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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

#181

Post by sitkack »

asquabventured wrote: post #152
sitkack wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What city has this problem? I haven't heard of a burrito extinction event, maybe I missed the news though.

If the burritos are extinct, you are definitely out of foie gras. First they came for PB&J, but I didn't complain, I ate lobster bisque.

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

#182

Post by devmunchies »

m_mueller wrote: post #86
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 towar…

I would be interested on more reading on these topics (collapse, human migration, global inequality, defense, survival etc.)

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

#183

Post by sitkack »

Amygaz wrote: post #146
sitkack wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Basically, you're going to engineer new insects... I love it! I'm in! Can't wait to see the big chemical companies' faces when they see a poster on new breeds resistant to everything they have on the market or contemplating to put on the market.

I was thinking some combination of carpenter ant, a beetle and a mantis. It would nice if it had wings so it could spread faster, the ant and the mantis are intelligent. It would be nice if it could live off leavings of a 25-35 year old yuppie, so unused airtime minutes and a mixture of dried latte foam and eco-plastic.

I wonder if we could infuse it with some Octopus brain matter? Also, I'd like it to have the ability to remember across generations, but Octopus probably already do this.

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

#184

Post by devmunchies »

phil248 wrote: post #156
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…

" Turning things around would require changes of a pace and scale that we have no idea how to motivate and coordinate." Things like electricity, the automobile, air travel and the internet went from nonexistent to universal in developed countries in phenomenally short time spans. Renewable energy appears to be following a similar trajectory, leaving all the estimates in the dust and emerging faster than most people r…

> Things like electricity, the automobile, air travel and the internet went from nonexistent to universal in developed countries in phenomenally short time spans

Oh, hey, thats about the same "phenomenally short time span" that everything started going to shit.

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

#185

Post by downer71 »

irrlichthn wrote: post #166
christophilus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This year, I left a portion of my lawn unmowed. I seeded it with a $10 bag of wildflower seeds. It's given me 4 months of beautiful flowers, loads of polinators, many butterflies, and it's given me less yard to mow. I now think that lawns of neatly trimmed grass are about as dumb as it gets.

Ha, did exactly the same thing, since I noticed nearly no bees or other insects last year. I dedictated around 200 m² of my lawn to nature. I think it helped: This year, there where so much more of them to see.

Aren’t there local ordinances in some jurisdictions, requiring an orderly yard about the house? For sure, in many places there are laws regulating tree count and what you can and can’t chop down. I swear I’ve heard of fines for unmowed lawns too.

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

#186

Post by carbonmachine »

eksu wrote: post #106
beambot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to dedicate a slice of time to doing something to solve the problem Eat less meat (huge environmental impact!), bike more, don't consume as much non-local food, etc.

I wanted to tack on here that even our agriculture has a huge environmental impact — nothing worse for biodiversity than how we’ve replaced animal habitats with fields of a single crop! And then pesticides etc. I don’t know if it ever happen, but we really should support capture fisheries, fish farms, and captured game. Properly Managed Captured Fisheries (Mostly more prosperous nations have well managed fisheries, o…

You make a compelling point. If I wanted to support one of those companies by purchasing their products, what would I look for? Any chance salmon is among the fish that are well farmed?

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

#187

Post by monochromatic »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #162
smt88 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course the planet is conscious. The entire consciousness of the human race combined is a lower bound on the consciousness of the planet.

By that argument, my house is conscious whenever I'm at home.

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

#188

Post by monochromatic »

radiorental wrote: post #128
smt88 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not a great analogy. And even good analogies don't make great arguments.

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

#189

Post by nnfy »

smt88 wrote: post #92
nnfy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the people you go out of your way to slander as both trump supporters and climate change deniers exist as they do because of people like you, who immediately take any adverse global trend, blame it on climate change with what amounts to shakey, correlative evidence, and then shame anyone who dares glance over with a skeptical eye. We are dumping all kinds of chemicals into the environment - pesticides, plasti…

Saying that science is biased because it fails to see the benefit of global warming is like saying it's biased because it doesn't discuss the benefit of a worldwide plague. Sure, there'd be benefits: fewer lines at amusement parks, all the food you can eat, etc. But that's so far from a net "good" that only a psychopath or moron would publish a paper with that argument.

How would you even know of there has been so little research on the subject? How can you claim to have an unbiased answer when you only research one side of a topic?

I legitimately want to ask you how you can be so sure that our doomsday scenarios are accurate, when we still have a fledgling understanding of a massive chaotic system like climate, and when almost all research has been purposefully negative?

If you look hard enough, you'll find anything. That's why skepticism is necessary. You'll at least agree that anything remotely pro climate change is taboo, I hope, and there is no room for taboo in science, in my opinion.

Edit: hell, how long have we known about deep ocean currents? Stratification of the subsea into various isoclines and thermoclines? Calthrates? People seem to underestimate how complex climate is, and how much we've yet to discover.

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

#190

Post by monochromatic »

nickbauman wrote: post #83

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.

> It's a policy that should be scrapped

Why? They're not spraying some broad-spectrum pesticide.

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