this is great. also, why must every stinking device have a light letting you know the device is on or sleeping or whatever. so annoying. monitors, printers, cable modems, routers, everything has freaking, annoying blinking lights. i have to use dark tape to cover it all.
Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
441–450 of 481 posts
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless there is actual data it’s probably best to not trust your memory. Every time you remember something the reality of it changes. Memory is lossy. Bias and selection are favored over improvement or precision of recall. Every recollection is inferior to the previous one. I have a few memories of extensive fire fly experiences back in the day. But when I really think about it, I don’t remember all the days and year…
My grand-father lived through WW2. I’d say he was able to give a recollection of memories and experiences that are not found in any books and even though I agree that “good sources for truth” may vary for the use-case, we shouldn’t bee (pun intended) too insecure about believing some of our “past-memory-gut-feel”/“anecdotes”. There is ample evidence about research being “sponsored by the right people showing the righ…
I agree to an extent on most you’ve written but I do think we need to be careful too. A general insect decline (objective data points to this) seems to exist. But a single persons observation that they remember more fire flies than today doesn’t necessarily hold water. I replied to another response that I had a similar thought only to eventually realize I was biasing a small number of events from the past that were probably a standard deviation or more in the “lots of Fire flies” direction. I wasn’t considering all the times there weren’t.
Our brains do this. We key on certain experiences and memory favors the extreme. Over time our memory does distort. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. But that we should be careful with anecdotal memories to make generalized pr specific statements about today’s reality.
As for “history repeating itself” - does it? Or do historians who write history repeat themselves? Historians write about long sequences of events that seem inevitable and if only such and such action were taken then a disaster or triumph would have been avoided or accomplished. But the recording of select historical events is more a persons narrative - a story - rather than the actual past.
What are the motivations of the historian writing about the past? What have they negated? What have they chosen to focus on? What of their memories or the subjects they used to inform their history? Which people do you choose to understand what they “said or saw”?
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#443I 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
Lots of fireflies in my backyard every night, probably because it is partially flooded due to the record high water levels in the Great lakes. Have been trying to film them. But subpar results so far. I have a vintage 70-200 lens adopted to m4/3. It says macro on the lens, but I can't focus on anything close at all.
I have a similar lens that says macro but only focuses a tiny bit closer at the wide end. If you don’t want to buy a real macro lens try an 85-135mm prime with an extension ring.
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
On that note I just did a Google search for "more fireflies this year" and got news articles saying as much from 2018, 2019, and 2020.
It's possible that some policy changes are working. One of my favorite memories of cycling through the midwest in the early 90's was watching the redwing blackbird population slowly recover.
Wouldn’t have been a good memory if you were _running_ through the midwest. A good chunk of the summer, they dive-bomb anyone who looks at their bush funny. Those birds are my personal nemeses - but they’re winning.
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, this year we for one don't, in fact we're having the exact opposite, but last year we did have a hot year and everyone said it's definitely climate change. I think we're not yet at the point where we can feel it, we're just projecting.
The personal subjective feeling at this point is fewer places having snowy winters and more frequent and severe heatwaves — the phrase “9 of the hottest years on record were in the last decade” being in the news most (or all?) years since the late 1990s. Most individual people won’t feel the change that’s happened over their lifetime unless they’re wondering why it doesn’t snow any more or how they ever managed witho…
Those of us into winter sports are keenly conscious of the winter weather patterns, in a way the bulk of the population is not. Snow in southern Ontario for example has always been unreliable, with rain and snow mixes common, but snowfall is getting much much less reliable.
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#446Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#447Also Germany: Shuts down nuclear plants and lights up more coal plants.
More coal plants is incorrect and the shutdown of the nuclear power plants was planned anyway. Since the mid 1980s no less...
Basically most of the plants that were shut down simply didn't get their runtime extended again and would've been shut down in a few years anyway.
And the utility companies owning them get billions in compensation and don't have o pay for waste disposal of all the irradiated parts either...
Facts that nuclear proponents always conveniently ignore...
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#448I wonder how many centuries it might take for the US to start to care about insects or the environment like some European countries do with the recent regress in policies overall that isn't about ONLY increasing overall GDP in the US. And I say this even not considering Trump, which is a big menace. But democrat candidates in the US also don't care about the environment, not showing much promise. So do the Americans…
The states of California and Alaska each individually have more wild forest lands than the entire European continent. The US created the concept of state-protected wilderness reserves and national parks. The US was the driving force behind the Kyoto Protocol, and the originating nation of solar power, wind power, and nuclear power. California leads the world in automobile fuel economy targets, and the US as a whole h…
> The states of California and Alaska each individually have more wild forest lands than the entire European continent.
I really don't want to get into a Europe vs US argument, but this statement strikes me as odd. Sweden and California are roughly similar in size, and Sweden is nearly 70% covered by forest. For California to have more forest than Europe as a whole, not only does California need to be covered in forest to a larger extent than Sweden (this may be true, I don't know), but Sweden needs to hold more than 70% of the total amount of forest in Europe - something that seems exceptionally unlikely at best.
What am I missing?
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#449I 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…
>I do think that living organisms are extraordinarily adaptable if the changes are gradual and bounded. Most of us have this idea that an ecosystem is this delicate and fragile thing, but nature actually has a lot of robustness and redundancies built-in (which are inefficient but increase chances of group survival).
Yet, the vast majority of scientists who study ecosystems disagree: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/ipbes_7_10_add.1_en_1....
Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
#450I 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 probably a bit North of you (Southern Canada) and this is the first year I've seen lots of fireflies at night. So there's a good chance it's more a case of migratory patterns changing than a mass die-off. Don't mean to make light of the matter, but it might not be as grim as it appears right now either.