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Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

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Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#151

Post by coward123 »

Hobby beekeeper here... I kinda disagree with her final summary... I get her point, but there are benefits to encouraging more people to keep them:

-- Additional pollinators.

-- Awareness. I've witnessed for myself in my own backyard the effects of our unusual weather this spring (ahem: climate change) through observing how my bees are interacting with my garden and trees.

-- Overall benefit: Personally, tending them makes for great therapy and my neighbors love the honey.

-- Advocacy. When you are in-tune with the impact of climate change, pesticides, herbicides, and overall aware of the ecology around you, you are more likely to make political and consumer choices based on those learned / observed experiences.

Perhaps its a coincidence, but I noticed more native bees in my garden now too. I don't think I've done anything net-new in terms of flowers or trees since I started keeping honey bees, but maybe I'm just more aware of the native bees now? Disappointed I've not been able to attract Mason bees, but I've got at least three other varieties buzzing around regularly and I've identified the hive of at least one of those types.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#152

Post by rob_c »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #59
haspok wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long live High Fructose Corn Syrup!

It's no worse than sugar. Both are unnecessary for humans and can be extracted as needed from fats and proteins by the human body.

Keep drinking the corn syrup and Doritos. The rest of us will enjoy our food.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#153

Post by rob_c »

jl6 wrote: post #29
rob_c wrote: post #25

Simply put. Please America stop using more and more artificial modern chemicals in your farming and go back to tried and tested agricultural methods. Your soil is getting destroyed through mega tractors. Your buying everything glaxo can sell and your harming your own wasteland that for some reason you grow copious amounts of corn on. The problem is still there and making an article suggesting that it's not for a (sur…

Artificial modern chemicals increase yield, which reduces food price. Yes, we should use less of those chemicals. Yes, that will hit the poorest hardest. Is this problem solvable? Maybe. But let’s not pretend it’s simple.

Please stop defending the failing quo with "but what can we do about manbearpig...".

One of the first solutions is stop growing corn badly in the wrong place and grow more appropriate crops elsewhere. I never claimed it was easy I claim that it's obvious.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#154

Post by ephbit »

_yb2s wrote: post #128
ephbit wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Dr. Robert Lustig of University of California fructose is indeed worse than sugar. [1] It's been a good while since I've watched this video. As far as I remember, he argues that fructose is to the human body strikingly similar to alcohol. Since (unlike glucose) fructose can neither be utilized by muscles nor by the brain, it gets treated more or less like a toxic substance in the liver. In the video Lust…

High fructose corn syrup and sucrose (table sugar, which is a combination of fructose and glucose) have roughly the same amount of fructose- 50%. Also, what Lustig says is nonsense and isn't backed by any plausible mechanism or observational evidence. Alcohol and fructose aren't metabolized very similarly at all. He points out that if liver glycogen is constantly full, the liver has to convert extra fructose to fat (…

Agreed, fructose combined with overeating will lead likely to problems, fructose alone often not.

But what do you make of this passage in the abstract of the linked paper?

> Thus, fructose can exert detrimental health effects beyond its calories and in ways that mimic those of ethanol, its metabolic cousin. Indeed, the only distinction is that because fructose is not metabolized in the central nervous system, it does not exert the acute neuronal depression experienced by those imbibing ethanol. These metabolic and hedonic analogies argue that fructose should be thought of as “alcohol without the buzz.”

As to your knowledge these claims about fructose and ethanol being "metabolic cousins" are false? Do you have any references for this?

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#155

Post by rob_c »

_yb2s wrote: post #128
ephbit wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Dr. Robert Lustig of University of California fructose is indeed worse than sugar. [1] It's been a good while since I've watched this video. As far as I remember, he argues that fructose is to the human body strikingly similar to alcohol. Since (unlike glucose) fructose can neither be utilized by muscles nor by the brain, it gets treated more or less like a toxic substance in the liver. In the video Lust…

High fructose corn syrup and sucrose (table sugar, which is a combination of fructose and glucose) have roughly the same amount of fructose- 50%. Also, what Lustig says is nonsense and isn't backed by any plausible mechanism or observational evidence. Alcohol and fructose aren't metabolized very similarly at all. He points out that if liver glycogen is constantly full, the liver has to convert extra fructose to fat (…

Please stop defending HFCS. If you've ever lived outside of the US for more than a week you'll realise what an offence to the pallet it is, let alone what it must be doing to your body.

Plus didn't we recently realise that fructose genuinely causes the gut to stop digesting good properly?... Overly processed sugar is also bad yes, but govt subsidised HFCS and corn bio-fuel are an affront to common sense.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#156

Post by rob_c »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #73
stjohnswarts wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no worse than sugar. Both are unnecessary for humans and can be extracted as needed from fats and proteins by the human body.

Agreed, but we didn’t used to shove sugar in literally everything. Corn syrup mixes well into solution, it’s pretty damn stable, cheap, easy to store and measure, won’t clump… and yea people used to like x product fine, but really prefer it sweeter. It’s not that corn syrup is bad, it’s too good which is bad.

Yet it is still to take off in Europe and people pay a lot of money to import European food worldwide... Strange...

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#157

Post by rob_c »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #101
haspok wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long live High Fructose Corn Syrup!

The same is true for wheat, rice, and virtually every other staple crop. Not to mention that going back to the "traditional" methods would require that 90% of the population be dedicated to performing manual agricultural labor, the bulk of which has historically been performed by unfree people (i.e., slaves and serfs).

Why does everyone assume when you say "traditional" you mean go back to the horse and cart. Is this an American thing? I...

Progress has been made on improving the efficiency of small farms of diversified crop types. It's what most of farming in Europe was until the 90s and we didn't have "slaves". I get it your past is coloured by greed and hubris but please don't let it be clouding common sense.

Unfortunately the larger EU nations started to adopt more mega farming practices which just led to problems, food reserve mountains and now they're reaping the bad decisions.

It's hilarious how actual research in the area keeps saying smaller fields, let ground go back to wild every few years as part of a rotation and growing rapeseed is probably better than directly dumping chemicals into the soil for altering the soil content.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#158

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #126
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the quote: > Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on. Linking to an article that, in your words: > cites some data to say that recycling paper and metal does a good job and > the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals But also says metal mining and logging communities are against it because they 'have accepted the environmental trade-off…

If mass recycling doesn't work well except for two materials, then it's not unreasonable to disparage recycling in general. Especially when you're talking about recycling as an alternative to landfills. > Nor is cheaper ways of reducing CO2 a sensible argument. Every method of reducing CO2, except for one, has cheaper options. We should do all the ones that are a net positive, and so save us money, not only the very…

Yes, the article tried to give the vague impression that recycling is expensive, and then admits that metal recycling would increase the social good and should be subsidized.

So it's not 'expensive', it's expensive not to do it, no matter how much that total subsidy comes to. In fact the higher the total subsidy the more we save. (Not coincidentally the same applies to CO2, carbon fees are the economists solution to achieve higher efficiency by subsidizing alternatives)

Which must be hard for a contrarian libertarian to admit, so the fact that he does so in an article about how bad recycling is, is very telling. I mean he's just told us that mining communities don't like this idea, it's just stupid rich liberals from the other tribe who want a more efficient economy, now he's telling us to use tax money to put miners out of jobs, for the 'social good'? That we should tax landfills to reduce their use and incentivise alternatives? What kind of hippy talk is that?

So, back to SSC, he proved that trash wasn't going to pile up, which he dubiously claims is the original, false reason given to recycle, by linking to an article and saying "recycling didn't work and never caught on", but the article says it saves money and we should do it for that reason.

His source literally calls for a pigouvian tax on landfill use. To reduce landfill use. So he proves trash wouldn't pile up and we'd never run out of landfills, by citing an op-ed by a guy who thinks we should disincentivise landfills? Where is the logic here? Maybe people wanted to reduce landfill usage for whatever unstated reason his source has for wanting the same thing and believing it was economically optimal?

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#159

Post by Turing_Machine »

rob_c wrote: post #157
Turing_Machine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true for wheat, rice, and virtually every other staple crop. Not to mention that going back to the "traditional" methods would require that 90% of the population be dedicated to performing manual agricultural labor, the bulk of which has historically been performed by unfree people (i.e., slaves and serfs).

Why does everyone assume when you say "traditional" you mean go back to the horse and cart. Is this an American thing? I... Progress has been made on improving the efficiency of small farms of diversified crop types. It's what most of farming in Europe was until the 90s and we didn't have "slaves". I get it your past is coloured by greed and hubris but please don't let it be clouding common sense. Unfortunately the l…

> Why does everyone assume when you say "traditional" you mean go back to the horse and cart.

Because that's basically what "traditional" means? If "progress has been made on improving the efficiency", then it's not "traditional". By definition.

Did you look at the chart I posted above?

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