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Insects Are in Serious Trouble

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Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#151

Post by jm2721 »

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…

> Making some people wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan.

Reminds me of this quote: "When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#152

Post by ansible »

defterGoose wrote: post #149
b0rsuk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a company produces 1000 cars and pollutes a river in process, this counts as economic growth. When another company spends time, money and resources to clean that river, that also counts as economic growth, even if was just to get natural environment back to its original health. Some food for thought.

What? You're making a serious stretch there. The profit from the cars contributes directly to GDP, but even if individual people get paid to help clean up the river, where is that money coming from? It's a DRAIN on resources to get the river back to normal, there's no profit. Therefore it's not growth.

I think the point is that the cleanup effort is "on the books" and calculated as part of the gross domestic product.

The issue that people are trying to make is that there are many activities that do contribute to the overall wealth of a country, which don't get counted in the GDP. And there are things that are counted by the GDP which don't contribute to wealth.

GDP is a poor measure of the overall wealth and health of a country.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#153

Post by dreamcompiler »

jrmg wrote: post #117
TheMissingPiece wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just moved from California to Tennessee and only recently got to experience fireflies for the first time in my life. They're incredible :) I don't see them in the city, but that doesnt surprise me... there are tons once you leave downtown, though.

I went to Pennsylvania for the first time in my mid twenties. When I saw fireflies, it affected me in a way writing about it can only hint at. A sense of surprise and wonder that I haven’t experienced since childhood - maybe not even then. I haven’t experienced anything like it again, and I suspect I never will. Intellectually, I knew they were ‘a real thing’, but that in no way prepared me for the reality. Since the…

We called them "lightning bugs" in rural Texas. We used to have ice cream after dark in the back yard with the parents and grandparents and neighbors, amidst a swarm of moving stars. It seems magical now, as though I'd dreamt it. But back then, it was just a typical Saturday night.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#154

Post by dragontamer »

chitresh wrote: post #140
dragontamer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poop, bone, leather, wood re-enter the system very quickly. I suggest you study the River Ganges and then reevaluate your position. Poop alone can destroy a river on the scale of citywide human populations. --------- Plastics are actually INCREDIBLE for preventing waste. A plastic bag for groceries is composed of roughly 13mL of LDPE, or roughly 260 "drops" of plastic! LDPE is so incredibly efficient at manufacturi…

The human waste that contributed to the pollution of the river Ganga (or Ganges) was generated by a population that was supported by modern medicine and a whole lot of other modern inventions. It wasn't always this polluted, even though there have been cities on its banks for millennia. And of course industrial waste also added to the problem. You can't compare that population with the "mythical tribe" that is under…

My point is that mythical tribesmen don't scale.

It makes absolutely no sense to "cargo cult worship" the mythical tribeman's lack of pollution, when our society is funadmentally built differently.

There are some incredibly simple solutions available to us that the "Mythical Tribesman" doesn't have. IE: We can pass a law and regulate pollution in our country, if we can convince enough other people that the costs are worth it.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#155

Post by stouset »

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…

Exponential growth as we’ve become used to is fundamentally limited, whether we like that fact or not. We simply cannot expand exponentially into a finite supply of resources indefinitely, and in doing so we appear to have rapidly surpassed our planet’s ability to support that growth.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#156

Post by stouset »

greg7gkb wrote: post #52
avip wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there "growth" without consuming physical resources? If not, we have to accept OP's POV that economic growth is by definition unsustainable. "Anyone who thinks exponential growth can continue forever is either a madman or an economist"

There is absolutely 'growth' without consuming resources. Economic growth also includes improvements in efficiency, which typically reduce the amount of physical resources used. Also, look at the transition in our lives from physical media to digital media. Digital channels have brought massive growth while reducing the need for paper, CDs, DVDs, etc.

Only up to a point.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/

This entire blog (not just this one post), start-to-finish is a sobering look at the limits of our growth.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#157

Post by stouset »

taw55 wrote: post #142
mikeash wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an economy in perfect stasis, no growth, no shrinkage, just the same stuff year after year. Now introduce some efficiency improvement, like shaving some weight from a car design, or a computer chip that performs the same computation for less power, or an agricultural technique which requires less land for the same yield. Voilà, growth without consuming additional physical resources. Of course, this is not our…

> Of course, this is not our main source of growth at the moment. But surely it could be? Yeah, but for how long? Exponential economist meets finite physicist: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

It makes me so happy to finally start seeing others on HN post links from the Do The Math blog. If I could make one website mandatory reading for all policy makers, economists, etc., this would be it.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#158

Post by defterGoose »

ansible wrote: post #152
defterGoose wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You're making a serious stretch there. The profit from the cars contributes directly to GDP, but even if individual people get paid to help clean up the river, where is that money coming from? It's a DRAIN on resources to get the river back to normal, there's no profit. Therefore it's not growth.

I think the point is that the cleanup effort is "on the books" and calculated as part of the gross domestic product. The issue that people are trying to make is that there are many activities that do contribute to the overall wealth of a country, which don't get counted in the GDP. And there are things that are counted by the GDP which don't contribute to wealth. GDP is a poor measure of the overall wealth and health…

Right, I agree with you. From the tone of the post, it seemed like the author was justifying the GDP calculation as it's made. Perhaps there was some sarcasm there I didn't detect. But yeah, if we want to count the cost of services produced for, say, digging a giant hole and then subsequently filling in said hole, we may want to rethink our logic. I'm becoming disillusioned with the idea of economics being a valid human science when it can't seem to deal properly with the concept of externalities.

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#159

Post by hutzlibu »

chaostheory wrote: post #111
hutzlibu wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a much better way to get rid of mosquitos in a local area, but not of everything else, would be a laser turret ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser Unfortunately not market ready, yet ... edit: bat boxes, water-fish traps and having birds around will certainly reduce mosquito population ... but there will be still lots of them around. A laser can take them (allmost) all out ... Oh and about the wa…

TLDR: mosquitos hate air current. Just buy a few electric fans. No chems and relatively cheap. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/a-low-tech-mosquit...

Not bad ... but the fans do make noise. Which is OK for a party with music anyway, but for something more romantic - not so much. At least not for me ...

Re: Insects Are in Serious Trouble

#160

Post by gwbas1c »

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…

Take the time to read "Silent Spring." People used to kill themselves doing what you did. Never apply liberal quantities of pesticides all over your yard unless you really know what you're doing.

(Some lady gave herself leukemia from spraying down her basement with DDT to kill the spiders. A doctor poisoned himself spraying his rosebushes.)

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