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

Where have all the insects gone?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 299 posts

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#181

Post by ChainOfFools »

pengaru wrote: post #159
BobbyJo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drove through Texas agricultural land in spring of 2016. Windows up, not a convertible, and I was still horribly affected for 2 weeks. My eyes and nose burned the moment we started driving by the fields, and my nose continued to run and drain for 2 weeks after.

I believe it, but being Texas I imagine you drove through a much larger area. The distance I traveled through this poison was relatively little: https://goo.gl/maps/v7MQNgpffP2wNCrc7 It was Box Canyon S down to 111E, stair stepping a bit through the fields...

The name of that road is extraordinary appropriate, though, so I imagine under the right conditions it could trap and concentrate quite a lot of the aerosolized chemicals from the croplands it opens onto just south. While on the twisties through the namesake canyon you could have been blasted with several times the concentration found in the open air above the fields themselves.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#182

Post by skinkestek »

jerry1979 wrote: post #36

Anecdotally, while driving along Minnesota's segment of I94 in the '90s, one would have to stop and scrape the bugs off the front window and grill. Today, this is no longer a problem.

I didn't drive to much until 20 or so years ago but I think I saw a lot more of ot back in the day.

In according to the more usual explanations I've been working if lights along the road might be part of the problem.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#183

Post by Jensson »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #177
Jensson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An oil extraction and distribution company isn't an industry? No, they aren't manufacturing anything. Managing natural resources is a reasonable thing for a government to do. > Crown corporations could operate in any sphere of business at all But they aren't which is the point. Just because they could do something in theory doesn't mean that they would do a good job if they did. There is no evidence that they would…

Apologies, I had updated my comment to list a few of the dozen-and-a-half industrial Crown corporations that Canadian governments have sold off to already-wealthy people. I'll continue: Victory Aircraft, Orion Bus Industries, Canadian Vickers, Canadair... It's a historical fact that the government did operate industrial Crown corporations, and they operated them "better", as viewed from the embarrassingly non-fiducia…

Still see no evidence among those.

Victory aircraft was a WW2 wartime aircraft manufacturer, not sure how that is relevant for anything. Wartime economics is very different from peacetime economics.

Orion Bus Industries is and was always a private company. It was owner by a government entity for an extremely short period.

Canadian Vickers is a private company.

Canadair was a private company, then nationalized for a decade. Crown didn't do a good job leading this company so they sold it a decade later. This just solidifies my point, they can't run industries efficiently.

> There's not really an incentive for Crown corporations to do that. They're not there to make ever-increasing amounts of money, they're there to provide a service.

Right, they can work in service sectors where you provide a service to people. They can't do good work in an industry sector where the job is to produce goods. Government agencies are great at managing simple sectors, but they couldn't take over the entire private sector. If they could then they would already have done that in many areas of the world and those would thrive. But anyone who tried quickly reversed it as it didn't work out.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#184

Post by tw04 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #164
tw04 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without the full article it's tough to say, but my refute would be about my local environment. There has absolutely been a MASSIVE decline in NATIVE insects (among other things). Instead we have more asian beetles, emerald ash borers, and japanese beetles than you can shake a stick at. So while yes, technically the numbers may remain neutral, I'm not sure we can call it a healthy distribution.

No disrespect, but I'd feel more comfortable if the rebuttal was based on science and not an individual anecdote from some unknown individual on HN :)

No disrespect taken. There are countless studies backing up the finding of insect decline. I was simply throwing out a hypothesis of how someone could claim otherwise - they simply aren't measuring the appropriate way and/or they aren't accurately representing their results.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/studies-c... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/studies-c...

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#185

Post by imglorp »

Hokusai wrote: post #16

Not just insects. Where I used to live even birds had left. A decade of stronger regulations and cleaning the closer by river made animals come back. And the river started to look less like a sewer and more like a river. The pollution that kills insects is not good for humans either.

Songbird populations everywhere are hurting.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#186

Post by iso1210 »

cranekam wrote: post #132
bluGill wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is why you need a semicolon. The Oxford comma is good as well, but what you showed was where a semicolon is called for.

I don't think a semicolon is right here. Are you proposing this? "He spent a sabbatical conducting field work on Trinidad and Tobago; and in Suriname." That sounds very odd indeed — I wouldn't say the sentence with a semicolon-sized gap in it and reading it with one is jarring. There's nothing wrong with the original sentence. When I read and say it I do so with the same cadence as "He spent a sabbatical conducting f…

> He spent a sabbatical conducting field work on {Trinidad and Tobago} and in {Suriname}

Could be clearer, although "On Trinidad and Tobago" doesn't make sense. "In Trinidad and Tobago", or "On Trinidad", or "On Tobago", sure, but Trinidad and Tobago are two islands (and many smaller)

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#187

Post by agumonkey »

DantesKite wrote: post #178
Hokusai wrote: post #16

Not just insects. Where I used to live even birds had left. A decade of stronger regulations and cleaning the closer by river made animals come back. And the river started to look less like a sewer and more like a river. The pollution that kills insects is not good for humans either.

On a side note, I noticed after the pandemic began, the birds began starving because they started eating out of our dog's bowls of food.

A lot of birds are getting way closer to our windows than they used to be (lived in the same place for 40 years). These aren't angry bird (npi), usually they keep their distance with humans, but now they come very close very often.. I cannot not interpret it as a sign of risk taking facing higher needs.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#188

Post by l8rpeace »

jerry1979 wrote: post #36

Anecdotally, while driving along Minnesota's segment of I94 in the '90s, one would have to stop and scrape the bugs off the front window and grill. Today, this is no longer a problem.

Try south of St Louis, MO on 55 (specifically south of Cape Girardeau, MO) in the summer. That might be where all the bugs have gone. \s

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#189

Post by tedmcory77 »

mellavora wrote: post #149
thisiscorrect wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could that be explained by improved aerodynamics of cars now compared to then? Has that been studied?

For me, I noticed the change over one year. I had a job where I commuted the same stretch of highway every day. For the first few years, every May/June the windshield was always badly crusted with bugs. Then suddenly one year, no bugs. Same car.

What year? Would love to have that data point, or an aproximation.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#190

Post by pfdietz »

lsiebert wrote: post #154

The loss of pollinators is scary. blueberries, cherries, every brassica (broccoli, cabbage etc), carrots, squash, melons, and many more are insect polliated. A few other plants can also self pollinate, but with reduced yields.

All the major staple foods are wind pollinated.
Post reply on HN