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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

#121

Post by lossolo »

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.

Human race will survive. When extinction level event will be certain then 20-30 underground mini cities will be created and biggest minds will create solution for humans to survive there for 100+ years. Of course only privileged will be chosen to live there. 7 billions of people will die but human race will survive.

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

#122

Post by mschuster91 »

javajosh wrote: post #117
kpil wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just speculating wildly and looking at Sweden, for example meadows have more or less disappeared since 30-40 years. I mean flowering meadows, not pastures for grazing. The meadows have been turned into forests and to a lesser extent pastures. It's not a few percent, it's 30% of the land, probably more in Germany where there are much lest forests than in Sweden. The bio-diversity in a meadow strikes me as much higher…

My understanding is that there is a give and take between meadows and forests that occurs on multi-year cycle. Meadows grow when there is too much water, and trees grow when the water recedes. You can see this in the Yosemite Valley really clearly. Perhaps this is a sign that the freshwater in the ground is going away.

> Perhaps this is a sign that the freshwater in the ground is going away.

Now look what Nestle/other food giants, but also slaughterhouses and animal farms, do: they use groundwater with private wells, and they extract more water than can be replenished... boom.

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

#123

Post by deelowe »

Dove wrote: post #91
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…

Try to help figure out why it's happening. Uninformed activism is unhelpful, and can cause people to ignore informed activism.

Uhh pesticides. Duh!

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

#124

Post by sitkack »

Jach wrote: post #109
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…

Go into crispr research or other biological engineering fields if you want to do something directly. Figure out how to make less toxic pesticides that are economically substitutable (break-even or only slightly more costly than existing ones) rather than demanding that they're banned entirely, or if you're satisfied those exist already, lobby for their use. I suspect that whatever preventable problems we face we're n…

I am going into crispr to make pesticide immune versions of all the bugs we currently have. Effect change where you can.

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

#125

Post by beachy »

colordrops wrote: post #118
beachy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

Well, don't let my depression lead you to the wrong conclusion. I'm am (somewhat) active - I donate to climate causes, it's my number one issue when voting, I drive a hybrid, only buy organic food, minimize eating meat, minimize consumption, grow some of my own food, bike when I can, minimize electricity use, etc. I do recognize that it's not enough and we all need to basically go back pre-industrial lifestyles to re…

Yeah, that wasn't aimed at you. More a general observation that one of the biggest problems with climate change is how we think about it. I'll bet there are a lot of people who have more or less given up. I've talked to some people who are not really deniers but rather people who don't want to know, and find it easiest to not think about it at all.

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

#127

Post by sitkack »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #90
sogen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not unlike if one drives up the cost of rent in a city so high that the people who make it function, can't afford to live there and leave. Dogs don't get walked, burritos unmade and drinks unstiffened. Jane Jacobs outlined all of this decades ago.

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

#128

Post by radiorental »

smt88 wrote: post #85
kafkaesq wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s say you were interviewing a butterfly — or a Mayfly. A Mayfly lives for four or five days. Say that Mayfly was standing on the branch of a giant Sequoia tree in California, which lives for thousands of years. If you were to ask that Mayfly, “Do you perceive this branch that you are standing on as being alive?” The Mayfly would say, “Of course not. I’ve been here my entire life, four days, and the branch hasn’t done a doggone thing.” Yet when you look at the tree in our context, it is very much alive. It started with a seed, and it grew. Well, the earth is very much like that tree, and mankind is very much like that Mayfly. If we are lucky, we will live a hundred years. We are standing on a planet that was born four and a half billion years ago. It looked very different when it was born; it evolved and has changed. Africa used to be just outside the window here. Morocco was connected to Cape Cod. Beneath this building are rocks from Africa. It’s hard to imagine that. But if you were to sit on the moon, and look at the earth and blink your eyes once every million years, it would come blossoming to life.

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

#129

Post by musage »

mikestew wrote: post #95
musage wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they're trying to tell you to stop mowing the lawn and start enjoying the meadow?

“Enjoy” a meadow full of stinging insects?

First off, stinging insects hardly make up 100% of the biomass of a meadow, so if it's full of stinging insects, it's a bowl filled with stinging insects, not a meadow.

Secondly, http://www.countrylovers.co.uk/hort/wildgrdn.htm

> Where 'attracts insects' is mentioned you can assume that birds will also be consequently be attracted

https://www.kingsseeds.co.nz/Kings+Seeds+Blog/x_post/Plants-...

> But what if we are trying to DISCOURAGE insects from coming into our garden. After all, there are some we just get completely sick of. What can we sow to help us to repel the insects we don’t like? Here are some ideas for that:

Thirdly, if all fails, enjoy it with binoculars. You'll live. Heck, most people will even survive insect stings.

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

#130

Post by QAPereo »

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…

Being an earth dwelling human, this seems pretty bad. Aside from buying ammo or survival rations, what's something proactive that I can do?

Build a time machine, and instill this sense of dismay, terror, and dawning realization into everyone then.

Barring that, a series of technological miracles would help, but we needed them yesterday.

Don’t have kids.

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