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Insects Are in Serious Trouble

theatlantic.com

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Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#121

Post by always_good »

athenot wrote: post #9
j_s wrote: post #2

I believe the primary source was discussed last week. (Discussion is still open but ain't nobody got time for that once it's off the front page!) 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074 (Oct 2017, 428 comments)

Last week's article motivated me to plant Milkweed ( Asclepias tuberosa and Asclepias incarnata ) in my garden next year, to help with the population of Monarch butterflies and bees. On the other hand, I'll still be deploying my organic mosquito control based on plant oils injected into a mister system. I really don't think mosquitoes fulfill any role in the ecosystem that can't be filled in by other species; but the…

Mosquitos pollenate plants. And they're an important food item for migrating bugs and birds. Less than 40% of them feed on blood, nor is it their only diet among those that do.

It's interesting how matter of factly you spread such a casual opinion about what our ecosystem does and doesn't need.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#122

Post by patcon »

mikeash wrote: post #18
b0rsuk wrote: post #10

I think nothing will change as long as economic growth is understood as economic Good . Current economy can't work if there's no economic growth. Banks are among the biggest culprits. If banks lend money at a 5% interest rate, their customers must grow their businesses by 5%. A new, sustainable economy is needed. I think about it each time I see the Race for the Galaxy card. I've seen a radical example of this among…

I like growth. I want to be wealthier or be able to work less (which is really just an aspect of being wealthier). I want everybody else to be wealthier too. I want my children to be better off than I am. The problem is growth without care for the consequences. Making some people wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan. But I think that it goes too far the other way to turn around and say that gr…

Is it growth you want (presumably capital/resource-based), or the things you associate with that growth? eg. Self-improvement (personal growth), stability, security, happiness, leisure...?

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#124

Post by cromulent »

njarboe wrote: post #30
mikeash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like growth. I want to be wealthier or be able to work less (which is really just an aspect of being wealthier). I want everybody else to be wealthier too. I want my children to be better off than I am. The problem is growth without care for the consequences. Making some people wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan. But I think that it goes too far the other way to turn around and say that gr…

I think one of the main problems is that GDP is used as the measure of national prosperity. GDP goes down when people decide to work less. Some kind of net wealth measurement would be much better parameter for a country to try and maximize. Include natural resources and the biosphere in that wealth. In this scheme taking oil from the ground and burning it would likely be a net negative on national wealth while using…

Bhutan have Gross National Happiness (GNH) as their measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#125

Post by pcmaffey »

sxates wrote: post #67

Years ago when I lived in suburban Texas with a typical suburban house with a back yard that had open space behind it I had a terrible insect problem. Exposed skin would get a mosquito bite-per-minute, the dogs were coming inside covered in fleas, etc. So I went to Home Depot and bought this yard spray that promised to kill mosquitos, fleas, ticks, etc. and I hosed down the back yard in a desperate attempt to reclaim…

Also sprayed on your food... sometimes not even to kill insects, but to kill the plant, desiccating it right before harvest so its easier for a machine to pick and sort.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#126

Post by schiffern »

autokad wrote: post #50
njarboe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the main problems is that GDP is used as the measure of national prosperity. GDP goes down when people decide to work less. Some kind of net wealth measurement would be much better parameter for a country to try and maximize. Include natural resources and the biosphere in that wealth. In this scheme taking oil from the ground and burning it would likely be a net negative on national wealth while using…

nothing is neither created nor destroyed, by that very law there cannot be a crop that does not take from the soil. If I eat a banana that has potassium in it, it lends to the fact that it took potassium out of the soil. farmers do add fertilizer and other stuff back to the soil, though we are finding that maybe there is more to the equation. certain methods like tilling are done to kill parasites, etc, but it may al…

> If I eat a banana that has potassium in it, it lends to the fact that it took potassium out of the soil.

This is true. However the little-known fact is that healthy soil contains all the "machines" required to break down the abundant insoluble potassium (along with every other necessary element) present in rock particles into plant-soluble fertilizer. This "insoluble pool" contains enough nutrients for literally thousands of years of plant growth, if only the soil life is present to unlock it.

The problem is that tillage kills this soil life, and that dead land now requires the constant import of external fertilizer to grow food. Pesticide and fertilizer application also kills these organisms, which out-compete pest species (as mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15515209). Spraying becomes a vicious cycle for the farmer, and a lucrative cycle for their chemical supplier.

In other words, functional soil isn't just an inert "tank" for holding nutrients. It's a two-dimensional factory for converting in-situ rock and air and rain into biomass.

This is all explained much better by soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag

> luckily engineers and farmers are looking at these things more closely now.

I would add biologists (including soil scientists, botanists, mycologists, entomologists, ecologists, etc) and indigenous experts to that list.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#127

Post by js2 »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #96
indescions_2017 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we like to call them "lighting bugs" back here on the east coast ;)

We called them "lightning bugs" when I was living in Pennsylvania (as I recall), but since then I've lived in North Carolina and Virginia and now think of them as "fire flies". Maybe it's a north/south thing, too.

I grew up in Miami and what we called lightning bugs were a beetle with a pair of green glowing dots on the head:

https://youtu.be/7MMleTEQoo4

I now live in NC where the bug is called a firefly and it has a single yellow glow near its tail and looks more like a fly.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#128

Post by jon_richards »

carterehsmith wrote: post #118
sliverstorm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about bat boxes?

Sure it works... but now you need snakes or raccoons to keep bats in check. Next you need badgers to keep snakes and raccoons in check etc etc. Soon enough you will need elephants and lions and whatnots. Maybe easier to just live with mosquitoes.

Why do you need to keep bats in check?

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#129

Post by colordrops »

AlexandrB wrote: post #7

As sad as this is, the reality is that nobody cares. Biologists have been beating the conservation drum (rightly so) for decades but the behaviour of the average consumer has hardly changed. Arguably, it's actually gotten worse with metrics like the use of plastic at an all-time high [1] (thanks, bottled water). Soon enough we will learn what the economic value of the free labor provided by insects and other animals…

Someone with the knowledge really needs to add quantities to the destruction caused by specific actions. E.g. using this plastic causes this much pollution which kills/disrupts this many biological organisms which prevents you from getting these resources. Then it needs to be wrapped up in a holistic vision of what life will be like in 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 years if you continue this behavior . This visualization should also allow you to input your childrens ages and show a representation of them at the age of particular scenarios.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#130

Post by King-Aaron »

mikeash wrote: post #18
b0rsuk wrote: post #10

I think nothing will change as long as economic growth is understood as economic Good . Current economy can't work if there's no economic growth. Banks are among the biggest culprits. If banks lend money at a 5% interest rate, their customers must grow their businesses by 5%. A new, sustainable economy is needed. I think about it each time I see the Race for the Galaxy card. I've seen a radical example of this among…

I like growth. I want to be wealthier or be able to work less (which is really just an aspect of being wealthier). I want everybody else to be wealthier too. I want my children to be better off than I am. The problem is growth without care for the consequences. Making some people wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan. But I think that it goes too far the other way to turn around and say that gr…

Ultimately of course, when you work less someone else has to work more to sustain you. And what if that person wants to work less? Well someone else has to work more to sustain them. And that person, when they want to work less, ends up in the same position.

It's not really sustainable.

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