61–70 of 117 posts
When I was a kid there were a ton of grasshoppers around. Now kids don't even know what they are.
A related observation I have made is that ALL the frogs have disappeared leaving only toads. I recall reading somewhere that this is due to UV radiation that kills off the eggs.
Its going to be a silent planet soon
On a trip "up north" my car still needs a good washing to get all the bugs off when I get home. I still found TFA interesting, and the traps are another data point.
No one can prove that insecticides are responsible for killing insects? If only someone would do some sort of study on this, or perhaps if we somehow had some way to know the purpose or function of pesticides and insecticides.
I wonder what the long-term impacts of so many homeowners applying lawncare chemicals will have. It just seems like a bad idea to spray chemicals all over the lawn, yet so many do it it. I also wonder how many are over-applying, thus making matters worse. Any thoughts on how to change people's mindsets. It seems herd mentality has taken over, even though most likely know this is not healthy or environmentally friendl…
So when will people stop minimizing that, literally, the planet is dying?
When will people stop with this hyperbole? The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years. The _life_ on this planet AS WE KNOW IT is dying, along with ourselves. That is a huge difference and one that needs to be repeated with as much clarity as possible. Will homo-sapiens still exist in 10,000 years? maybe. 100,000 years? doubtful. 1,000,000 years? nope. Will single-celled…
This is not a productive comment. Everyone knows that "the planet" in an environmental context refers to the living things on Earth. It's an extremely common and universal metaphor. I have no idea why threads always have this one guy who feels like pointing out that the metaphorical language isn't literally true is insightful.
"The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years". That number is scary. If that number is even close to the same across the world, the planet is in more trouble than anyone realizes
[in]"one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%"
What about the other 88 sites? What about the percentage decline in the other 11 declining sites? How were the sites chosen? How have the sites changed over the years?
This is alarmist ecological drama. Some readers on this website are extrapolating the results from a single experiment at a single site to the entire world. And I think Science magazine did a poor job of reporting this correctly.
Here's a link to another alarmist post about this study. Note the url:
http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/insect-biomass-declin...
Here's a link to AFAICT a copy of the paper that started this brouhaha. Read it and be questionably impressed:
http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/20...
The authors of the paper are doing good work, but the alarmism here on HN far exceeds the scope of any validity of the original paper. People should be wary of their confirmation bias.
And if a HN reader cannot make a reasonable judgment about the scope of this study, I doubt that (s)he would be successful in an enterprise such as Machine Learning, given that science and statistics are the very basis of ML.
OTOH Woody Allen once said, and I begrudgingly admit he has a strong point, "Showing up is 80 percent of life".
Interesting. So maybe it wasn't just my imagination. I remember butterflies being everywhere in Spring in this area when I was a kid. Fields and air full of 'em for weeks. Monarchs especially, but all kinds. I haven't seen that kind of thing even once in probably a decade, at least. And the windshield thing. I hadn't really thought about it, but I remember my parents having to scrape the windshield just about every g…
"The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years". That number is scary. If that number is even close to the same across the world, the planet is in more trouble than anyone realizes
This is rather worrisome, but I sure didn't see any lack of mosquitoes last summer :-( Maybe this is affecting the "good" insects while the "bad" ones are thriving...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawns, in general, are not environment-friendly because of the need to use fuel to cut it and for spraying chemicals to keep the weeds and mosquitoes out. I lost the battle with my HOA to completely take the lawn out and instead just plant some useful trees. People don't realize how much money they spend on a 30 year basis to keep the lawns healthy.
http://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/ Got one of this for my lawn about 8 years ago and it was probably the best investment i've made for the lawn. Not only does it remove the maintenance but it also keeps the grass cut to a certain length, drying out the weeds and fertilising the grass with the smaller cut off parts. On top of that it's electric. I agree, trees would be better but in your situati…