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Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

fwi.co.uk

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Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#91

Post by kasey_junk »

black-tea wrote: post #88
mads wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 1.5 hours today each direction, but I am commuting to a different country and have to cross a bridge. Back then it was 1 hour or so - maybe a little less if traffic was good.

How can you waste that much of your life? You've spent almost an entire year over the past ten years just moving your body around because other people want you to.

This would be considered a long but not especially noteworthy commute in the US.

1.5 hours each way gets you into the “supercommuter” level but 1 hour each way is fairly common.

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#92

Post by benj111 »

neffy wrote: post #89
benj111 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was more that today I have a phone in my pocket permanently, digital photos are free so ill take a picture of anything. In the 50s there were financial and convenience barriers to photography, however small. Plus these photos have survived. My modern photo of an un notable thing probably wont survive, a picture of a notable thing probably will.

I find it´s best to make a mental note, and talk to Uncle´s friends. There is an intergenerational information transfer band if you pay enough attention to it. Plus your own memory will inform you after a while. I remember growing up and there being 3-4 weeks of snow around January and putting on multiple pairs of socks to play in it. My mother remembers there being a couple of feet of snow up into March, and getting…

Agreed, but that isn't science.

You could use it as a prompt to start doing more research to see if there actually is less snow. I'm not sure what else you could do with that information though, a tool for raising awareness of climate change?

Photos are better, they're useful for things like measuring glacier retreat. But even in your example there would be issues, if snow becomes noteworthy more people will take photos of it, so already you can only be confident of looking at the most extreme examples.

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#93

Post by powercf »

CalRobert wrote: post #41
ALittleLight wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a passage in the book Sapiens, where the author muses that there may have been prehistoric tribes where grandparents told tales of when mammoths were so plentiful hunters would take them every month, and the grandchildren would smile and nod. The grandchildren would in turn grow up and tell their grandchildren that there were once beasts called mammoths, and these grandchildren too would smile and…

The shifting baselines problem comes up a lot; it related to fish catches It's described more here - https://oceana.org/blog/daniel-pauly-and-george-monbiot-conv... and aptly illustrated here - https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/285468/catch_of_the_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

Excellent article.

I especially like "We have to get rid of this notion that the past is a provider of anecdotes and the present is a provider of knowledge". This way of thinking is pervasive everywhere, including on HN. But we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the accounts of our ancestors because they seem exagerated when we compare them to our experiences today.

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#94

Post by BaronMingus »

lazyjones wrote: post #57
mads wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also did anyone notice that they don’t clean off insects off their car as often as before? Just 10 years ago, when I used to commute 170km every day in my car, I would have to clean the windshield regularly. I think I cleaned it once the last year and I even travel further today...

I guess you eradicated all insects along your commute route. More seriously, my car is full of dead insects just from a few trips to the airport and I live in a metro area with almost 2 million people.

Possibly a factor. I think it's quite likely insect numbers are declining but some amout of the windscreen affect could be accounted for by good old Darwin - all those insects you scraped off your windscreen found their reproductive success curtailed with extreme prejudice.

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#95

Post by desas »

CalRobert wrote: post #40

I was out digging in my field yesterday (in Ireland, not England) and thought it was interesting that there was a large variance in worm counts. Some areas had massive numbers of worms pushing 20cm, and others had relatively few, smaller ones. The bigger worms were in areas that hadn't been grazed by sheep, but I'm not sure how that relates, if at all (the sheep have been gone for a few years).

Soil compaction?

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#96

Post by varjag »

CalRobert wrote: post #41
ALittleLight wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a passage in the book Sapiens, where the author muses that there may have been prehistoric tribes where grandparents told tales of when mammoths were so plentiful hunters would take them every month, and the grandchildren would smile and nod. The grandchildren would in turn grow up and tell their grandchildren that there were once beasts called mammoths, and these grandchildren too would smile and…

The shifting baselines problem comes up a lot; it related to fish catches It's described more here - https://oceana.org/blog/daniel-pauly-and-george-monbiot-conv... and aptly illustrated here - https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/285468/catch_of_the_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

Same happens with climate change. Obligatory apt XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/1321/

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#97

Post by est31 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #39
photoguy112 wrote: post #13

Back when I was a kid, after a heavy downpour the roads would be crowded with earthworms. You really had to watch where you step to avoid stepping on one of those suckers. Fast forward today and I RARELY see a single worm out on the road after a similar downpour.

This reminds me of a passage in the book Sapiens, where the author muses that there may have been prehistoric tribes where grandparents told tales of when mammoths were so plentiful hunters would take them every month, and the grandchildren would smile and nod. The grandchildren would in turn grow up and tell their grandchildren that there were once beasts called mammoths, and these grandchildren too would smile and…

You will also love this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/drmegafauna/status/1088716741700710401

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#98

Post by [deleted] »

black-tea wrote: post #88
mads wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 1.5 hours today each direction, but I am commuting to a different country and have to cross a bridge. Back then it was 1 hour or so - maybe a little less if traffic was good.

How can you waste that much of your life? You've spent almost an entire year over the past ten years just moving your body around because other people want you to.

[deleted]

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#99

Post by black-tea »

kasey_junk wrote: post #91
black-tea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you waste that much of your life? You've spent almost an entire year over the past ten years just moving your body around because other people want you to.

This would be considered a long but not especially noteworthy commute in the US. 1.5 hours each way gets you into the “supercommuter” level but 1 hour each way is fairly common.

I did just over an hour each way for three months and questioned what the point was. I was wasting my life just so I could live in one place and work in another, but for what? My "living" basically consisted if eating and sleeping and my body started to become fat and unhealthy due to not having the time to exercise. What's the point of transporting a fat, useless body 100 miles every day?

Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England

#100

Post by kasey_junk »

black-tea wrote: post #99
kasey_junk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be considered a long but not especially noteworthy commute in the US. 1.5 hours each way gets you into the “supercommuter” level but 1 hour each way is fairly common.

I did just over an hour each way for three months and questioned what the point was. I was wasting my life just so I could live in one place and work in another, but for what? My "living" basically consisted if eating and sleeping and my body started to become fat and unhealthy due to not having the time to exercise. What's the point of transporting a fat, useless body 100 miles every day?

Oh, I'm 100% onboard that one of the quickest ways to improve your life is to lower your commute time. I'm just saying commuting that long is not a particularly odd thing to do.
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