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Where have all the insects gone?

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Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#261

Post by bluGill »

0des wrote: post #212
cranekam wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was taught to use a semicolon when both fragments can stand alone as discrete sentences.

I was taught the semicolon is when you have a list within a list.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#262

Post by King-Aaron »

termau wrote: post #227
e40 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We feed crows in our area peanuts and when neighbors complained of crap on their cars we stopped for a bit, but they were really aggressive in asking for peanuts. Sometimes there are 10 of them on the wires near the street. They follow my wife home from a main roost a few blocks away--they seem to recognize her in her car. It's unclear if there's a connection to the article.

crows are super clever, when I drive brisbane to sydney they'll be in the middle of the road eating kangaroos and other dead animals, they dont fly away they just hop to the right of the line so I dont squish them at 100 miles an hour, watch me go by then go back to what they are doing - they actually know which side of the road I'll go past and that they will be safe.

If you're doing 160kph in QLD you must have no fear of the highway patrol, haha!

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#263

Post by goatlover »

mistrial9 wrote: post #18
daenz wrote: post #7

Sometimes I get the sense that people hate that we exist, in the numbers that we do, because of our impact on the earth by merely existing. A self-hatred if you will. And before you respond with "if only we did X, it would be fine," consider that the difficulty of convincing/coercing lots of people to do things is also an inherent part of our existence. Also part of our existence is the incentive to cheat to get ahea…

Insects are seriously part of eco-system, what part of that is not important? pp remarkably off-topic and additionally self-defeating.

There's a Radiolab episode about a subspecies of butterfly that only lives on and around this one US military base, and the 20 years of effort one ecologist spent trying to save the species. The ecologist admits that nothing else depends on that butterfly for existence, but it's still worth saving because of a moral obligation we have for making it endangered.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3J...

I think we're going to have to make tradeoffs, and spending 20 years of resources on saving a small insect in one area probably isn't worth it.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#264

Post by lathiat »

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.

Not necessarily a co-incidence.

“Small birds are always vulnerable to predation from larger species. ... One reason that the larger birds do well in cities is that they are more likely to benefit from human-created foods (petfood, garbage, foodscraps and carrion) than small birds, which mostly eat insects.”

https://www.birdsinbackyards.net/birds/featured/Small-insect...

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#265

Post by sizzle »

pengaru wrote: post #129

Last year I had a jarring experience driving through some of the agricultural land near the Salton Sea en route to Bombay Beach coming down from JTNP, taking back roads. The general region is desert, water and food is scarce, but through this agricultural zone there's this dense pocket of food and water on the surface. I was in a Miata with the top down, and the amount of chemicals they were using to keep the pests/i…

How much of these crap chemicals are we consuming?

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#266

Post by nemacol »

MivLives wrote: post #40
nemacol wrote: post #28

Somehow mosquitos, stink bugs, and asian lady beetles persist in my area. It is amazing to see every other type of animal come back stronger with the waning of industry.

All these, and ticks, so many ticks. My roommate got lyme disease walking through are back yard which has next to no plant life and is mostly concrete.

You are right, I forgot ticks. This spring while hunting mushrooms I would pick 10+ off of my pants after every trip out. I have a pill bottle with dozens of them from taking the dogs for a walk. almost always itty bitty little devils.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#267

Post by rsj_hn »

trutannus wrote: post #105
throwawayfear wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is misanthropic to talk about it that way. You're describing thinking conscious beings that have needs and that are born without their choosing. Construing people as an invasive species is not going to be productive or win you any points in a serious conversation on the subject.

This won't be popular, but remember just 10 years ago when people were talking about the environmental advantages of a mass die-off of humans? It was trendy for a bit to spitball about how much better off the environment would be with an x% decrease in human population as a result of a global death event. In fact, "we need a new plague" was a running joke on online environmentalist forms for a while. Funny how an act…

> remember just 10 years ago when people were talking about the environmental advantages of a mass die-off of humans

No. I recommend finding better friends, or choosing different online reading material. We live in an age of information abundance as well as opinion abundance. Your attention is valuable, and there are better communities and reading options out there.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#269

Post by mensetmanusman »

WalterBright wrote: post #204
foxhop wrote: post #176

We used technology to make the earth sick. The insects are fleeing to safe havens in places like my small backyard. Seriously all I did was stopped mowing, and instead use simple nudges to guide the manifestation of a natural system! So much abundance here, with some practice we all can make habitats for humans and animals (including attracting animals and humans by growing tasty food). We will rebuild stronger toget…

I don't use any fertilizer or *cides on my lawn. I do mow it once every month or so. When I walk down the driveway in the summer, there's a constant hum of insects. The only pesticide is a line of diatomaceous earth around the house to keep the ants from setting up shop inside.

Do the ants come up to your skeletal wall of ancient ancestors and flee in fear?

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#270

Post by irrational »

agumonkey wrote: post #187
DantesKite wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few evenings ago I went out on the deck and there was a huge owl just sitting on the railing. It looked at me like, “what are you going to do about it?”
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