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Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#211

Post by turk73 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #186
neom wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Walton and Mars family net worths exceed $250 billion. If you add in Aldi and Ikea you're over $340 billion, Bezos gives you another $100 billion.

Comparing absolute numbers to nothing isn't very meaningful. You compare your $340 billion to the almost a hundred trillion dollars in US total net worth and the amount that went somewhere else is above 99%. To get to the numbers like "1% of people own 40% of the wealth" you have to go the 1%, which is to say about three million people, and then you're including a bunch of doctors and software engineers who are clear…

It's not that, but think: I still count my change in a $10 transaction and to the real movers and shakers, $1 million is a rounding error! We've seen unprecedented inflation the past decade or so and yet, the $20 bill is still the standard denomination from an ATM. Freaking clown world!

Our world is absurd and it's time regular people got off their asses and complained a little louder.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#212

Post by mikeash »

pfdietz wrote: post #75
nck4222 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organic doesn't mean more flavor. Tasteless strawberries are around for a few reasons 1) you can't try before you buy. bigger, redder strawberries look better, so sell better, so are grown more, and so on until that's the expectation. if varieties are cultivated for their looks, that means they're not cultivated for their taste or sugar content 2) bigger strawberries are easier/faster to pick, which means they're che…

> Organic doesn't mean more flavor. It doesn't formally mean that, but often it means that in practice. I think some of the success of organic food is that it can in practice be a marker for attractive features that otherwise have nothing to do with "organic". Consumers learn the association and use it, even if they don't buy into the organic philosophy.

Maybe they should try advertising this.

For me, "organic" is a marker for "bullshit label that's used to convince people to pay more." If they actually do taste better, I might buy the stuff.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#213

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #160
colordrops wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is one of the great things to come out of the invention of the web. We are becoming better informed and this kind of information is becoming more prevalent. It’s becoming much harder for these big corporations to hide these negative side effects We are at the end of that era. The big corporations are slowly closing down that unintended loophole in which the internet was a tool for free movement of know…

"The FBI assesses anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity," the document said. "The FBI further assesses in some cases these conspiracy theories very likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places, and organizations, thereby increasing the likelihood of viole…

[deleted]

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#214

Post by DangitBobby »

elorant wrote: post #162
bbddg wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone wants to eat tomatoes in the middle of winter! I also want ice cream that tastes great but has no calories. If some company makes an ice cream like that but we find out 10 years later it's leading to the extinction of many insect species on the planet. Is it really my fault for buying the ice cream? Not the producers fault for using chemicals with such huge downsides?

Of course you're fucking responsible. We all are in some way. And that's the thing. We need to start acting more responsibly instead of expecting someone else to solve our problems. We can't live in a world where we consume meat three times a week. Demand drives the market and what the market does is deforesting huge areas to grow grass to feed the cows which in turn add tons of methane to the atmosphere. Companies w…

How can people be responsible for knowledge they don't have? Not everyone can know everything about all of the food they eat, which is by design in some cases.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#215

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

dekhn wrote: post #176

It is soooo painful watching non-biologists debate pesticide impact based on watching biased, nonscientific reports. In the same way it's easy to train an ML model that is garbage, but you have to an expert in ML to understand why, it's easy to make mistaken conclusions with complex systems like biology/agriculture. I see comments below like "pesticides are bitter and that's why vegetables grown with pesticides are b…

you are trivially retarded

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#216

Post by mhkool »

lonelappde wrote: post #122
mhkool wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I base my opinion on three court cases in the USA where evidence was borught to court that Monsanto knew many years ago about the cancer causing risks. on what do you base "this is simply a lie" ?

Whether roundup is safe or not is not clear to me, but the decision of 12 unwilling laymen with no access to independent research tools is certainly not credible.

I did not say anything about the capability of the jury but was talking about the evidence that was brought to court.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#217

Post by SolaceQuantum »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #202
adrianN wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare 340 billion to the net worth of the median person the mind boggles.

Then you're comparing the sum total of the wealth of many of the richest families to that of one individual person. The fact that rich people have a lot of money is not really a recent development. But it's the focus on the super rich which is missing the thread. If housing prices go up, people at the 25th percentile lose and people at the 75th percentile gain. We see the loss for the people at the 25th percentile an…

Wait, ok, I genuinely don't understand your proposition here.

We should ignore the people with the most assets, and only pay attention to the people with the most assets?

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#218

Post by DFHippie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178
DFHippie wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't put the burden on the grower either. If you have two growers, one who tries to internalizes all the costs of production and one who doesn't, the market will reward the latter, because the market -- the consumers -- only see the price and appearance of the tomatoes. Regulation is required so that externalizing costs is not an option for either grower. People who rail against regulations, most of them, just s…

It's not as simple as "regulation good" or "regulation bad" -- there are plenty of companies that lobby for regulation because they know it will exclude smaller competitors, or ward off lawsuits because they followed the regulations even if people still died, or they want them to get passed while their stooge is in the majority so they can draft the rules themselves and then claim that it was already done last year w…

Sure. There's regulatory capture. But this particular problem, the externalization of costs, is a classic one solved by regulation rather than the free market.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#219

Post by cowmix »

THIS is why I'm sick of people complaining that pro-organic consumers are "anti-science". Many pro-organic people, like myself, are for organic food because of many reasons including IP issues and pesticide use. Individual piece of food made from conventional processes might be fine to eat but it doesn't mean there is not tons of collateral damage to the environment or our society in general.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#220

Post by AnthonyMouse »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #217
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're comparing the sum total of the wealth of many of the richest families to that of one individual person. The fact that rich people have a lot of money is not really a recent development. But it's the focus on the super rich which is missing the thread. If housing prices go up, people at the 25th percentile lose and people at the 75th percentile gain. We see the loss for the people at the 25th percentile an…

Wait, ok, I genuinely don't understand your proposition here. We should ignore the people with the most assets, and only pay attention to the people with the most assets?

"The people with the most assets" in aggregate are the upper middle class, lawyers and nurses and chemical engineers, not Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
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