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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

#421

Post by [deleted] »

erikbye wrote: post #409
schiffern wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>use pesticides to get rid of disease-carrying ticks Unfortunately this solution is a bit like using a nuclear bomb to get rid of gang violence. It does indeed do that, but at the expense of destroying the entire beneficial insect community as well. Generally pest species recover faster after catastrophe than beneficial species, so by eliminating all of the pest's competitors pesticides are sewing the seeds of future…

By your response it looks like you assumed I thought using pesticides were a good idea. I only said I understood why people might choose to. It wasn't an endorsement.

[deleted]

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

#422

Post by dmix »

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…

That's an interesting fact, but is there any scientific studies showing that retail pesticide use is why the insect population has declined so much?

We all love to feel guilty about our consumerism and personal choices but this study showing a 75% decline was done entirely in Germany and controlled for habitats.

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

#424

Post by throwme211345 »

avodonosov wrote: post #67
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…

Butterflies - exactly the example I wanted to mention too. In childhood I saw them often, now - very rarely.

A field of butterflies in the cow pasture feeding on manure. Pure joy. Rarely seen now, more the lone floater on the wind.

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

#426

Post by [deleted] »

erikbye wrote: post #409
schiffern wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>use pesticides to get rid of disease-carrying ticks Unfortunately this solution is a bit like using a nuclear bomb to get rid of gang violence. It does indeed do that, but at the expense of destroying the entire beneficial insect community as well. Generally pest species recover faster after catastrophe than beneficial species, so by eliminating all of the pest's competitors pesticides are sewing the seeds of future…

By your response it looks like you assumed I thought using pesticides were a good idea. I only said I understood why people might choose to. It wasn't an endorsement.

[deleted]

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

#427

Post by jm2721 »

beambot wrote: post #98
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…

> 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.

"Eat less meat" is not a good solution since industrialized monocrop agriculture has tons of problems on its own like topsoil erosion and air/water pollution. The problem doesn't lie in any one single food, but in commercial food production in general, be it livestock or agricultural. If you want to help against that, the best option would be to support sustainably raised meat and vegetables from local farms by going to farmers markets or eating out at farm-to-table restaurants. If possible, plant your own vegetables, raise your own chickens or hunt. Avoid buying from the big food producers, like Kraft, Tyson, PepsiCo or ConAgra

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

#428

Post by dmix »

CalRobert wrote: post #361
crispinb wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Solar panels, electric bicycles, and not completely-effing-crazy urban design is actually a pretty easy answer. But everyone wants to live on an island of asphalt with a sterile, depression patch of grass in front, at least three miles away from the nearest place to buy a cup of coffee (a disposable cup, natch). Actually, not everyone does, but those who do, made it illegal to build anything else. At least in the US.

> But everyone wants to live on an island of asphalt with a sterile, depression patch of grass in front, at least three miles away from the nearest place to buy a cup of coffee (a disposable cup, natch).

... I love how the cliche environmentalists worldview is to reduce these problems to entirely the result personal choice. As if consumers chose petroleum as the most efficient and widespread fuel in the earth's crust, and the combustion engine, then decided they wanted highways and suburbs, etc. Instead of thousands of small choices over a century (or more) based on circumstance, central planning, present needs, etc - things largely out of their control. Combined with other biological human flaws like short term thinking and favouring political populism and emotion when voting/buying.

Not to mention, the widespread adoption of suburbs was not a product of market capitalism or consumerism... it was the result of government zoning and regulatory policy:

https://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-M...

You may be convinced and have deep knowledge of the subject but it's far from common knowledge. Understanding of climate issues is very low and it's not entirely the result of ignorance or malice or compromise because someone loves having a big lawn.

I tried to educate myself on the subject, I love to read, but even I found it difficult to find good books on the subject, specifically books that were balanced and scientific instead of sounding like the ravings of an ideologue.

I've asked on HN for book recommendations on climate change multiple times and each time I've been pointed to websites with dry 150 page reports by non-profit organizations. It's far from easy to know better.

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

#429

Post by stult »

dmix wrote: post #422
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…

That's an interesting fact, but is there any scientific studies showing that retail pesticide use is why the insect population has declined so much? We all love to feel guilty about our consumerism and personal choices but this study showing a 75% decline was done entirely in Germany and controlled for habitats.

Well this study hasn't definitively isolated pesticides as a cause, but it did successfully eliminate a large number of alternative explanations, making agricultural pesticides a likely contributor. Whether consumer pesticides contribute is also an open question, but it makes a lot of sense. They're designed to kill these insects, so widespread application is a reasonable hypothesis for the decline in insect populations. It's functionally habitat loss, which is well established as a cause of population decline in other animal populations. The theory especially makes sense when you consider the particular areas covered by this study.

The authors looked at flying insect populations in various protected areas in Germany, where pesticides are not applied directly and thus are not impacting populations locally. But since those populations are so mobile, the surrounding areas' pesticide levels certainly could be. Many of Germany's protected areas are surrounded by developed land, doubly so for those covered in this study. Most of the data collection occurred in Nordrhein-Westfalen, which is landlocked and surrounded by one of the most heavily industrialized and intensively farmed regions in the world. The rest took place in Brandenburg, which is similar. They're also not wide open plains like much of the American agricultural heartland, where insects can blow through more rapidly.

So, maybe we would see less decline in America, where there are much wider swathes of undeveloped land. That wouldn't disprove the pesticide hypothesis, it could merely indicate that the blocks of pesticide-free land in Germany are too small to form a sustainable habitat for flying insects. That would mean we need to create larger blocks of pesticide free land.

Maybe that doesn't mean we need to stop using pesticides, but does mean we need to reconsider the scope of their use. Deprioritizing non-essential uses such as lawn maintenance, for example.

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

#430

Post by kiliantics »

jimmies wrote: post #227
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…

I am Vietnamese. There was a mythically rare oil called 'ca cuong' that not many have experienced in their life but was mentioned enough times in traditional folklore and old-timey food novels. The oil is from a little cockroach-like insect that has a liquid producing sac in their body. They live in rice fields that span across the north of Vietnam. It was believed you have to catch hundreds of them to harvest those…

Wow, amazing story. Unfortunately, scientists, for all their glorification of skepticism, are often not quite skeptical enough...
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