Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 138 posts

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#101

Post by jimnotgym »

dan-robertson wrote: post #84
40four wrote: post #34

I’m not really sure yet how I feel about this particular case of temporary emergency authorization (which is omitted from the title). I get the chemicals were banned for good reason, but in this case they are trying to prevent a whole commodity sector from collapsing. Tough situation to be in. The larger issue to me is how warped the debate around saving bees and pollinators has become. I get very frustrated every ti…

The sugar beet farmers groups have been trying to get emergency authorisation ever since the pesticides were banned. I feel like it isn’t a sustainable situation and these farmers unions are either misleading or foolish if they believe these measures will be both temporary and successful. They also seem to have a weird line about the zeitgeist against refined sugar (maybe the article mentions this as a reference to h…

I think this is especially troublesome from the National Farmers Union. They were simultaneously campaigning publicly to keep EU standards (to protect their members from cheaper imports), whilst privately lobbying the government to lower standards. They have lost an awful lot of credibility with environmentalists over this.

For a bit of added intrigue, cane sugar producers Tate & Lyle were major Brexit supporters in order to get tarrifs on cane sugar dropped.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#102

Post by jimnotgym »

This is even more perverse than it seems. In many parts of the UK there is no sugar industry but sugar beet are still being grown...to feed biodigesters, to generate electricity to help meet green energy targets. Subsidised of course. Subsidised to save the environment by destroying the environment.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#103

Post by eucryphia »

I went to buy a fruit fly spray at my local nursery and the sales rep said it’s not stocked because it kills bees. He claimed that was why there were so few bees around. I replied that it was more likely because the local council banned amateur bee keeper’s backyard hives. I’ve tried a replacement which is about 80% as effective but has to be sprayed after every rain shower or every fortnight whichever comes first.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#105

Post by bluGill »

pkaye wrote: post #87
bluGill wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name one that works and isn't worse?

It was a rhetorical question. These countries where pushing for all these pesticide bans without identifying safer alternatives. Perhaps instead of banning it, maybe limited use for specific cases while promoting the research of alternatives.

Research has been happening for years. Little new has been discovered, not even leads.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#106

Post by ineedasername »

liaukovv wrote: post #55
ineedasername wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd rather have cheap sweet things than expensive sweet things. Then we'll come up with a cheap solution for the consequences that causes even more problems, and on and on. It seems like most of the problems we have as a society are because we choose expedient solutions rather than careful solutions to problems.

This approach appears to work since we thrive as a species.

We're only about 200 years into such decision making having the ability to effect things so quickly on a macroscopic scale. Your statement amounts to standing on the crest of the wave and saying "see we're fine!" Unaware of the potential fall and disregarding the harm that short term solutions have already caused.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#107

Post by ineedasername »

liaukovv wrote: post #83
Technically wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you comparing us to? We don't have a control group for intelligent species.

Why do you consider intelligence somehow special over big teeth or ability to change color at will?

Because intelligence is a more general purpose tool that can be used to overcome more specialized advantages.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#108

Post by simon1ltd »

40four wrote: post #34

I’m not really sure yet how I feel about this particular case of temporary emergency authorization (which is omitted from the title). I get the chemicals were banned for good reason, but in this case they are trying to prevent a whole commodity sector from collapsing. Tough situation to be in. The larger issue to me is how warped the debate around saving bees and pollinators has become. I get very frustrated every ti…

I don’t think there’s a big difference between “wild” bees and the “domesticated” or farmed bees that you seem to believe exists.

I’m in Ohio, and I’ve only been keeping bees for 3-4 years now, but I’ve attended lectures and talked to many longtime keepers in my area (Ohio).

I specifically asked about wild bees, and the answer I got was unexpected, but made sense once it was explained to me.

The PhD speaker, who’s worked in pesticide research his entire career, explained that around here American Foul Brood wiped out > 95% of hives in many areas over the span of a decade (70s or 80s?) — and he said there’s no reason to believe that the “wild” bees fared any differently. In fact, he believes we still have wild bees because of natural swarming behavior — meaning our wild bees are heavily linked with the commercially managed hives.

I can’t speak to anywhere else, but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that the wild and managed bees are essentially the same.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#109

Post by Chris2048 »

lwhi wrote: post #92
Chris2048 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fails to mention the authorizations are "Emergency authorizations", thereby omitting relevant information to make the title more click-baity

Read the article. It doesn't.

I was talking about the title.

Re: Pesticide believed to kill bees is authorised for use in England

#110

Post by Chris2048 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #73
Chris2048 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fails to mention the authorizations are "Emergency authorizations", thereby omitting relevant information to make the title more click-baity

Emergency authorizations often end up being permanent. Claiming that the entire premise of the article doesn’t hold water because it’s an “emergency” authorization is to completely ignore how emergency authorizations work in practice.

I didn't claim anything about the premise of the article, I commented on the content of the title/headline.
Post reply on HN