wealthy (or
more frugal) people to drive. Plus, some improved fuel economy (due to engine
being in better repair longer), so less CO2 emissions.

------
sliverstorm
That's a sharp irony, to think the anti-whaling community of the 60's and 70's
was driving around with whale oil in their cars! I wonder if they had any
idea?

~~~
Tichy
I wonder how much driving they did, though. Personally, I have always avoided
cars and environmental impact is one of the major reasons.

Of course I still benefit from cars, I am aware of that (goods get transported
by cars, which I then consume). Just saying that some environmentalists
actually also avoid driving.

~~~
sliverstorm
Are anti-whale hunters actually environmentalists though? I mean, is opposing
the hunting of whales an environmental thing? I always figured they were more
of the animal rights category, and while some people might be both, animal
rights != environmentalism.

------
ScottBurson
_by the 1950s automatics were the preferred transmission_

Feh. Never owned one of the contraptions, myself.

------
rsanchez1
It boggles the mind why the car companies lobbied to keep whale hunting when
their numbers were already so low. They wanted a few more years of automatic
transmission working at then-current levels, and then what? The same mass
transmission failures that happened, only without anymore whales left.
Poachers are similarly mind boggling. Instead of leaving a viable population
to harvest more animal parts (not saying it's OK, just for the sake of
argument), they hunt down every last animal then move on to other animals.

Oh, and if automatic transmission had never been invented, maybe people would
actually know how to drive.

~~~
bdunbar
_Poachers are similarly mind boggling. Instead of leaving a viable population
to harvest more animal parts ... they hunt down every last animal then move on
to other animals._

Poaching makes sense to the poacher.

Take a guy I might or might not be related to. When he was growing up his
family was dirt-poor and rural. Taking game out of season meant the difference
between eating and starvation.

Hard on the deer, if you have a lot of people like that, granted. But laws and
conservation and 'think about next year' don't mean much when your family
needs to eat today.

~~~
borism
yeah, two guys all of us might or may not be related to...

one have domesticated deer, offered good conditions for it to breed (protected
it from other predators including hunters like himself) and then he and his
children prospered off their cattle...

the other one just hunted his food to extinction...

guess who's children have survived to tell the story?

~~~
bdunbar
_the other one just hunted his food to extinction_

All of mine - and your - ancestors have done just that. They found new sources
for food or they didn't become our ancestors.

I get what you are saying about hunting one's food to extinction, how it's a
bad idea.

Do you get what _I_ am talking about when I say that poachers don't _care_
about tomorrow, that they are do poor and desperate that today is all that
matters?

~~~
bad_user
That's how agriculture happened, which is the biggest step forward the human
race ever took.

And many groups and individuals that failed to evolve towards agriculture
either died or have been thrown in slavery (as civilizations with agriculture
developed more rapidly than the others without it - that's how cities started
to emerge, as suddenly bigger groups could live together).

I get what you're saying too. Personally I would do anything to keep my child
from starving. But extinct species are NOT in danger because of poor people
that are fighting for their lives. And not all poachers are poor, not all
poachers have an excuse, quite the contrary.

~~~
eru
Agriculture might be the biggest step. But I don't know whether it was
forward.

------
cq
Sad how there's no discussion of the economy that enables stuff like this to
happen. "Why were people so cruel and evil?" is a stupid question; it's not
about cruelty or being "evil". It's about money. Don't expect people to be
moral in this economic system. Morality is a weakness in a capitalist society,
and you'll go out of business if you bring morality into a competitive
business ecosystem. This is why we need to change the rules of our economic
system, if you care about morality.

Moreover, sure P. S. Landis "saved the whales", but he didn't do it to save
the whales, he did it to generate an enormous amount of profit for Mobile Oil,
and was paid for it handsomely.

~~~
philwelch
Can you name an economic system that doesn't have similar flaws? Economic
systems only usable by hunter-gatherers don't count, unless your real argument
is with civilization rather than capitalism.

~~~
microarchitect
You ask this question as if it were a rhetorical question.

Is there any reason to believe that such an economic system that also combines
much of "good" properties of capitalism _cannot_ exist?

Disciplines like game theory and mechanism design have made tremendous
advances over the last few decades. Surely we can put these ideas to work in
designing better political and economic systems.

~~~
philwelch
It wasn't a rhetorical question. Or rather, it remains a valid rhetorical
question until it receives a satisfactory answer. Until that point, all
supposed flaws with capitalism are really flaws with all industrial
civilizations observed thus far.

Tangentially, no real world economic system is "designed". They evolve out of
competing interests. Even if you did design a system and implement it
perfectly, it would have unintended consequences. We can't perfectly implement
pre-designed political and economic systems, though; every attempt seems to
turn into a bloodbath.

~~~
microarchitect
_Even if you did design a system and implement it perfectly, it would have
unintended consequences._

Sure, but what prevents you from then measuring these unintended consequences,
plugging them back into your model and asking the question "how should my
system change?". Is there any reason to believe we can never reach a stable
fixed point?

We do things sort of like this in microprocessor design for instance - where
we need to deal with "unintended consequences" like parasitic capacitances and
resistances that we cannot fully model until the design is complete, but we
need to account for while designing the system.

~~~
philwelch
So who are the designers, and how are they going to do any of this in
isolation? Previous attempts have resulted in bloodbaths because the only way
anyone can design a society is with large amounts of force. And then the state
of the society is better characterized by the bloodbath than by whatever
design the bloodbath was intended to create or enforce.

Unintended consequences aren't the only reason you can't design society. The
main reason is that society insists on designing itself. It's obvious with a
processor who is the designer and what is the designed. Societies are full of
people who don't agree with other people's "designs" and won't voluntarily
cooperate. So either you give up, or you spend most of your time designing
cost-effective means of imposing your designs by force, which always turns
into some combination of mass imprisonment, mass murder, and repression.

~~~
microarchitect
_So who are the designers, and how are they going to do any of this in
isolation? Previous attempts have resulted in bloodbaths because the only way
anyone can design a society is with large amounts of force. And then the state
of the society is better characterized by the bloodbath than by whatever
design the bloodbath was intended to create or enforce._

I don't buy the argument that this has to be done by force, or that this
necessarily results in a bloodbath. What are governments trying to do when
they tweak laws, interests rates and the like but trying to "design"
societies?

I'm just suggesting that we take more quantitative and model-based approach to
this issue. We can start by simply involving more scientists and engineers in
policy decisions, and ask them to use the tools we've developed to analyze
complex systems to analyze the socio-economic system that we live in.

To a certain extent, we're already doing this. A hundred years ago, most
political decisions were ad hoc based on what "seemed right" to the party in
charge. Decisions today are much more data-based and rely on expert input.

 _Unintended consequences aren't the only reason you can't design society. The
main reason is that society insists on designing itself. ..._

These are dogmatic statements unsupported by citations. I'm not sure how to
respond to them.

 _Societies are full of people who don't agree with other people's "designs"
and won't voluntarily cooperate._

It would have inconceivable five hundred years that "most" people would agree
on the following:

(1) large parts of the world would elect their own rulers. (2) women would
have the same rights and privileges as men. (3) violence as a means of solving
problems would be perceived as "wrong".

This perception changed because we see now that these were decisions that
benefited society as a whole.

~~~
philwelch
Fundamentally, design is the wrong analogy. In design, there is a designer,
and then there is something being designed. In society, the "designer" is
already part of society, and he doesn't have the same degree of control an
actual designer has.

Let's suppose you assemble everyone together to agree on and implement a
design. The design process literally turns into a political process: a
competitive effort to benefit fundamentally unreconcilable private interests
and opinions rather than a collaborative effort to come up with an objectively
good system. Stable, democratic governments aren't designers: they're a
manifestation of the powers that be in the society already.

What form of government is a designer? The closest match seems to be some sort
of brute-force colonialism--when foreigners try to redesign a society that
they, themselves, are not a part of. The next-closest analogy to design is
absolute dictatorship. Once you get into stable systems of government, even
one-party states like China, or mature colonial states, but especially
democracies, the political and economic system governing society is the result
of a competitive game between different players, not the result of anyone
implementing a design. Framing social problems in design terms is
fundamentally wrong--well-functioning societies do not work that way and
societies that are designed turn into bloodbaths until reverting to a form of
society that's not designed.

I'm not unsympathetic to your viewpoint. I like to design things, too.
Unfortunately, some things just can't be designed. There's a process
fundamentally dissimilar to design--natural selection--that ultimately
produced the human brain out of competing, uncoordinated forces following
shallow goals. And when you put humans together in a social context, there are
processes fundamentally dissimilar to design, made out of competing,
uncoordinated forces, that ultimately produced liberal democracies. The
biggest joke on the designer ever is that these undesigned processes
eventually end up doing a better job than any designer would, as the blood-
soaked social designers of the 20th century discovered.

~~~
wallflower
"The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of
art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The
inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the
imperfection inherent in every human being. Thus, I redesigned it based on
your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your
nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure.

I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required
a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection.
Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially
created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father
of the Matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother."

-The Architect from "The Matrix Reloaded"

------
1010010111
The automatic transmission does not cause a species' extinction. People's
actions cause extinctions. The title is perhaps revealing about how we think
and how we rationalise or justify our actions.

------
joejohnson
tl;dr

The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant
ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100
years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became
possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role
in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning
international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays.

------
guard-of-terra
This is humiliating to us as a race of sentient species.

If we still badly need sperm oil, why don't we work to inject the relevant
genes into some bacteria and get our oil in any quantities we want to? Or
reproduce the process in any other way (synthesis, cell culture).

~~~
tedunangst
Sure, I'll just hop into my time machine and teach the scientists from the 70s
all about gene splicing...

~~~
guard-of-terra
We still need those kinds of lubricants, they're just aren't available now
except for emergency cases.

------
_THE_PLAGUE
Whaling needs to be brought back. Sperm whales are prevalent once again, so
controlled harvesting of them should be possible just like hunting deer or
anything else. This creates jobs, and contributes to finding renewable energy
sources. Furthermore, because without whaling sperm whales have no predators
they are getting abundant and taking up too much of the marine ecosystem's
food supply. We need to limit their numbers for our own survival. Jobs.
Energy. Marine food supply. For all these reasons we need to restore whaling,
and we need to do it now.

~~~
tyng
So you think human should be playing God?

~~~
_THE_PLAGUE
It is not playing God to hunt to get the resources we need, like, say, hunting
buffalo for their meat and fur. That is just survival. We need the whale oil,
so hunting them is no more playing God than is hunting buffalo. I do not see a
problem here.

~~~
bdunbar
It's a lot easier to herd and harvest buffalo than to hunt them down.

Also lets one see them for what they really are: just a big shaggy cow.

