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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

#211

Post by mc32 »

djsumdog wrote: post #198
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is case in Sweden, but here in the US the reforestation is actually a return to the natural state. Much of the country was logged repeatedly in the last few centuries. Modern sustainable logging and the transition to other energy sources is resulting in the land returning to the endless forest it was before settlers arrived. This is mostly clearly seen on the east coast because most of the Midwest is…

It seems like a lot of American logging has pushed to the Pacific Northwest, where it's very wet, doesn't get very hot/cold and new growth is very fast. I was talking to someone in Portland out in the middle of nowhere who said, "Almost everything you see is new growth; less than 60 years old. It grows that fast." The Singapore City gallery had a display where they talked about growing plants sustainability for paper…

Yup, Fat growing pulpwood is what they use. 20-40 year cycle. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1634930/is-the-larg...

Weyerhaeuser, etc. grow those fast growing pulpwood trees and harvest.

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

#212

Post by devmunchies »

ryanx435 wrote: post #210
devmunchies wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

K. Let's get rid of electricity and go back to horses and sail boats as our prime travel options, then.

I was just stating that its the same timing. i think those things enabled globalization and too many hyper efficiencies but they themselves aren't the cause.

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

#213

Post by dbcurtis »

sitkack wrote: post #140
sitepodmatt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that eventually mean you starve a large portion of the population as crop yields shrink dramatically?

Let Them Eat Bugs!

People are actually seriously proposing that. Very high in protein, and very efficient at converting feed to protein.

I'm not sure it will catch on fast....

More seriously, we need to be pursuing sustainable agricultural practices. I believe that means treating crop fields as the complex microbiomes that they should be, instead of highly-tilled, species-restricted biomes. Read up on how no-till and low-till farming practices change the soil communities of worms and microbes. It's huge. We need to move away from heavy reliance on pesticide and herbicide for the health of the soil and environment neighboring the fields, not to mention our own.

The thing is, we got to heavy chemical agriculture in part because of a drive to lower fuel consumption by making fewer passes over the field doing mechanical weed disruption. Of course, mechanical weed disruption is the kind of tillage that disrupts the soil biome, so we shouldn't go back, anyway, even if you could magically make diesel fuel cost $0. We need a new way forward to feed a hungry planet in a sustainable fashion.

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

#214

Post by doctorcroc »

jpm_sd wrote: post #24

This is pretty alarming and suggests that soaking agricultural land in insecticides might be having some far-reaching side effects.

The primary suspected cause of this is a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. These are not sprayed, but rather coated on seeds (which is arguably even more alarming). See: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7550/full/nature...

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

#215

Post by devmunchies »

zo7 wrote: post #209
devmunchies wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it doesn't scale. Good luck if you live in a metro area.

How so? In San Francisco there are several local produce markets within walking distance of where I live. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are pretty common major grocery chains here, and there are two weekly farmer's markets I can think of that are accessible by bike/transit. When I visited Manhattan/Brooklyn recently I didn't get the sense that they were lacking in locally-sourced foods either. Main problem I can think…

this part specifically:

> growing your own food

I should have quoted that directly in my original comment.

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

#216

Post by libraryatnight »

nnfy wrote: post #63
knodi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of the same thing I'm seeing with firefly in Michigan. In the summer time when I first moved to MI over 30 years ago I use to see them everywhere in large amounts. This year they're back but last 3 years I didn't see them at all. As long as there are climate change deniers a.k.a Trump supports we're all in a lot of trouble, even humans.

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…

So you're angry that perhaps some of the people that are trying to affect change for a cleaner planet are doing so under misinformation? You seem to be the one politicizing things. I think most of us just want to support ideas, technology, and people that make sense. Cleaner more sustainable energy just makes sense regardless of what you think about bugs and weather.

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

#217

Post by dbcurtis »

devmunchies wrote: post #179
okreallywtf wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It frustrates me that even though I am not in a HOA area, I cannot do this without getting letters from the city and fines. They will come mow my lawn for me and then charge me if I don't keep them mowed. Even my back yard which is almost 100% enclosed. I rent, otherwise I would build a wall right against my neighbors property so they wouldn't call the city on me for being able to see through a 5 foot gap into the ba…

I wish there was a way to make it popular for people to let their yard grow wild and make it taboo to mow your lawn.

Ha! That's easy. In California, we call that "drought". A couple of years ago, having a green lawn was Extremely Incorrect in my neighborhood.

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

#219

Post by alsetmusic »

nordsieck wrote: post #200
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is case in Sweden, but here in the US the reforestation is actually a return to the natural state. Much of the country was logged repeatedly in the last few centuries. Modern sustainable logging and the transition to other energy sources is resulting in the land returning to the endless forest it was before settlers arrived. This is mostly clearly seen on the east coast because most of the Midwest is…

> before settlers arrived I think you mean "before Native Americans arrived". One of the side effects of the European arrival to North America was reforestation due to a disease-driven decline in the population of Native Americans.

Seems appropriate to mention controlled burns preceding European settlers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire

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

#220

Post by contingencies »

I went down the Mekong River from China to Thailand in about 2006 and there were thousands of insects that would flock to the boat when it moored overnight. I repeated the trip in early 2016 and there were almost none. Deforestation and the replacement of virgin forest with rubber plantations appeared to be the main factor, but at a guess the use of pesticides was probably also to blame.
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