Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 134 posts

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#101

Post by pjc50 »

ptaipale wrote: post #98
pjc50 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely people who are anti- environmentalist , for whatever reason - seeing the environmentalists as on the other side of the culture war. The environment itself is not at issue, just the opposition to those humans who are in favour of environmental protection. Resulting in stupid stunts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal which really is pollution for its own sake.

Or, the opposition to those humans who they perceive are using shoddy claims of being in favour of environmental protection when advocating for other reasons their policies which might in fact be harmful for environment. Typical examples of this culture war are nuclear power and GMO agriculture. The scientific consensus is settled: using GMOs in agriculture would be better for environment, but nevertheless it is the…

> The scientific consensus is settled

Is it? I'm not aware of the GMO counterpart of the IPCC here and, unlike the question of global warming, there is a problem with Monsanto-funded studies muddying the waters.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#102

Post by tpm »

ccozan wrote: post #75
titzer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. [ http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insect... ]

Start travelling from West Europe towards East Europe. Until you reach Romania/Slovakia/Serbia/Ukraine, your car is clean. Over these borders, after 10km of night ( or even day) drive your car will be splatted with insects. No idea why, but the vegetation is incredibly varied/wild compared with West Europe.

Slovakia here. Not sure about the eastern part of our country as I don't travel there very often, but as for the western part, we are fully integrated into the ecological disasters of western Europe. Meaning almost no insects this summer. Even mosquitoes were far from their usual numbers.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#103

Post by chrisseaton »

dkarl wrote: post #100
pmyteh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be phrased infelicitously, but I think thinking more-or-less any other good is worth more counts as anti-environmental, given that politics is an endless series of tradeoffs. I mean, in the same sense that socialists are often seen as anti-business. It's not so much that they dislike businesses per se (most of us in the social democratic tradition see markets and those who operate in them as an important sourc…

That's a very rational analysis, but I think a factor that is more relevant to politics is people's strong gut reaction to issues. Some people reflexively oppose all efforts to protect the environment. I'm very liberal, so I have a lot of friends who reflexively support all government regulation of business, without bothering to know the specifics. I would call them anti-business. Or if you tell someone there was a p…

I think the real issue is that people think they are pro-environment, and so think that people they disagree with on related issues must surely then be the opposite - anti-environment. I think it’s a sad indication of how polarised people think things are and how little they try to understand and be reasonable.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#104

Post by tpm »

pjc50 wrote: post #96
ccozan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start travelling from West Europe towards East Europe. Until you reach Romania/Slovakia/Serbia/Ukraine, your car is clean. Over these borders, after 10km of night ( or even day) drive your car will be splatted with insects. No idea why, but the vegetation is incredibly varied/wild compared with West Europe.

That sounds like the boundary between the regions where herbicide/insecticide is economically viable and where food prices are low enough that it's not worth it.

More likely there are lower agricultural subsidies.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#105

Post by ainiriand »

arethuza wrote: post #60

If that is the Dubh loch at the head of Glen Muick then I wonder how on earth stuff would get in there - it's fairly remote and reasonably high up. No farming territory for miles. I wonder if anti-midgie lotions have these things in them?

It can be through the capilarity of the soil. Just a possibility.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#106

Post by projectileboy »

jesperlang wrote: post #99

This reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing wolfs affects riverbeds: https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolve... It like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do seem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over again, we have to abandon the "as cheap and fast as possible" thinking !

FWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they can't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing systems in production that we don't fully understand.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#107

Post by Sone7 »

projectileboy wrote: post #106
jesperlang wrote: post #99

This reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing wolfs affects riverbeds: https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolve... It like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do seem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over again, we have to abandon the "as cheap and fast as possible" thinking !

FWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they can't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing systems in production that we don't fully understand.

Exactafuckingmundo. Those PR scumbags in Monsanto have been extremely effective at equating being anti-GMO with being anti-science, and it'd be real nice to see some accountability for them.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#108

Post by knownothing »

jesperlang wrote: post #99

This reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing wolfs affects riverbeds: https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolve... It like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do seem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over again, we have to abandon the "as cheap and fast as possible" thinking !

> It like we can't understand complex systems very well.

The problem is we keep getting better at doing crazier things, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15929012

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#109

Post by tstactplsignore »

projectileboy wrote: post #106
jesperlang wrote: post #99

This reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing wolfs affects riverbeds: https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolve... It like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do seem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over again, we have to abandon the "as cheap and fast as possible" thinking !

FWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they can't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing systems in production that we don't fully understand.

You can say that about all agriculture ever even more than you can about GMOs. We understand exact, precise genetic changes that have a much higher standards of testing than all of the genetic changes we've made to food using traditional techniques (mutagenesis, cross-breeding, selection) which modify dozens or hundreds of genes in highly unpredictable ways. We should be careful about all agricultural changes in a way proportional to what changes we made in the system, and not classify using modern science as always "too scary" to rely on.

Re: English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

#110

Post by [deleted] »

projectileboy wrote: post #106
jesperlang wrote: post #99

This reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing wolfs affects riverbeds: https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolve... It like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do seem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over again, we have to abandon the "as cheap and fast as possible" thinking !

FWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they can't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing systems in production that we don't fully understand.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN