Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude • Hacker News Board

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#131

Post by Joeri » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

bbojan wrote: post #28

As I believe that Earth is the only life-bearing planet in our galaxy, if not the whole Universe, I'm extremely saddened with news like this of a near-extinction of yet another fascinating species. My only hope is that humanity will spread among the stars, dispersing what species remain to billions of new worlds, and that this might be our redemption for the unspeakable crimes we have committed against life...

A highly likely explanation for why we’re seemingly the only intelligent life in a vast universe is the great filter, something in the path between inert matter and a galactic civilization that prevents progressing along said path. What if there have been hundreds of human-like intelligent species in our galaxy, and what if all of them wiped themselves out before spreading among the stars? What would that say about us?

Anyway, there’s an interesting podcast “the end of the world” that covers this in depth.

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#132

Post by vixen99 » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

AlanSE wrote: post #108

cryptonector wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The variations in surface temperature we have seen in the modern era are nothing compared to what we've seen in the recent geological record. Moreover, insects are very sturdy throughout the geological record, so it's very difficult to believe that less than 1C change in a century could cause this (the end of the last glacial period saw a 7C swing in just a few hundred years). It's pretty clear that climate change is…

> We also know that CO2 and temperature in the geological record are linked, with CO2 changes lagging temperature changes, which rules out CO2 as a cause of past temperature changes. This sentence might have seemed logically sound to you, but it's extremely fallacious. What this means is that the geological evidence is not sufficient to say that increasing CO2 concentrations increases temperature. Do we have other ev…

Dead simple? An eminent atmospheric physicist - Lindzen begs to differ: "Former senator and Secretary of State John F. Kerry is typical when he stated, with reference to greenhouse warming, ‘I know sometimes I can remember from when I was in high school and college, some aspects of chemistry or physics can be tough. But this is not tough. This is simple. Kids at the earliest age can understand this’. As you have seen, the greenhouse effect is not all that simple. Only remarkably brilliant kids would understand it. Given Kerry’s subsequent description of climate and its underlying physics, it was clear that he was not up to the task.".

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/richard-lindzen-lectu...

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#133

Post by samstave » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #7

This seems like part of the insect apocalypse story, and bee colony collapse disorder. All probably caused by overuse of insecticides. Note that if we don't find a way to correct this, it can be catastrophic on a timescale that makes the most alarmist climate change predictions seem like nothing. There must be some percentage of normal insect population density below which population of frogs and birds and what not w…

the problem is that the gardening and weed management actions we take eliminate the sole plant that these critters put their eggs on. MilkThistle is what they eat and lay eggs on ONLY. and so with RoundUp killing the milkthistle "weed" we blindly erradicate the support system for upsteam insects like the monarchs.

Funny how if you want to dploy a new building facility to a location you need to do an environmental impact analysis/report...

but looking at a pesticide, we dont look at the impact it would have to the lyfecycle ecosystem to all the critters who rely on the various "weeds" we think we are killing...

Look at the episode of chefs table on netflix with the buuddhist chef - she hasa . "farm to table" garden where she gets the ingredients for her amazing dishes - no pesticides, no weed killers - not insecticides.. just goes through and lets everything live naturally together.

monsanto should research how all the various ecosystem cycles rely on each plant type and what role insects play in every manner other than affecting their company bottom line.

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#134

Post by vixen99 » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #60

cryptonector wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The variations in surface temperature we have seen in the modern era are nothing compared to what we've seen in the recent geological record. Moreover, insects are very sturdy throughout the geological record, so it's very difficult to believe that less than 1C change in a century could cause this (the end of the last glacial period saw a 7C swing in just a few hundred years). It's pretty clear that climate change is…

> it's an extremely complex system about we have shockingly little information in the grand scheme of things (30 years' worth of satellite data!), You should stop making that argument as it's too much like a well-refuted talking point that climate change denialists use. We have many different lines of evidence. “Global Warming in an Independent Record of the Past 130 Years“, for example, shows that the temperature ch…

Trust doesn't come into it. As Eschenbach puts it in his articles "My Other Request: If you believe that e.g. I’m using a method wrong or using the wrong dataset, please educate me and others by demonstrating the proper use of the method or the right dataset. Simply claiming I’m wrong about methods doesn’t advance the discussion unless you can point us to the right way to do it."

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#135

Post by happertiger » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

zhte415 wrote: post #77

trgn wrote: post #4

I planted milkweed in my front yard. These plants don't come cheap, between 10-20$ at the nursery for a young plant. I never was able to grow them from seed. Anyways, the plants did attract a few monarchs late summer/early fall. I counted two. I planted nine total. I got a code violation warning last month for not mowing my front yard and having overgrown "landscape weeds".

> I got a code violation warning last month for not mowing my front yard That sucks. Why do such restrictions exist? My whole front yard is ivy and bushes. There's no mowing that, and it looks very pleasant (and the frogs like it, too).

How? Homeowners associations. I planted milkweed in an empty side yard and was cited for the same thing.

Also I was cited for having a browning lawn. My neighbors brought me a bag of weed-and-feed (basically lawn seed with pesticide) because he thought I did not know how to “do the lawn.” Very sweet, but all I wanted was not to kill everything. Wasn’t allowed.

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#136

Post by wgjordan » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

tstrimple wrote: post #122

monktastic1 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that all of these problems -- the insect apocalypse, general biodiversity loss, climate change, all the way to the depression and anxiety epidemics, economic inequity, etc., stem from the same general principle: our alienation from ourselves, each other, and nature. In a sense, healing any one of them will contribute to healing all of them. And trying to merely engineer our way out of any of them (whil…

> It seems to me that all of these problems -- the insect apocalypse, general biodiversity loss, climate change, all the way to the depression and anxiety epidemics, economic inequity, etc., stem from the same general principle: I thought you were going to say capitalism.

According to Marx [1] our alienation from ourselves, each other, and nature is the product of (the capitalist relation to) labor:

> Through estranged, alienated labor, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labor of a man alien to labor and standing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labor creates the relation to it of the capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labor). Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts...

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#137

Post by justinph » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

trgn wrote: post #4

I planted milkweed in my front yard. These plants don't come cheap, between 10-20$ at the nursery for a young plant. I never was able to grow them from seed. Anyways, the plants did attract a few monarchs late summer/early fall. I counted two. I planted nine total. I got a code violation warning last month for not mowing my front yard and having overgrown "landscape weeds".

From what I've read, urban areas are the refuge for monarchs since there are people like you that plant it, and areas that don't get pesticide applications.

It is rural areas that are blanked with pesticides that are the problem. You can cover large distances in the rural areas of the country where everything is sprayed and there is no milkweed.

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#138

Post by calebm » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

I stopped using chemical weed killer on my yard a couple years ago, and I have noticed more monarchs this summer than in the past few years combined.

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#139

Post by justinator » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #93

crispinb wrote: post #87

All our evolved natural systems are collapsing, and are being replaced by crude early-stage technological ones. "Fighting" each as a separate policy issue is a continuation of the fluffy-minded & neurotic economic/business attitude which cannot cope with facing physical reality. We're almost certainly stuffed. This was probably always inevitable, because the naked ape likely lacks whatever capacities might be needed…

Can I take the cynical extreme long term view for a second? No matter how much we destroy our planet, it's damage will be a blink of an eye in cosmological terms. Even if we nearly exterminate all other species, plenty of genetic material will survive by dumb chance alone, and in a few million years there will be a whole other ecosystem/society to worry about. Earth doesn't care about biodiversity, beauty, or longevi…

Or quoting George Carlin,

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Differe nce. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue - green ball that's just a - floatin' around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

https://umdgrb.umd.edu/~goodman/Physics105/George_Carlin.pdf

Re: Monarch butterfly populations in U.S. west are down an order of magnitude

#140

Post by njarboe » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:29 PM UTC

sverige wrote: post #110

ben_w wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Lots of insects are dying” and “insecticides kill insects” does make it very easy to reach that conclusion. I know nothing of the relevant biochemistry. Are these insecticides well targeted or highly generic in what they kill?

Most are based on organophosphates, which work basically by sending the nervous system into hyperdrive. They will kill a wide swath of animals (not just insects) if applied heavily enough. Some are deadlier to certain insects more than others. For example, Sevin kills bees even in very small doses. The other thing to note is that "loss of habitat" isn't always disappearing wetlands or stands of trees being cut down a…

Also these ditches and edges of farm properties are often eliminated with consolidation of farmland into larger and larger continuous acreage ownership.