And in the meantime here we are, spending 200 kWh in energy per Bitcoin transaction.
Planet is doomed :(
75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
271–280 of 454 posts
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#272Earlier 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.
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 loo…
> 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?
Like a plague, the millions or billions of human deaths is all the research we need. No benefit is going to counterbalance that.
Just to take one example (of many) of deadly things that are already happening that you yourself mentioned: permafrost melting.
"More arable land" also means "the release of incredibly dangerous, dormant pathogens like anthrax". Kinda makes the "arable land" moot.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
Yeah, lots of wet land have been drained for farming.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#274Earlier 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…
It may grow fast, bug the pacific north west once was covered with HUGE trees. Those trees may seem normal, but they are small in comparison to how things "normally" looked before Europeans. https://www.google.cz/search?q=spruce+giants+olympic&source=...
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Factory-farmed meat is bad for humans and bad for the environment, true, but any industrial-scale monoculture crop has huge negative impacts, and that includes vegetables too. Better to avoid monocultures by buying organic/biodynamic, shopping at farmers' markets, CSA, growing your own food, etc. Eat less processed and make more from scratch. Better health, better for the environment, and you can still enjoy meat :)
I've long had a scifi vision of the future in which autonomous drones intelligently, with sustainability as a goal, hunt wild fish as a good way around the factory meat problem. Only slightly related, just wanted to share some techno-optimism.
Techno-Optimism nowadays includes Hunting Robots. What a time to be alive.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#276Being 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.
Buy organic too
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#277Earlier 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.
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…
Given that I spent much of my childhood staring at and placing things on ant hills, I'm not so sure a meadow is a terrible thing for children.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#278Being 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…
People here argue things like that if whole industries, laws, etc don't change then an individual's actions don't matter. I see it the opposite. Only if I change can I expect or hope anyone else will. My list includes: - Flying less - Driving less - Eating low on the food chain - Avoiding packaged food - Owning and acquiring less stuff ... things like that. My life has never been better. I wish I had started this cha…
And your right, individual action won't scale...
For the US you have a lot of work to do before you have a moderately decent working political system.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#279It's not only a consequence of direct habitat destruction, but also the use of pesticides. According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946087/, more than a billion pounds of pesticides are used on lawns in the US every year. There is little regulation there.
All of those pesticides are designed to kill bugs. Why are we now surprised that bugs are disappearing?
We are sterilizing the planet.
According to this (http://www.beyondpesticides.org/assets/media/documents/lawn/...), we use up to 3.5x more pesticides per acre on suburban lawns than on agriculture.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#280Earlier 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.
Wouldn't that eventually mean you starve a large portion of the population as crop yields shrink dramatically?
It's certainly a decent plot for a bond movie.
Pesticide resistant super bugs could probably breed and eat all our crops in no time.