Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
backreaction.blogspot.com
Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
1–10 of 184 posts
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#2Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#3Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0].
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#4Great article! One of the first I’ve ever seen that breaks down the complexities of the bee problem in a thoughtful, reasonable way. The slew of articles we’ve seen is the last 5-10 years about the ‘Bee Apocalypse’ were largely either highly misleading, poorly researched, or just plain biased by one agenda or another. It used to make me really angry. I’m sure I could dig up past rants I’ve made about it here on HN. Very nice to finally see a detailed objective explanation of the situation.
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#5Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...
These historical successes are encouraging, but it is very important not to extrapolate any of them to anthropogenic climate change. The processes underlying every single one of the examples in the SSC article operate on time scales of years or decades. CO2 causes effects over centuries and persists for millennia. It is a completely different beast.
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#6(1) Stop using neonicotinoid pesticides. There are plenty of alternatives for protecting food crops from insect infestations, such as neem oil applied as a foliar spray or a soil soak in response to infestations. Neonictoninoides are based on the tobacco nicotine molecule structure, but are typically chlorinated and modified to make them more persistent and toxic to insects relative to animals. There's a good argument for banning the entire class due to their persistent ecological effects on beneficial native insect populations.
https://organic-center.org/research/neonicotinoid-pesticides...
(2) Have undisturbed habitat set aside for wild bee populations. This can be something as simple as maintaining undisturbed hedgerows on the sides of agricultural fields, but in general means maintaining a fair amount of undisturbed native habitat.
https://www.planetbee.org/planet-bee-blog//native-bee-series...
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#7Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
I am very fond of the Summer of the Shark.
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#8Great article! One of the first I’ve ever seen that breaks down the complexities of the bee problem in a thoughtful, reasonable way. The slew of articles we’ve seen is the last 5-10 years about the ‘Bee Apocalypse’ were largely either highly misleading, poorly researched, or just plain biased by one agenda or another. It used to make me really angry. I’m sure I could dig up past rants I’ve made about it here on HN. V…
> or just plain biased by one agenda or another.
When it reaches mainstream news, there's always an agenda.
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#9Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
Doing this for back-issues of Zero Hedge would be particularly entertaining.
Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
#10Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...
This article is notable in that it contained this sentence:
> Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on.
Which made me realise, the first time I read it, that he didn't know what he was talking about and was just repeating what he heard in his weird echo chamber with unwarranted confidence. If you're in that bubble that will apparently seem like a totally normal thing to say, if you're not then it will seem like utter insanity.
Even more so when you follow the link, and realise he's linking to a New York Times op-ed, which doesn't even agree with the claim (though it's trying pretty hard to give the impression it is).
> THE environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products — less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries and to the communities that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs.
Oh so recycling actually works, but we need fake jobs for people who don't care about economic efficiency? I'm glad we got some clear eyed realists in to explain this all to us.