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75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

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Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#81

Post by flerbozorp »

carbonmachine wrote: post #75

Being an earth dwelling human, this seems pretty bad. Aside from buying ammo or survival rations, what's something proactive that I can do? Is there an organization that is trying to rid the world of pesticides (assuming that's the cause)? If I opt to call my representatives, what am I calling in support of/against? Over the last year, reading the news had made me more passive and worried. I want to dedicate a slice…

If our problem is all the smoke we have to breath, and the embers, ashes and soot blown into our face, how do we fix it so that the camp fire doesn’t choke us, sting our eyes, and ruin our clothes?

How do we control the camp fire that we keep buring right in the middle of our living room? It’s ruining the wall paper, and there’s a huge blackened stain on the ceiling.

No matter how many showers I take, my clothes still smell like smoke. What gives?

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#82

Post by kafkaesq »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #37
ashark wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monarchs used to be a "oh cool, look, it's the 50-100 monarchs in that field which we'll see a couple times a week for the whole season" thing here. Now it's "holy crap, it's our one single monarch butterfly of the year!" thing.

That has a simple explanation, though. Monarch caterpillars can only survive on milkweed, and we've decimated the amount of milkweed around because we see it as, well, a weed.

So basically the planet is starting to treat us as a kind of a ... weed, in return.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#83

Post by nickbauman »

I live in Minneapolis. The city fumigates regularly in the summer by aircraft and ground-based methods both, which is why I can go running around the lakes in mid July and get maybe one mosquito bite. I think most US cities are like this.

It's a policy that should be scrapped in spite of the risk of West Nile and Lyme Disease.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#84

Post by andai »

coliveira wrote: post #34
avip wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't jump into blaming the climate. We've shifted many parts of a very complex system in the last 50+ years. I'd put monoculture and pesticides higher on my list of suspects.

One of our problems is the idea that a single cause is responsible for these things. It is not just pesticides or CO2 or some other single change. It is the combination of those changes (even the small ones) that is driving this huge environmental problem. The only way to get out of this is starting to think of the environment is a complex system that needs to be preserved, not trying to find a single culprit that we…

Less finger-pointing, more parameter-tweaking!

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#85

Post by smt88 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #82
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has a simple explanation, though. Monarch caterpillars can only survive on milkweed, and we've decimated the amount of milkweed around because we see it as, well, a weed.

So basically the planet is starting to treat us as a kind of a ... weed, in return.

The planet isn't conscious and can't "treat us" as anything.

We are doing this to us. We are changing the environment to support short-term wants/needs at the expense of its human habitability in the future.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#86

Post by m_mueller »

carbonmachine wrote: post #75

Being an earth dwelling human, this seems pretty bad. Aside from buying ammo or survival rations, what's something proactive that I can do? Is there an organization that is trying to rid the world of pesticides (assuming that's the cause)? If I opt to call my representatives, what am I calling in support of/against? Over the last year, reading the news had made me more passive and worried. I want to dedicate a slice…

Not that I've planned it for that reason, but my family has the documents to live in either Japan or Switzerland. Both seem reasonable bets to me, i.e. protected by geography and with a pretty resilient local population.

Have a read on the Bronze age collapse - when the global economy collapses, the main danger won't be environmental but due to human migration. In a functioning economy I'm very liberally minded towards freedom of movement (and in fact this lessens the danger I'm describing), but in a collapse, global inequality will come back to haunt the developed world in an apocalyptic fashion.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#87

Post by andai »

wolco wrote: post #77
crispinb wrote: post #43

Results like this are some confirmation of what everyone not entirely swaddled in the virtual worlds of city and business is already entirely aware of: that our living planet is dying. All the people I know who have lived in rural areas for decades (in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and SE. Asia) are in no doubt that their local ecologies are collapsing, and that the collapse is accelerating. I'm not sure…

In other parts of the world like Canada things are becoming alive with the changes. The earth is a living ecosystem.

It's warming up, isn't it? I'm hearing about a loss of permafrost. Sounds like it's becoming more habitable up north.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#88

Post by beachy »

colordrops wrote: post #78
crispinb wrote: post #43

Results like this are some confirmation of what everyone not entirely swaddled in the virtual worlds of city and business is already entirely aware of: that our living planet is dying. All the people I know who have lived in rural areas for decades (in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and SE. Asia) are in no doubt that their local ecologies are collapsing, and that the collapse is accelerating. I'm not sure…

I'm starting to think that as well. As a father it hits me much harder, and I think I'm at stage four of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The human race may just not be special and will be erased, sooner rather than later.

I think when it comes to climate change, you can end up in one of three buckets:

- denier (perhaps the happiest group)

- defeatist (I recycle and cycle to work, but what can I do? I'm just one person, its all so bad, I'm depressed)

- activist (I'm going to do something about this now, they can't do this to my children)

I think one of the biggest problems facing us on climate change is somehow making better use of people who care than letting them fall into defeatist mode.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#89

Post by vermontdevil »

I’ve noticed a lot less bug splatter on windshields when I go on a long trip in the Midwest. Inm sure there’s research in this but I’m in a restaurant right now waiting for my group.

It has to be disconterning to see these kind of changes.

Edited: there’s more with linked articles elsewhere in the thread that I just saw.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#90

Post by ChuckMcM »

sogen wrote: post #80
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The massive use of neonicotinoides would not surprise me given the research of its impact on bee colony collapse.

Maybe a side effect of less bees pollination?

I was listening to an entomologist podcast on colony collapse and they were suggesting that as members of the colony became more and more impaired the interdependency of the various bee groups (workers, foragers, queen) was compromised and then "all of a sudden" the hive was unable to reliably function. And large social group (ants, termites, bees, etc) might be similarly affected.
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