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75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

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Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#441

Post by dragonwriter »

avar wrote: post #440
jm2721 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is missing point. The point of eating local food is that you eat what's in season and what's available in your area. Obviously if you live in Canada you won't be able to find 'local' Avocados, but the idea is you would forfeit eating Avocados in favor of eating whatever is locally produced, instead of shipping those Avocados from Mexico.

No, I believe you're missing the point. What the article is asserting and what the science shows is that even if you have Avacados being grown literally next door the environmental impact of buying them locally is often higher than shipping them from abroad. For example, the SGU podcast they link to [1] (around 55m:50s in) discusses that the net environmental impact (carbon emissions) of shipping beef to the UK from…

> net environmental impact (carbon emissions)

“environmental impact” and “carbon emissions” are not the same thing; the latter is a very limited subset of the former.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#442

Post by avar »

dragonwriter wrote: post #441
avar wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I believe you're missing the point. What the article is asserting and what the science shows is that even if you have Avacados being grown literally next door the environmental impact of buying them locally is often higher than shipping them from abroad. For example, the SGU podcast they link to [1] (around 55m:50s in) discusses that the net environmental impact (carbon emissions) of shipping beef to the UK from…

> net environmental impact (carbon emissions) “environmental impact” and “carbon emissions” are not the same thing; the latter is a very limited subset of the former.

Yes, but generally those will average out, and other than carbon emissions the environmental impact tends to get pretty well priced into the end product because it tends to be more land or resources that are required.

I put "carbon emissions" in parentheses there because the reason for this "buy local" fallacy to begin with is because people intuitively assume that it's the transportation of the good that makes all the difference, when the reality is that that's just 1/10 of the cost.

The environmental impact of the transportation is almost exclusively carbon emissions.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#443

Post by sulam »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #350
Bartweiss wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

21% of all Americans live in common-interest housing. Half of that is condominiums, half is HOA-governed housing. It's a safe bet that large portions of that heavily restrict lawn conditions. Add in another ~10% of the country living in multi-family apartment buildings, which usually have no lawns or owner-controlled lawns. And, of course, single-family home lawns in any densely populated area are likely to be regula…

Homeowners on HN are wealthier and live in more densely populated areas than the average American homeowner. Wealth directly correlates with minimum standards of upkeep. Population density correlates with volume of rules and regulation. A suburb of Portland ME and Portland OR both likely have a bylaw disallowing you to run a pig farm without some paperwork/approval. A suburb of Portlad OR is far more likely to have a…

Keep in mind the "more free" places also tend to be much less dense in general (not just fewer HN readers, fewer people in general). So even if it's relatively geographically isolated where these rules exist, it still covers a substantial portion of Americans (including HN readers).

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#444

Post by Infernal »

delbel wrote: post #301
analogic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not getting my hopes up, but have seen more this year (Ohio) than I remember seeing in a long time. As in, like maybe 4-5 instead of 1-2, but I'll take it.

replying to your comment, I have seen hundreds of monarch butterflies this year. so many, my cat has given up and runs away. I have problems walking around. There are also dozens of other types of butterflies. Like I said you have to stop when you are walking and let them fly away 30-50 at a time. I actively look where I walk because I don't want to run into them, like in-my-face-there-are-so-many. So I don't know wh…

Where have you seen all these butterflies?

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#445

Post by dragonwriter »

avar wrote: post #442
dragonwriter wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> net environmental impact (carbon emissions) “environmental impact” and “carbon emissions” are not the same thing; the latter is a very limited subset of the former.

Yes, but generally those will average out, and other than carbon emissions the environmental impact tends to get pretty well priced into the end product because it tends to be more land or resources that are required. I put "carbon emissions" in parentheses there because the reason for this "buy local" fallacy to begin with is because people intuitively assume that it's the transportation of the good that makes all t…

> other than carbon emissions the environmental impact tends to get pretty well priced into the end product because it tends to be more land or resources that are required.

No, most of the environmental impacts of agricultural productions besides carbon emissions are still externalities, usually time-shifted, that aren't priced into the product.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#446

Post by immutable_ai »

autokad wrote: post #419
immutable_ai wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article seems very misleading, at least for California. If you look at aggregate water usage for California agriculture uses 4X "urban" and "urban" includes industrial, golf courses, parks, etc. So even if lawns are using more area they are much less water intensive than agriculture. http://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

the majority of usage goes towards power generation ( https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-total.html ). urban areas consume the power, but they dont produce it. they hide their water usage in the rural areas.

Looking at that data it appears that a majority of California's water for power generation is coming from salinated sources, so at least for California the largest user of fresh water sources is still irrigation (agriculture).

Either way, the point that agriculture takes a lot more water than people watering their lawns still stands.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#447

Post by sogen »

JulianRaphael wrote: post #263
ChuckMcM wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was listening to an entomologist podcast on colony collapse and they were suggesting that as members of the colony became more and more impaired the interdependency of the various bee groups (workers, foragers, queen) was compromised and then "all of a sudden" the hive was unable to reliably function. And large social group (ants, termites, bees, etc) might be similarly affected.

Could you please share the link to the podcast?

I think it was on 99pi

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#448

Post by sogen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #90
sogen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a side effect of less bees pollination?

I was listening to an entomologist podcast on colony collapse and they were suggesting that as members of the colony became more and more impaired the interdependency of the various bee groups (workers, foragers, queen) was compromised and then "all of a sudden" the hive was unable to reliably function. And large social group (ants, termites, bees, etc) might be similarly affected.

Like breaking a food chain, thanks!

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#449

Post by briga »

mac01021 wrote: post #370
titzer wrote: post #279

It's not only a consequence of direct habitat destruction, but also the use of pesticides. According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946087/ , more than a billion pounds of pesticides are used on lawns in the US every year. There is little regulation there. All of those pesticides are designed to kill bugs . Why are we now surprised that bugs are disappearing? We are sterilizing the planet. According…

I don't get it. Who cares if there's bugs in your grass? I used to play with bugs in the yard as a kid.

My step-father has this weird obsession with keeping a perfectly flat green lawn as a front yard. Any time an ant-hill springs up it's out with the pesticide. Any weeds that pop up are immediately exterminated. It's this sort of stupidity on a global scale that's causing the problem. For a lot of middle-class America, a sterile grass mono-culture is the ideal for a front yard, environmental health be damned.

Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

#450

Post by ryanmerket »

mac01021 wrote: post #370
titzer wrote: post #279

It's not only a consequence of direct habitat destruction, but also the use of pesticides. According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946087/ , more than a billion pounds of pesticides are used on lawns in the US every year. There is little regulation there. All of those pesticides are designed to kill bugs . Why are we now surprised that bugs are disappearing? We are sterilizing the planet. According…

I don't get it. Who cares if there's bugs in your grass? I used to play with bugs in the yard as a kid.

We have some nasty bugs here in Texas. Fire ants, scorpions, asps, and many other pain inducing critters. My wife, from Kansas City, had no idea when we moved here...
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