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Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

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Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#321

Post by raffraffraff »

sillystuff wrote: post #289
Cryptonic wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B. Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.

As long as the elites believe they have a plan B, whether it be New Zealand or Mars, they will not make the sacrifices necessary to avert disaster. The author writes on his experience with a group of elites who were seeking ways to protect their positions in the face of collapse (societal / ecological / etc.). Salvation will not come from the top. https://archive.ph/AABsP original: https://onezero.medium.com/survival…

Nobody is making it off earth. And it's not just elites, we're all shitting in the drinking water to some degree, and we're all stuck here. I don't know anybody (personally) who actually makes significant lifestyle sacrifices that curb their impact on climate change. My wife and I are vegetarian, have no kids, don't own a car, and haven't been on a plane for years. I don't know any other person in the "first world" who lives the way we do. I'm not saying this because I think I'm better than other people or because I'm some type of activists. Far from it. Our lifestyle choice is comfortable physically and is the only one that makes me comfortable psychologically. I rarely mention this stuff online, and I never bring it up with friends of family. But every person I know in my age group lives a "typical Western life". Cars. Kids. Meat-rich diet. Several flights a year. Plastic bullshit on their lawn at Halloween and Christmas. And yet they also demand to know what the elites and politicians are doing to save the planet. Because they sure as shit don't think it's their job.

I'm not saying "this is your fault". But I think that these elites you want to blame are as clueless and selfish as every other person you know.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#322

Post by raffraffraff »

inglor_cz wrote: post #319
bmitc wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My general sentiment is that it seems much, much easier to just keep Earth sustainable rather than trying to make an unsustainable planet sustainable. It's sort of a paradox. If we can't keep a sustainable planet sustainable, how can we possibly make an unsustainable planet sustainable and keep it that way?

Because keeping the Earth sustainable means reaching consensus among 200 states and 8 billion people? That is a political/legal problem, and I am not sure why it should be "much, much easier" than first settlers terraforming an otherwise empty planet. It seems wrong even to compare those two tasks. They are so different that they don't seem to have a common metric. An analogy: is is easier to stop two spouses from qu…

At least writing a SHA-256 implementation from scratch is theoretically possible. The point is, it is possible to keep Earth habitable, were just not doing that. But there is no plan B. In other words, we're fucked.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#323

Post by fleddr »

munificent wrote: post #241
fleddr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a worldwide thing. An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all. Modern life is almost fully abstracted away from it, and it seems fine to destroy it for as long as our delicate lifestyle remains intact. Every once in a while, we watch a documentary like Planet Earth. It inspires even the most cynical stoic. And we feel terrible about our negative role. But the next day we go on as usual. And as so…

> An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all. My experience has been the exact opposite. Growing up in rural areas, most people seemed to treat nature as an endless resource to be exploited for personal enrichment. Any discussion of ecological regulation was met with harsh rebuke about "jobs" and "freedom" (i.e. the freedom to extract value by exploiting nature). As I moved to more urban areas, people…

You're quite right. And it's even worse than that. I had this part in my earlier comment but deleted it as I did not want to distract from my main message by causing a political stir.

The controversial statement being that the issue extends into (many) indigenous communities. We have this pristine idea of them, as original peoples living in harmony with nature.

That's not the reality on the ground. I've traveled to a lot of remote areas where we frequently encountered illegal activity by locals and even park rangers. Poaching...anything and everything, including rare flowers. Logging. Gold mining. Hunting critically extinct species even when alternatives (for food) are widely available.

You can't explain it by poverty alone, there's a general sense of total carelessness. A very clear example of that is people dumping their trash in the river, in forests, everywhere. Many good faith reforestation attempts soon are gamed and corrupted.

So yes, pretty hopeless.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#324

Post by donkeyd »

naasking wrote: post #290
wartijn_ wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are the people claiming that the farmers are being blamed for climate change saying that the farmers are the only or primary driver for climate change? All the comments in this thread are replies to someone who seems to do exactly that by defending farmers "visiting politicians their homes with torches, threatening them and explicitly their kids, blockading highways with burning rubble, blocking highways with asbes…

Ok, but one HN comment is not a misinformation trend throughout right wing media, per the parent comment.

Here's an example about the misinformation campaign that's happening in the US about the issues in the Netherlands:

https://youtu.be/IUGwT8irPKc

This video is full of blatant misinformation and misrepresentation. Our current discussion is not about climate change, it's about acidification and that's it. No matter how true your comments may be, it has nothing to do with the situation in the Netherlands and it continues the spread of this misinformation. Please stop, it's harmful.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#325

Post by donkeyd »

kdbeall_ wrote: post #249
leokennis wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The farmers' protests are insane. They either flat out deny science, or frame biodiversity as some "left wing bleeding heart liberal" hobby. Despite that they get offered millions to stop their farming activities. Despite that they dump asbestos on highways and threaten politicians by visiting their homes. And despite that our politicians cheer them on. It really is the worst of times.

Oh, so the Dutch government should expropriate their land?

The government will be paying a shit load of money for it, so yes, I don't see any issues.

Or the government can just stop giving them subsidies and they'll just seize existing. I think buying them out is a neater solution.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#326

Post by garfieldnate »

bmitc wrote: post #244
fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

And what's crazy is that everyone thinks it's going to be electric cars that somehow saves us. When the fact of the matter is there is a ton of stuff we can start doing today that would positively impact the environment. It's pretty easy: * Restore lawn areas to native plants: small (wildflowers), medium (bushes), big (trees) * For areas that are kept as lawn, simply mow less. Allow plants to flower. Don't treat clov…

I was surprised when I moved into a German apartment that my landlord apologized about their being moss between the tiles on our patio. My honest response was, "oh no, moss looks better than an empty crack." I was really surprised when I for the first time saw people outside literally using blow-torches to kill moss in their driveway cracks. The dislike of clover is a really strange one for me, too. When I was growing up I loved the clover patches in the yard; they're like green clouds floating across the lawn, and the honeysuckle brings happy honey bees. Dandylions are pretty, too, admittedly more so in the yellow phase than the gray phase. But then they make nice toys! Generally speaking I find the natural aesthetic more beautiful and more serene than the golf course look.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#327

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

Beltalowda wrote: post #215
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or just a piece of machinery responding in a pre-programmed way? Is a mouse responding in a pre-programmed way? I'd say you're just showing mammalian bias here. > given the tiny size of their brains compared to higher animals I think it's fair to say the machinery for any kind of emotion just isn't there First of all, a whale isn't necessarily smarter than a monkey just because it has a much bigger (physically) bra…

> Is a mouse responding in a pre-programmed way? All life is to some level – including your and me – but that doesn't mean there aren't distinctions. > a whale isn't necessarily smarter than a monkey just because it has a much bigger (physically) brain I claimed that brain size is deterministic of intelligence, but it's not as if any brain of any size can do anything ; there are real physical limits here. Ant brains…

I keep an ant colony as a pet. Ants are pretty much indestructible creatures from a physical point of view - they need infinitesimal amounts of food and water to survive, they don't get sick or hurt, but they're very succeptible to stress. They're nervous creatures and go nuts from stress, acting in illogical and even suicidal ways.

Is it because their primitive brains go haywire? Or is this just our mammalian prejudice speaking? Who knows.

Probably best not to anthropomorphize any animal, I think.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#328

Post by leokennis »

kdbeall_ wrote: post #249
leokennis wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The farmers' protests are insane. They either flat out deny science, or frame biodiversity as some "left wing bleeding heart liberal" hobby. Despite that they get offered millions to stop their farming activities. Despite that they dump asbestos on highways and threaten politicians by visiting their homes. And despite that our politicians cheer them on. It really is the worst of times.

Oh, so the Dutch government should expropriate their land?

They could define and enforce environmental laws that would make the current way of farming that is destroying nature impossible. The farmers would need to adapt or go bankrupt.

Instead they get offered millions. And in response they terrorize our society.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#329

Post by nobodyandproud »

axiolite wrote: post #275
nobodyandproud wrote: post #118

Aside from pesticides and land development, yet another cause of decline is our over obsession with landscaping and municipal lights (at least here in the Northeast US). I have mixed feelings about this: Night lights do add a bit of security, but insects such as moths rely on natural darkness and moonlight to navigate.

> another cause of decline is our over obsession with landscaping and municipal lights Very much unlike their incandescent and florescent predecessors, LED lights emit practically no ultraviolet wavelengths, and therefore have a drastically reduced attractive effect on insects. Whatever effect outdoor lighting may have on insects, should be showing precipitous declines over the past several years, as LEDs have become…

Insects are most attracted to UV, but they’re attracted to most of the visible (to human) spectrum.

Just less so, which is why the recommendation is to use “warm” led to minimize insect attraction.

Also, light usage hasn’t remained constant. LED’s lower power usage means that it enables more lighting, including solar powered (day charged) landscaping lights.

So whereas owners would formerly only have one or two lights at low watts before, the reduced energy usage means that they sprinkle in another magnitude more with LED.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#330

Post by namaria »

raffraffraff wrote: post #320
namaria wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compounds in NZ, mountaintops, deserts, islands, they are the now. There is clearly a drive to get off planet. It will most likely fail but it's happening.

Humans will never make it off earth. Perhaps we'll make extremely brief flights, like the flying fish.

Sad thing is, we're probably gonna repeat our horrible colonial history, but with space ships.
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