75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by baxtr » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 5:37 AM UTC

avip wrote: post #3

Yes. This is a case of hard data confirming what we already know. As in - few types of butterflies I used to like, and see yearly as a kid - are gone. I see them now once in 5 years, if lucky. I bring my kids to look because it's a first time for them. On the other hand, some types of beetles, ants, flies, mosquitoes, even wasps - are just new. They were not here 20-30 years ago. Now, what are the consequences of all…

Once we are gone, they’ll all come back: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-returns-...

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

#232

Post by crispinb » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 5:40 AM UTC

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…

Two problems with that.

Firstly: climate change is only one of the problems caused by a culture based almost entirely on the ecocidal fantasy of stolen-from-the-future 'economic growth'. We are losing topsoil at a dizzying pace. Fresh water is disappearing. The habitats on which natural systems depend are being ripped apart. Novel substances are being created and released into our air, water and land with unknown consequences. Climate change is a single crisis piled upon multiple others. Case in point: Australia's Queensland inner reefs are almost completely gone, and the outer reefs have only a few decades left. Causes: multiple, from nutrient-rich agricultural runoff (largely from pointless vanity sugar cane production), to wholesale destruction of coastal ecosystems including mangroves, which are crucial nurseries for many reef fish. Increasing ocean temperatures deal the final blow to already critically weakened ecosystems. This is our planet in miniature. Climate change isn't the problem. It's yet another symptom of the same fundamental dynamic, delivered as just the latest and largest of a series of blows many ecosystems will not survive.

Secondly: the changes needed are not only (and perhaps not primarily) technological. They require planetary coordination and cooperation to handle on political and social levels, and the defeat of a crazed unthinking ideology of unhindered 'economic growth'. Fundamental changes of attitude and societal organisation need to be agreed upon in the next few decades, and implemented without delay. Yet we can't even agree on obvious tiny measures like removing nuclear weapons, and rogue wealthy nations resist nearly every attempt to do anything meaningful about any of the critical issues. We just don't know how to do what's needed, and there are no solutions on the horizon. And we are still locked into fantasies of national government and sovereignty, despite being (factually & physically) a global civilisation.

Look at the political convulsions happening now as a consequence of current worldwide refugee crises. But that's minuscule compared to what's coming. Imagine what happens when ocean level rises cause two billion refugees to seek somewhere to live. Given our level of global immaturity, what do you think will happen? It will be all wars and walls. And our capability, in the midst of such convulsions, to make (and keep) difficult international agreements? Nil.

I'd absolutely love to be wrong. But all physical and social indicators are pointing in the same direction.

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

#233

Post by crispinb » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 5:46 AM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #135

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…

You can see the changes just fine in the city. New weather, different bugs, local forests ravaged by invasive pests, all that stuff is plainly visible to me.

Yes of course you can if you're sensitive and observant. That's why I limited my observation to those 'entirely swaddled' within the built & busy human world. I don't know what it's like where you live, but here in Australia, there are millions who never notice anything that doesn't happen on their pocket screens.

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

#234

Post by crispinb » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 5:51 AM UTC

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.

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

Too late for that. And I don't see anyone offering easy answers.

But pretending that what's happening in the real world isn't happening, or frantically waving totems of electronic consumer satisfaction about, won't make those physical realities go away.

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

#235

Post by adrianN » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 5:52 AM UTC

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…

Japan is way overpopulated. In the case that agriculture stops producing as much as it does now and food imports also dry up, Japan will be a very bad place to be. The country is mostly forest and mountain, arable land is rather scarce.

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

#236

Post by Tempest1981 » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:05 AM UTC

irrlichthn wrote: post #193

downer71 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK, I can do with my garden whatever I want to do, as long as a I don't turn it into forrest. But that's here in Austria. What you describe sounds terrible. Fines for not mowing? In which country do you live?

The issue is homes/lots in dry areas with 1-meter-high dead weeds. After the California fires, and how quickly they spread, I can understand the concern.

That said, since the drought, there are thousands of dead lawns, and I've never seen these laws enforced.

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

#237

Post by groby_b » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:13 AM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #205

smt88 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you would say we are at perfect temperature now, or should we pursue strategies to cool the globe toward a cooler temperature?

You seem to be under the misapprehension that climate change is simply fiddling with the thermostat. The decidedly ill-chosen name of "Global Warming" might certainly lead in that direction.

But here's the thing - the weather systems on the planet are rather complex systems that are in a somewhat stable equilibrium. Changing temperature will affect that equilibrium, which will mean rather impressive upheaval. Both a warming and a cooling will have catastrophic effects for humanity. What we should pursue are strategies that prevent shifting too far from that fragile balance. No matter which direction.

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

#238

Post by Fezzik » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:16 AM UTC

irrlichthn wrote: post #193

downer71 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK, I can do with my garden whatever I want to do, as long as a I don't turn it into forrest. But that's here in Austria. What you describe sounds terrible. Fines for not mowing? In which country do you live?

In the United States most (all?) cities have local ordinances regulating lawn height. For example, in Portland, Oregon “lawn areas” can be no more than 10 inches high[1]. Mind you, this is just for the city and only applies to lawns, not gardens, or forested areas on large acreages. I imagine it stemmed from helping reduce fires near dwellings, but that is a total guess. Rural areas will have different regulations though.

[1] https://www.portlandoregon.gov/citycode/article/514518

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

#239

Post by giardini » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:16 AM UTC

This study appears to be an alarmist rehash of what was previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323533

Here's one of the original papers: https://www.farmlandbirds.net/sites/default/files/Orbrioch%2...

The 75% decline number appears to be from two data points from a 220-acre plot. From that paper:

"What follows is a description of measured Insect-Biomasses from samples collected in the Orbroich Bruch Nature Reserve, near Krefeld, using Malaise Insect Traps. The results show that, in the same two areas, sampled in the years 1989 and 2013, there was a dramatic fall in the number of flying insects. Using the same traps, in the same areas, significant reductions of insect populations, of more than 75%, were found. Our data confirms, that in the areas studied, less than 25% of the original number of flying insects collected in 1989, were still present in 2013."

"The Orboicher Bruch, to the Northwest of Krefeld, is a designated Nature Reserve of around 100 hectares (220 acres). Due to the reserve’s relatively remote location and its rugged landscape, intensive farming came to the area only recently."

So alarmists are extrapolating from two data points (years 1989 and 2013) for a 220-hectare plot of German farmland to the entire world. I think that is a bit of a stretch, even for statistics.

since different bugs breed in different seasons, and numbers depend on the fruitfulness of previous generations, food supply, predation, disease, temperature and so on, this bug weight could vary considerably from year to year (or site to site) for any number of reasons. While one year cicadas thrive, the next year there may be none. Shocking, simply shocking!

BTW they're measuring the weight of dead bugs - not how many bugs or what species of bugs - just the weight of bugs. Actually they're not even measuring that, they're measuring the weight of dead bugs' soaked in 70-80% alcohol.

I could go on and on about controls in statistical experiments but I think you get the idea.

See the original HN posting for discussions pointers to the earlier papers.

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

#240

Post by Tempest1981 » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:17 AM UTC

dbcurtis wrote: post #217

devmunchies wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, dead lawns and waist-high weeds. See it all the time. No nuisance enforcement. Although after the fast-spreading fires, I wonder if that will change?