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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

#391

Post by njarboe »

radiorental wrote: post #307
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.

Here's my kids doing their bit to protect the biomass in my back yard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukZA4Y7usQk But in all seriousness, yes.. lawns are evil. Created in Victorian Britain to demonstrate wealth.. "look at me, I can afford to have un-productive land". I try to minimise them as much as possible on my 1.5 acre lot. Veggie gardens, mushroom logs, wetland and lots of dead wood as in the video That all sai…

If you have sheep or cattle grazing, a short cropped "lawn" is just where you get your meat to eat.

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

#392

Post by wazoox »

michaelkeenan wrote: post #384
wazoox wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's see, 80% of insects, 60% of birds, 75% of fish have disappeared in 30 years (a blink of an eye). Climate change is already bringing famine and chaos around the world. We have absolutely no credible alternative to fossil fuels. The financial system is in complete disarray. Economists proved GDP is strictly tied to energy consumption (that seems obvious) therefore, they indirectly proved that GDP growth is…

I'd like to bet against civilization collapsing by January 1, 2020. Given how dire that scenario is, I see the problem ceejayoz pointed out where there might not be much value to money at that point. But maybe we can bet on a precursor, like a stock market crash. There are probably scenarios where the stock market crashes first, but there's still time to use money before civilizational collapse. I think we can solve…

Sounds reasonable to me :)

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

#393

Post by crispinb »

beachy wrote: post #389
crispinb wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm just stating hard truths here, rather than trying to pitch to anyone. I don't know how I'd win anyone over. And in any case for other reasons, I suspect H.Sapiens overrunning the Earth's carrying capacity is probably a biological fait accompli. > (I don't know if you're suggesting this) starting from the point of having to stop all economic growth I sort of am, except that I put "economic growth" in scare…

That's a fascinating concept, but I don't think all growth is of that sort (even if much of it is). Facebook as one example has seen enormous growth. Was it bad for the planet? (apart from the incalculable cost of being an attack vector against the more easily manipulated members of society, leading to an anti-environmental administration). Maybe not. Facebook users sit quietly, hunched over their phones, sipping sma…

You're right of course, and I would hardly claim to have a fully articulated theory. I'm fairly confident though of the minimal notion that aggregate "economic growth" (sorry, I need the scare quotes) is at the cost of entropy increase in evolved ecologies (another way of putting 'matter transfer from living to dead').

There was much talk in the 90s of decoupling economic growth from 'resource use' (sorry about the scare quotes again: I also think the term 'resource' masks a related myth). There were even individual companies that claimed to be getting there (eg. IIRC a carpet company that leased carpets to offices so they could control the whole lifespan?).

But evolution has had millions of years to explore state spaces using recycling. Carpet companies notwithstanding, on a planetary scale I doubt we can do it any more efficiently than evolved systems do, without developing systems of comparable complexity. And we're clearly centuries (at least) away from being up to that, and we don't have centuries to play with.

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

#394

Post by crispinb »

beachy wrote: post #388
crispinb wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good on you. If it's worth doing anything at all, that 'anything' has to be on a political level. Consumer action is a dead duck, albeit a convenient one for the green-hued sector of corporatocracy. Green parties have wasted enough of our time with it. It's a shame so much political activism is protest rather than construction. That's probably inevitable given the configuration of political power and the sheer speed…

I had to google Adani. That is some farking madness.

You're not kidding. The silver lining is that if it goes ahead (there's much doubt over the project being funded), it is quite likely to prompt a surge in activism greater than anything Australia has seen in decades. It is not a popular project.

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

#395

Post by wazoox »

jopsen wrote: post #287
wazoox wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's see, 80% of insects, 60% of birds, 75% of fish have disappeared in 30 years (a blink of an eye). Climate change is already bringing famine and chaos around the world. We have absolutely no credible alternative to fossil fuels. The financial system is in complete disarray. Economists proved GDP is strictly tied to energy consumption (that seems obvious) therefore, they indirectly proved that GDP growth is…

2020 is 3 years away, Trump's tax cuts might give an unrecoverable financial crash by 2020. But I'm not sure that's the end of civilization.. in terms of energy the EU goal is 20% renewable by 2020. Some countries are already at 40% of electricity. There is a lot of work to do, but it's not game over yet.

Global civilisation collapse is unlikely to be a one-day event. It will be a gradual process over several years, for instance there would be a financial market crash, than an obligation market crash and a global debt crisis, then several of the G20 countries would fall into deep crisis like civil war or dictatorship, global trade will come to a halt, wars on resources would erupt at many points on the globe, then for instance the EU would cease to exist in fact but not in law (governments would pay lip service to it for years without actually complying to its policies) etc. We wouldn't be able to say for sure "this is it, today the civilisation is collapsing". However, at the end of a several years period, billions of people would have been killed by famine, epidemics, wars, etc.

Just like the fall of the Roman Empire has been dated to some more or less arbitrary date, but actually was a many years process, actually beginning a century or more before the point we date the "event"; and for people of the time, the Empire wasn't actually dead before several decades at least (and Justinian failure to capture back Rome).

So we date the "fall of Roman Empire" to september the 4th, 476; but it was in the making for a century, and wasn't a done deal for another century. Similarly, the "fall of the thermo-industrial civilisation" or "American Empire" or whatever else we'll call it will be set up to some day at some later date in the future.

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

#396

Post by [deleted] »

TheGrassyKnoll wrote: post #380
hycaria wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone seem to forget the essential "have less kids" one ? This is what puts me into the defeatist group. As long as people won't even put their reproductive urges in question (and rather discuss how flying is bad), how are we even supposed to achieve anything ? This should be one of the first logical moves, yet it's so frowned upon it's never brought up. Depressing.

Totally agree. Condoms people ! USE EM !

[deleted]

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

#397

Post by cbcoutinho »

mac01021 wrote: post #370
titzer wrote: post #279

It'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…

I don't get it. Who cares if there's bugs in your grass? I used to play with bugs in the yard as a kid.

Because bugs play an important role in keeping ecosystems healthy.

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

#398

Post by skeleton »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #397
mac01021 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Who cares if there's bugs in your grass? I used to play with bugs in the yard as a kid.

Because bugs play an important role in keeping ecosystems healthy.

I believe he was questioning why people feel the need to eliminate bugs from their grass. Not why anyone should care if there are no bugs in their grass.

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

#399

Post by [deleted] »

skeleton wrote: post #398
cbcoutinho wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because bugs play an important role in keeping ecosystems healthy.

I believe he was questioning why people feel the need to eliminate bugs from their grass. Not why anyone should care if there are no bugs in their grass.

[deleted]

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

#400

Post by erikbye »

mac01021 wrote: post #370
titzer wrote: post #279

It'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…

I don't get it. Who cares if there's bugs in your grass? I used to play with bugs in the yard as a kid.

Well, ticks like grass (or at least breed in lawns) and some tickborne diseases are pretty bad.
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