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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

#261
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…

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.

now think that lawns of neatly trimmed grass are about as dumb as it gets.

Not just dumb: as far as biological life goes those trimmed lawns are pretty close to dead useless land.

Now, you don't even need the bags of flower seeds though it helps. Just mow your lawn + remove biomass only twice a year. At max 3, if you've been using fertilizer in the past, or down to 1 if the soil has gotten rid of most nutritients: by cutting grass and removing it you remove nutritients so the fast-growing plants (grasses, nettles, ...) get less of a chance while the slower growing ones (amongst which a lot of wild flowers are, as wel as plants which used to be common before mass-scale agricultuter but are now rare because they don't get a chance mostly due to the abdundance of nitrogen deposition) will florish. For maximum ecological results you'll also leave certain pieces untouched for a year (some butterflies/files/spiders need long grass to survive winter). Do this for a couple of years and your once neatly trimmed green piece of land will turn into an actually valuable piece of colourful nature. I realize this is not for everyone, e.g. it's not an ideal place to play football or teach your kids how to ride their bike, but if you have the chance it's worth giving it a shot.

An ideal tool for applying the above principle is the scythe. It has several advantages over machines like mowers and weedwackers: you learn how to use a nice tool which does not burn fossil fuel, makes no noise except from a satisfying 'swoosh', is relatively cheap yet will likely outlive you. Depending on how you use it it can be a tai-chi-like moment of peace to start the day, or you gan go full-on and treat it as your work-out instead of going to the gym. And in the end it is less work than keeping grass trimmed throughout the growing season (unless you have a robotic mower, or vast amounts of land): mowing/raking for a couple of hours twice a year doesn't even come close to the amount of time I see my neighbours running around with all their mowing devices bi-weekly even though I have more grass to cut than they have.

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

#262

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…

https://deepgreenresistance.org/en/

Find or form a group in your area, consider dumping or downgrading your existing career which may well be meaningless anyway, and take up activism. At least you won't be subject to suffocating feelings of futility and guilt. Start tomorrow, it'll take you a year or two of work to figure out your new job so you'd better get busy with it.

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

#263
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.

Could you please share the link to the podcast?

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

#264
post #91

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.

Yeah hold on while I take 5-10 years out to get a bio degree and publish research so I can start putting out papers saying it's too late and we've passed the point of no return, which will be denied and ignored by the people who are most likely to be causing the problem. Much better than possibly pissing anyone off.

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

#265
post #98

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…

> 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.

    > don't consume as much non-local food
This is actually an unscientific myth. It's counterintuitive but it can be much better for the environment to eat non-local food:

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/06/the_biggest_myt...

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

#266
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…

This is making the headlines in Germany right now: http://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2017-10/insektensterben-flu... http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/insekten-in-deutsch... http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/insektensterben-dramatisch... Der Spiegel discusses issues in the methodology of the data collection. The intervals over the years weren't uniform, data was collected by volunteers/hobbyists and they did not…

Don't forget glyphosate. Have you watched "mosanto in trial" ? The facts are frightening.

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

#267
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…

This is making the headlines in Germany right now: http://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2017-10/insektensterben-flu... http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/insekten-in-deutsch... http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/insektensterben-dramatisch... Der Spiegel discusses issues in the methodology of the data collection. The intervals over the years weren't uniform, data was collected by volunteers/hobbyists and they did not…

It's worth noting that data was collected by amateurs in the sense that they're doing this on their spare time but some of them are highly regarded in their field. Quote from http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insect...

    Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, 
    recording, and collecting insects from the region—and
    around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 
    members—including teachers, telecommunication 
    technicians, and a book publisher—have become world 
    experts on their favorite insects. Siegfried Cymorek, 
    for instance, who was active in the society from the 
    1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. 
    He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after 
    the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a 
    local chemical plant. But because of his extensive 
    knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal 
    Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an 
    honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members 
    have written more than 2000 publications on insect 
    taxonomy, ecology, and behavior.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's two main reasons way this doesn't scare me that much:

1) Japan's population is falling and I expect it to have fallen further, maybe to half or two thirds of current, until a global economical collapse.

2) There are ways to heavily increase the land use intensity with modern technology, which I'd expect to happen when the situation gets dicey. The Netherlands are a good example of how this can be done, essentially green houses everywhere. The actual bottleneck is how much energy you have, not the amount of land - Japan has lots of space in the sea for wind and solar energy, plus lots of unused geothermal.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

So start doing something. What have you got to lose if you're already doomed? Get yourself a copy of Deep Green resistance and join an aboveground affiliate group. It's easy to manufacture excuses not to do something because it looks impossible. So what? Better than saying you sat there and did nothing and watched it all disintegrate.

It's not about me. [edit: by which I mean we were talking about the phenomenon of ecological collapse here. I said nothing about my personal response, and don't intend to]

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

#270

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

Yes everything leads to that question: How can a problem of global scaled be solved, if it seems to be almost impossible to make some progress domestically?

I think I begin to see what the "solution" is going to be like.

The good news is: The planet is not going to die. The bad news: I guess you not gonna like the solution.

I'm convinced that in 10-20 we are going to live much more eco friendly. It will become much more expensive to waste natural resources. But as a downside of this we will loose a lot of personal freedom. Our highly individualized society will come to an end and we will live in a much more controlled environment.

Harmfull behaviour will either be punished with legal sanctions (like corruption) or in some form of social disaproval.

TLDR: In the next 20 we will see a greener but also more unfree world.

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