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Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

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Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#241

Post by spaetzleesser »

nightski wrote: post #202
teruakohatu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-American I have never understood why a people that values personal liberties are sometimes happy to be dictated to by housing authorities. I get it with apartment buildings with shared walls and communal property, but I just don't get why you would with suburban homes.

HOAs provide some value, in some cases mowing, upkeep, and snow removal. I'd never live in a place with HOA dues/restrictions but for older folks who aren't as physically capable it can be really nice.

They provide some value but they also attract control freaks who want to shape everything in the way they want. Most people don't want to engage in HOA so the people who do (and often are control freaks) have a lot of power.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#242

Post by closeparen »

wenc wrote: post #86
thatguy0900 wrote: post #16

I actually was sitting outside a few nights ago and realized that there was no more fireflies, and I couldn't remember the last time I had seen one. I used to go out all the time during summer as a kid to catch them, they would light up whole fields. That was just like 15 years ago. Pretty sobering realization

I'm in Chicago (in a neighborhood close to downtown) and in previous years I'd hardly ever seen any fireflies. This year, they're everywhere -- in parks and even in trees on neighborhood streets. I understand fireflies are sensitive to light pollution. I can't imagine Chicago's any different from other major cities. COVID has people staying home a lot more but that has nothing to do with street lighting. I wonder wha…

Chicago used to be orange at night, now it's blue. I wonder if the color temperature and intensity changes in the shift to LED street lighting played a role. They certainly do in human sleep.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#243

Post by hinkley »

Ma8ee wrote: post #151
wenc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Chicago (in a neighborhood close to downtown) and in previous years I'd hardly ever seen any fireflies. This year, they're everywhere -- in parks and even in trees on neighborhood streets. I understand fireflies are sensitive to light pollution. I can't imagine Chicago's any different from other major cities. COVID has people staying home a lot more but that has nothing to do with street lighting. I wonder wha…

Ecosystems are delicate and fragile. But if you destroy one, there’s a good chance it very soon will be replaced with a new one, where the new niches are occupied by different species. At first it will be species that that aren’t very specialised, like rats and cockroaches. But after just a few million years you might have something as diverse and rich as the system you destroyed.

I don't want highly specialized pigeons and rats, thank you.

And at any rate, specialization only works if the problems stay relatively stable, or temporary. If we aren't stopped/don't stop ourselves we will keep inventing new insults every ten years and nothing can adapt to anywhere near that rate of change.

You're also forgetting the Carboniferous period. It took 50 million years for anything to puzzle out how to benefit from surplus lignin. In 50 million years are we going to be around? In 50 million years is anyone going to remember that Alpha Centauri is a system humans used to live in (before we used it up)?

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#244

Post by dependenttypes »

I am wondering, is there any benefit to having insects in cities specifically? I would understand if this was a law specifically for rural enviroment but what is the benefit for this in the city?

Also, other than bees, which insects specifically benefit humans?

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#246

Post by nightski »

SteveNuts wrote: post #216
nightski wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOAs provide some value, in some cases mowing, upkeep, and snow removal. I'd never live in a place with HOA dues/restrictions but for older folks who aren't as physically capable it can be really nice.

Yeah but they could also seek that out on their own without an HOA.

Of course! No one is forced to buy into an HOA. For some Americans though I think it's less about giving up their freedoms and more about controlling their neighbors :)

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#247

Post by hn_check »

stinos wrote: post #237
hn_check wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume fireflies are declining from the loss of habitat, along with so many other insect species. The speculation about light being a cause seems logical, but is unproven. Indeed, even the population variations of fireflies is unproven -- the wiki citation in the other link uses as its authority a cite that merely notes that they recall more when they were kids. It is an extremely poor quality citation (but it will…

Habitat loss is a key factor, probably the key factor, but the reasearch around artifical night light and fireflies/glowworms goes way beyond 'recall more than they were kids' - not sure why you'd pick that as main argument from a Wikipedia page. See e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339213788_A_Global_... page 4 and beyond which reads Observational and experimental studies provide evidence hat ALAN adver…

I was specifically responding to the Wikipedia extract.

The citation for the statement "Firefly populations are declining worldwide, for a variety of reasons" is a link to firefly.org. That is a small, Texas group that appreciates Fireflies, which is nice. But it is home to no studies, no research, no analysis. Nor does it (that group, or the wiki page that was cited to apparently refute my personal anecdote...) cite the publication you mention. So I'm not really sure what we're discussing here.

I'm not disagreeing that there is a decline for a multitude of reasons, or that light is probably bad, but if someone says "my yard has no fireflies the apocalypse is upon us" it probably isn't credible.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#248

Post by kamarg »

SteveNuts wrote: post #216
nightski wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOAs provide some value, in some cases mowing, upkeep, and snow removal. I'd never live in a place with HOA dues/restrictions but for older folks who aren't as physically capable it can be really nice.

Yeah but they could also seek that out on their own without an HOA.

An HOA that represents more people can get a better deal for the residents than a single home can on their own.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#249

Post by cs02rm0 »

GordonS wrote: post #135
zackmorris wrote: post #109

The best thing we can do on a personal level is to stop using broadleaf weedkillers like Scott's Weed and Feed and other herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup). I've been doing handyman work at my boss's house during COVID-19 and he has clover growing in his yard. He has a fair number of bees, certainly more than on my end of town which is all chemlawns. It's arguably ok to use a little weed killer by hand on dandelion…

I never going the obsession with pristine lawns without clover, daisies, moss and such. I actually think it looks quite nice with some variation. My wife is militant about this, insisting that our lawn is sprayed with horrible chemicals at least once a year to kill off the clover, daisies and moss. Seems such a pointless thing to do, and very obviously not good for wildlife.

My wife seems to think all boxes with pictures of lawns on are the same.

About three years in a row now she's tried to get lawn seed and poured a load of cheap weed and feed on instead. Completely going overboard on the quantities for good measure. At this point I'm amazed we have anything left to grow.

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