101–110 of 181 posts
This seems like part of the insect apocalypse story, and bee colony collapse disorder. All probably caused by overuse of insecticides. Note that if we don't find a way to correct this, it can be catastrophic on a timescale that makes the most alarmist climate change predictions seem like nothing. There must be some percentage of normal insect population density below which population of frogs and birds and what not w…
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I don’t think the insect apocalypse is getting its attention stolen by climate change. I just don’t think enough people care. I mean, look at France. They are having violent riots because the gas prices were increased to fight climate change. I know that it’s easy for me, a relatively wealthy Scandinavian, to not worry about gas prices, but even if these people are struggling to make ends meet, they are right now, ac…
I think people being upset about rising fossil fuel taxes are not unreasonable. It hurts them in their immediate day to day lives. The government could try methods of fighting climate change that hurt them less.
I don't know the detail of the French measures, but I could understand people being upset if the taxes are on the citizen but sparing industrial polluters. Or if there aren't adequate alternatives, such as promoting electric vehicles.
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It's a long view, sure, but it's one that doesn't include humans. Most people would like humans to be around. The conditions under which we live won't be in play if the fisheries all collapse and the clathrate gun fires.
People want people around. People want endangered species around. However, civilization has been around for roughly 20,000 years, and modern civilization for roughly 100 years. If earth was a person and we all lived on it's tummy, everything humans ever existed would still be an eye-blick.
This does not make any sense to me.
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I was specially referring to the comments the g'parent poster made concerning climate, in a paragraph starting "As to climate". It happens that the statements made are not only incorrect, but aligned with common talking points which are predominantly made by climate change denialists. But you'll note that I carefully did not say that the poster was a CCD. I said the arguments were those used by CCD and which have bee…
Yes, but the rest of his posts proves he has a brain.
I think climate change denialists have a brain. I think people with a brain are perfectly capable of making bad arguments.
I think that just because someone is knowledgeable and even an authority in some areas doesn't mean that knowledge or authority extends to other areas, nor even the ability to recognize the limits of one's knowledge.
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Do you think that those companies would exist in their current form without the consumers (/the actual population) buying stuff made by those companies?
Average joe is not educated enough/has to worry about everyday living, to actually pay attention to those companies practices. Its on the goverment to regulate them in such a way that would allow our spicies to thrive in the future. Unfortunetely fast gain motion sparked by capitalism is also in the vains of people responsible for legiatlation. Humans have too many self-destruct mechanisms embedded in them to accompl…
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The general trend that goes upward in your graph isn't the number of butterflies, but the number of 'sites monitored', i.e., places where they searched for butterflies. In the time that monitored sites went from ~400,000 to ~1,400,000 the number of reported butterflies stayed roughly the same (~200,000), which should be grave cause for concern. The number of butterflies should be a linear correlation with the number…
>The general trend that goes upward in your graph isn't the number of butterflies, but the number of 'sites monitored', i.e., places where they searched for butterflies. With all due respect, I can read a graph. I was referring to the total amount of butterflies. There is no data on the site to permit one to draw any correlation between the number of monitoring sites and the number of butterflies. We could add 10,000…
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I think the people in France are acting very rational here. The artifical increase in gas prices directly hits their state of being right now and that of their kids. There is no uncertainty about that. Global warning may or may not make life shitty in some future scenario. Why do they, who are already poor, need to pay the price right now? I think most people rather want to be not poor in a world with global warning…
Your dichotomy is false. In a world with global warming there would be no humans. It's an extinction level event and few of us seem to understand it.
That statement is preposterously absurd.
Global warming is a serious issue. Ludicrous statements such as the above just detract from reasonable debate.
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You're assuming that's just due to insecticides. Insects are exposed to multiple stressors. One of them also happens to be global warming. Others are habitat loss, insecticides, invasive species, etc. In fact the researchers measuring the loss of insect biomass in puerto rico rainforests attributed it primarily to climate change since the other factors do not apply there.
The variations in surface temperature we have seen in the modern era are nothing compared to what we've seen in the recent geological record. Moreover, insects are very sturdy throughout the geological record, so it's very difficult to believe that less than 1C change in a century could cause this (the end of the last glacial period saw a 7C swing in just a few hundred years). It's pretty clear that climate change is…
This sentence might have seemed logically sound to you, but it's extremely fallacious.
What this means is that the geological evidence is not sufficient to say that increasing CO2 concentrations increases temperature. Do we have other evidence? Yes, high school physics knowledge.
Radiative physics tells us how much heat an increase in CO2 concentration adds to our biosphere (an increase in another gas could have resulted in a removal of heat, but obviously this is a greenhouse gas). From that, we can very easily calculate the new equilibrium temperature. Then, climate science predicts about a 3-4x feedback almost entirely from water vapor and ice melting. You can argue about the feedback, but pretty much every person I offer this to just shuts down and goes haywire saying something about a "complex system". Yet these same people seem to know how to use a stove - you increase temperature when you add heat to something. The prediction of global warming really is that simple at its core. It's not complex.
I planted milkweed in my front yard. These plants don't come cheap, between 10-20$ at the nursery for a young plant. I never was able to grow them from seed. Anyways, the plants did attract a few monarchs late summer/early fall. I counted two. I planted nine total. I got a code violation warning last month for not mowing my front yard and having overgrown "landscape weeds".
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You're assuming that's just due to insecticides. Insects are exposed to multiple stressors. One of them also happens to be global warming. Others are habitat loss, insecticides, invasive species, etc. In fact the researchers measuring the loss of insect biomass in puerto rico rainforests attributed it primarily to climate change since the other factors do not apply there.
“Lots of insects are dying” and “insecticides kill insects” does make it very easy to reach that conclusion. I know nothing of the relevant biochemistry. Are these insecticides well targeted or highly generic in what they kill?
The other thing to note is that "loss of habitat" isn't always disappearing wetlands or stands of trees being cut down and converted to tillage. The widespread use of herbicides has almost eliminated milkweed in areas where it used to be very common, for example. When I was a kid, it was everywhere in the ditches of the Midwest. Now it's rare to see it. Milkweed is essential for monarch butterflies.