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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

#31

Post by baxtr »

jlangenauer wrote: post #2

If I ever get rich enough to do so, I'm going to buy some land somewhere - perhaps old farming land that's no longer profitable, and just let it return to nature. Let the trees and bushes grow, let the insects, birds and whatever else breed there. I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.

That's super interesting. I had the same idea. I was thinking if there is a case in the current financial environment to just collect money from VCs, corporations etc and then buy land and make it "human-free". If you look at Chernobyl the results are very promising despite the radiation...

see for example: http://theconversation.com/chernobyl-has-become-a-refuge-for...

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

#32

Post by vkou »

romaaeterna wrote: post #19

Neonicotinoids are new since 1994, so they get pointed to as the cause of Honeybee collapse, because what else could it be? Well, a lot of things can cause a decline in insect populations, including non-human mediated things like new diseases, new parasites, or new competitors. And there are some good reasons to think that neonicotinoids are unlikely to be a serious cause after all. https://i.imgur.com/HaWyRr7.png Wh…

> Well, a lot of things can cause a decline in insect populations, including non-human mediated things like new diseases, new parasites, or new competitors.

Which may affect a few species. But not insects all across the board.

> What's the cost of getting this wrong? You make farming more expensive overall...

1. Farming relies on pollinating insects. Insect die-off is a great way to make it more expensive.

2. What is the cost of dumping poison into our biosphere, without having any idea of what the short and long-term consequences are?

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

#33

Post by riffraff »

baxtr wrote: post #31
jlangenauer wrote: post #2

If I ever get rich enough to do so, I'm going to buy some land somewhere - perhaps old farming land that's no longer profitable, and just let it return to nature. Let the trees and bushes grow, let the insects, birds and whatever else breed there. I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.

That's super interesting. I had the same idea. I was thinking if there is a case in the current financial environment to just collect money from VCs, corporations etc and then buy land and make it "human-free". If you look at Chernobyl the results are very promising despite the radiation... see for example: http://theconversation.com/chernobyl-has-become-a-refuge-for...

why would a VC put money in this? It's not like it promises any form of return on the investment.

As a charity cause, sure, but that is not something that the current financial environment encourages particularly.

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

#34

Post by xg15 »

blodovnik wrote: post #25

There’s no surprise here is there? We, as a society, poison pretty much everything as a standard part of the agricultural process. The outcome -the goal - of that is of course, death of vast numbers of insects. Mission accomplished. It’s a success story, strangely. The only thing that seems weird to me is how society was so easily convinced that soaking all our food in poison is OK and not a problem all good thumbs u…

Well, that's a problem with many aspects involving "wilderness", not just insects. The usual train of thought seems to be that yes, natural landscapes are occasionally pretty, but as a farmer it would be irrational to have them on your land. Problem of course, if there is someone for every patch of land who says "not here", then in the end, there is no room for it to go at all.

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

#35

Post by superpermutat0r »

gravelc wrote: post #22

I'm part of a group developing RNAi-based pesticides which are topically applied (so non-GM). They are extremely species specific; when designed properly they can avoid even close relatives of the target insect, and the by-product of the active ingredient is degraded RNA, which is harmless. The OECD had a meeting on it recently to help develop a regulatory framework - link here if interested ( https://www.oecd.org/ch…

These products can only be successful if tested for several generations.

Pesticides also had a similar narrative and ended up being used in large quantities. Their effects on environment and human health are only discovered today and were unimaginable before.

It was insanely unscientific to allow massive pesticide use and it would be insanely unscientific to allow RNAi-based pesticides without testing them for decades if not more.

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

#36

Post by obituary_latte »

blodovnik wrote: post #25

There’s no surprise here is there? We, as a society, poison pretty much everything as a standard part of the agricultural process. The outcome -the goal - of that is of course, death of vast numbers of insects. Mission accomplished. It’s a success story, strangely. The only thing that seems weird to me is how society was so easily convinced that soaking all our food in poison is OK and not a problem all good thumbs u…

Is it that society was convinced? Or was/is it that it is more “out of sight, out of mind”? I think for the layperson, little matters other than how much does it cost? If there is some invisible but safe-for-us chemical that increases yield and decreases cost, all the better for us, right?

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 (insect decline, Round-Up cancers etc) and we as a population are becoming more aware of the negative side effects of our imprint on the world.

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

#37

Post by sgt101 »

mhandley wrote: post #14

The EU banned field use of neonicotinoid pesticides from the start of this year. Is there evidence yet that insect populations within the EU are recovering this year? It's too early for scientific publications to have come out, but if you live in an agricultural area of the EU, have you observed a difference?

I'm in rural Suffolk, UK (still part of the EU). I think that there were more bees for the first part of the summer this year, our Lime trees were buzzing for a few weeks - something that used to happen 10 years ago, but had stopped happening for a few years - I'd wondered and worried about it. We've had more insects in the garden in general this year too and far more bats, but I lined the pond last autumn and it's been alive with insects all summer so that may be the reason.

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

#38

Post by pbhjpbhj »

romaaeterna wrote: post #19

Neonicotinoids are new since 1994, so they get pointed to as the cause of Honeybee collapse, because what else could it be? Well, a lot of things can cause a decline in insect populations, including non-human mediated things like new diseases, new parasites, or new competitors. And there are some good reasons to think that neonicotinoids are unlikely to be a serious cause after all. https://i.imgur.com/HaWyRr7.png Wh…

Surely the cost of not using neonicotinoids for a few years, long enough to rule out it having a detrimental effect, is pretty small compared to that of destroying all the pollinating insects that we rely on for food production?

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

#39

Post by Gravityloss »

jlangenauer wrote: post #2

If I ever get rich enough to do so, I'm going to buy some land somewhere - perhaps old farming land that's no longer profitable, and just let it return to nature. Let the trees and bushes grow, let the insects, birds and whatever else breed there. I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.

There are also ecosystems around old fashioned farming. Let's say cows on pasture, flies, wagtails and swallows. Bird nesting places in willows growing in ditches. Human - nature interaction can reach a sort of equilibrium. Probably one could do something similar with modern technology. Talk to biologists.

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

gravelc wrote: post #26
vosper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What potential risks can you think of for this approach?

The active ingredient is double-stranded RNA, which we all consume every day (from viruses in fruit and veges), so no issues for human health via ingestion pathway. A poorly designed dsRNA that has too much homology to a gene of a related beneficial species could impact it if it took up the dsRNA. dsRNA doesn't hang around in the environment, so the beneficial organism would have to be there at the time of spraying.…

[deleted]
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