that's because all the mosquitos are now in china...
Study shows massive insect loss
101–110 of 213 posts
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't speak German but I've always had the impression they love mashing words together to make super long but informative words.
Yes, that's a thing they do in German. Instead of post office it would be postoffice . Instead of train station it would be trainstation. (Only in German, obviously.) Not exactly what's being described above though.
People always go ”oh those crazy German words” when in reality all Nordic countries do this, and I’d bet at least Dutch too.
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#103Years ago, my family used to drive to our grandparents' village in hot, summer Friday nights. The windshield ended so pestered with dead bugs that the first task on Saturday morning was to drive the car to the river to clean it. I remember it vividly because it was so fun to wash the car with the cold river water. Last August I went stargazing with my wife. We chose a secluded area because it was far away from light…
That the environment could slowly transition its chemistry into a state which is not suitable for life is one of my biggest fears. It would be a silent killer.
Life is pretty resilient. I'm sure some bacteria would manage to survive pretty much anything. Life survived a number of extinction events where >90% of all species were lost, so the chances are good that life will go on.
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your GP's anecdata is cool but your parent's anecdata is not. :)
Parent's comment is "Actually X can't be happening because Y happened to me". GP's comment is "Z is happening, which might explain why I've noticed W". Parent's comment is textbook cherry-picking, GP's is closer to a regular anecdote.
I certainly agree that my anecdote doesn't prove anything, but I'm not sure it's imperative to immediately attack it as faulty reasoning. For one thing, I meant it in a more whimsical manner than perhaps comes across in my comment. As in a "bloody mosquitoes" kind of way.
In any case, some background might be useful: this happened in Corfu, an island in the Ionian Sea (to the west of Greece). Corfu, like the rest of Greece, used to have a big problem with mosquitoes spreading malaria, so in the 1950s the whole island was sprayed repeatedly from the air with DDT, to eliminate them. I believe the same was done in other parts of Greece.
Possibly as a result of that, the incidence of malaria in Greece is either 0 or negligible, nowadays. Which, despite the ecological catastrophy wrought by spraying bloody DDT on the entire countryside, is a big success- Greeks are among the Mediterrannean populations with a high prevalence of Thalassemia, a genetic modification that helps resist malaria (and which can lead to a sickle-cell anemia, a serious blood disorder):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassemia
Which means that there was a really significant problem there in the past.
So, when I say that there are many mosquitoes, I mean that I'm surprised there's still so many of the little blighters in Corfu, even given the protracted past campaign to eliminate them- and also given whatever else is happening in the rest of the world that's affecting insects, even though there's no reason that thing is also affecting Corfu, in particular.
But, OK, that doesn't come across in my original comment :)
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean like Proof of Work mining?
I a more generalist sense just things like using Electron vs native toolkits matter. The desktop Discord app is going to use substantially more power to run day to day than if it were a native code app that just used something like C++, and across millions of gamers for hours a night every night those resource requirements and power demands add up. It isn't always just "average hardware is faster so use more ineffici…
I wonder how many user-hours of Electron vs native replacing your development machine every five years instead of every two would buy.
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#106My dad claims that the bugs come and go in cycles and says he has seen so several times over his life. He believes that we are just in a period of low bug population and that at any time there could and will be a population explosion. Personally I am not so optimistic. My dad moved around multiple times over his life and I would suspect different areas would naturally have varying bug densities and that is why he fel…
I'm starting to feel like this is the common trend when you bring up arguments of potentially how disastrous our effects on the environment have been. Bugs? They come and go in cycles. Climate? Again, cycles. I suppose next we'll see claims that the rising ocean is just the cycle of the ocean and it'll fall back down any day now.
> the rising ocean
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's a thing they do in German. Instead of post office it would be postoffice . Instead of train station it would be trainstation. (Only in German, obviously.) Not exactly what's being described above though.
People always go ”oh those crazy German words” when in reality all Nordic countries do this, and I’d bet at least Dutch too.
We do this a lot! Woordsamenvoegsmania! (The mania of connecting words)
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's a thing they do in German. Instead of post office it would be postoffice . Instead of train station it would be trainstation. (Only in German, obviously.) Not exactly what's being described above though.
People always go ”oh those crazy German words” when in reality all Nordic countries do this, and I’d bet at least Dutch too.
At least in Norwegian the general rule is: if it is one thing, it is one word.
Is sad to see how the English rules influence how many write now. Auto-correct end "spelling-checkers" are often terrible at this, and many think if MS Word or Google say it should be written a way it is the correct way
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#109Years ago, my family used to drive to our grandparents' village in hot, summer Friday nights. The windshield ended so pestered with dead bugs that the first task on Saturday morning was to drive the car to the river to clean it. I remember it vividly because it was so fun to wash the car with the cold river water. Last August I went stargazing with my wife. We chose a secluded area because it was far away from light…
> and only a few bugs died on my windshield. Smoother airflow around the windshield means fewer bugs smashing into it and more glancing hits that don't leave a mess. Traditional hard edged cars like Jeep Wrangler seem to get a lot of bugs on the windshield (based on brief Googling), so while there may be fewer insects I'd wager to guess aerodynamics is large factor.
> Smoother airflow around the windshield means fewer bugs smashing into it and more glancing hits that don't leave a mess.
Not necessarily, I've noticed the same thing as the OP driving the same car, a small hatchback I bought 4 and a half years ago. One or two years after I had bought it I could still see lots of dead bugs on my windshield whenever I was driving to my parents, who live in the countryside, but during the last year or so the windshield has started to be more and more clean after each such trip. The same thing has been independently confirmed/noticed by my dad, as he likes to wash my car whenever I get to them, he told me that there used to be more dead bugs on the car.
What's scary for me is the speed with which things have changed for the worse as I remember a comment I made on this website about 2 years ago saying that I could still see lots of dead insects on my car after a highway trip, in response to a couple of HN-ers who lived in Western Europe saying they didn't (I live in Eastern Europe).
Re: Study shows massive insect loss
#110Years ago, my family used to drive to our grandparents' village in hot, summer Friday nights. The windshield ended so pestered with dead bugs that the first task on Saturday morning was to drive the car to the river to clean it. I remember it vividly because it was so fun to wash the car with the cold river water. Last August I went stargazing with my wife. We chose a secluded area because it was far away from light…
I've read lots of anecdotes like this over recent years, with an increasing knot in my stomach. I don't drive much these days, renting as per requirement, so my own experience in the matter is limited. That said, I had to drive to the south coast one Sunday this past summer and know for a fact that for one day a year at least, England needn't panic too much about catastrophic impending insect implosion. I know this because I discovered half-way through the journey that there was no liquid in the window washers, so by the time we reached our destination, the windscreen was caked in obliterated insect matter and we had to spend a good 15 minutes with a bottle of inappropriately-carbonated water trying to clean it off for the return journey!
My hope is that a reduction here is indeed more to do with improved vehicle aerodynamics.
Certainly, my sense of dread through springtime, seeing very few insects dissipated quite quickly after a few evenings being irritated by a multitude of flying critters.
A welcome irritation though, one which I hope to always be able to appreciate...