[HN Gopher] Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these ...
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Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 372 points
Date : 2022-10-24 02:44 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| donedealomg wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof wrote:
| https://archive.ph/20221021230011/https://www.washingtonpost...
| theGnuMe wrote:
| We've had a couple polar vortexes that sat over us for a few
| days. Those temps tend to kill off a large number of bugs. Then
| it's been drier than normal and I mowed back the long grasses
| that abut the property all of which reduced the bugs.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| To everyone replying "aerodynamics", I've had the same car for
| about 9 years now and the drive along the 5 from Bay Area to LA
| feels like there's fewer bugs on my windshield (granted not
| recorded diligently for scientific purposes but whereas before
| I'd need to scrub the windshield at least once halfway these days
| I can drive all the way and still don't need a wash at the end)
|
| Same goes for the argument that bugs have evolved to migrate away
| from the roads - the 5 has been a busy thruway for a long time
| with lots of cars and trucks.
|
| The article is short but says scientists have clear data that
| populations have plummeted and the larger vehicle consumer trend
| + more people on the road means that there's fewer bugs to
| encounter per windshield on top of that.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| What if, with more cars and bigger windshields, we're just
| grabbing less and less of these bugs due to more of them being
| killed by other cars / trucks?
| another_story wrote:
| I actually find it rather interesting how many people here, in
| a forum I generally assume to be better informed than
| elsewhere, seem wholly unaware of the dramatic decrease in
| insects over the last few decades.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| People who think they know better are more likely to comment
| than those who will simply say "huh, interesting!" You will
| often get a somewhat biased set of comments.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| I mean, hop into any threat remotely related to COVID and
| you'll see people come out in _swarms_ of common science
| denial.
|
| Just because people might be knowledgeable about certain
| technologies doesn't make them knowledgeable about anything
| else. In fact I'd argue that it heavily biases them to making
| more mistakes in other fields, especially considering that
| many tech problems are 'solved' by going to a search engine
| -- that's not a good way to do science.
| aredox wrote:
| Strong "I am very smart" contrarian energy here.
|
| See also this tale:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2376002/
| [deleted]
| stinos wrote:
| I also find it rather interesting to see talks about insect
| decline while it's only one part of the larger issue, rated
| by some as important as the climate crisis: the biodiversity
| crisis. Dramatic decreases are happening for way more species
| than just insects.
| a1445c8b wrote:
| But is it "only one part" or more like a reliable indicator
| of the overall ecological health?
| stinos wrote:
| Both?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Also, the "bugs evolve away" would need evolutionary pressure
| being involved. But the explanation I got was the available
| biomass for bugs is such that any chunk of bugs killed on the
| road was _easily_ filled by other bugs eating their lunch and
| procreating.
| titzer wrote:
| Also note that "species are evolving to adapt to XYZ" really
| means "everything that can't deal with XYZ is dying". If the
| ecosystem just doesn't have _any_ species that can deal with
| XYZ, then that part of the ecosystem _just dies_.
| orlp wrote:
| > Also, the "bugs evolve away" would need evolutionary
| pressure being involved
|
| I do not claim that evolution is the reason for the reduction
| in dead bugs, but if "go near road" has a increased risk of
| death due to automobiles, there absolutely is selective
| pressure to not "go near road". Bugs that get killed by cars
| don't procreate (again) after all.
| queuep wrote:
| I read last week about mooses avoiding certain hunting
| spots during hunting season.
|
| Link in Swedish, not sure how scientific this is but...
|
| https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/mQQWbO/algarna-
| overlist...
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Is "moose" a word like "sheep", that is it's own plural?
| (I honestly don't know, but "mooses" sounded odd).
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Many much moosen
|
| https://youtu.be/CafPNEWnDhk
| someweirdperson wrote:
| My guess would have been meese. Luckily, all the
| information is out there.
|
| > "plural moose or (dated, rare) mooses or (non-standard,
| jocular) meese" [0]
|
| [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/moose
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yes but the pressure is weaker than one might intuitively
| guess. There are billions of bugs. Even near roads, very
| few of them are going to be hit by cars, comparatively.
| Near roads there often are ditches with some water or
| moisture, making an environment otherwise beneficial for
| bugs.
|
| Also, decreased road side windshield bug smashing coincides
| with measured loss of insect biomass:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations
|
| Disputing that feels more and more like disputing global
| warming being a thing.
| orlp wrote:
| > Disputing that feels more and more like disputing
| global warming being a thing.
|
| There's a reason I started my comment with "I do not
| claim that evolution is the reason for the reduction in
| dead bugs". I was just nitpicking and not trying to be
| the devil's advocate.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Same goes for the argument that bugs have evolved to migrate
| away from the roads
|
| There are many studies in all kind of environments, even in the
| middle of the woods, in natural reserves; insects are going
| down both in term of diversity and numbers everywhere
|
| They're being evolved away by pollution
| jvm___ wrote:
| NY state has a long running study where on July 15th every
| year they would put up a super bright lighthouse bulb in the
| middle of the woods and put it over a tarp. After they night
| they'd weigh the physical mass of insect life that had come
| to the light, and died, overnight.
|
| I forget the exact %, but they'd seen a 50 or 60 percent
| reduction in mass since the 70's, some depressingly high
| number.
| donkeyd wrote:
| I don't think this would stop anyone from using the
| evolution argument, since in their mind this would just
| show that they evolved to not fly towards the deadly light.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| One bulb, one night, once a year wouldn't be enough to
| select for light avoidance.
| [deleted]
| xattt wrote:
| > To everyone replying "aerodynamics", I've had the same car
| for about 9 years now and the drive along the 5 from Bay Area
| to LA feels like there's fewer bugs on my windshield (granted
| not recorded diligently for scientific purposes but whereas
| before I'd need to scrub the windshield at least once halfway
| these days I can drive all the way and still don't need a wash
| at the end)
|
| Hasn't California had extremely climate events over the last
| decade (wildfires, ongoing drought)? Given that bugs tend to be
| sensitive to air quality, this would likely local population
| decline which would then lead to the effect you've observed.
|
| I welcome anyone to come to Prince Edward Island and enjoy the
| many, many mosquitos and midges our Island has to offer. They
| can be heard as small "pops" while driving.
| [deleted]
| saltcured wrote:
| Yeah, I certainly don't doubt that there are global changes
| going on, but that particular drive along I-5 is confounded
| by many other local variables.
|
| I too notice changes in the amount of bugs having driven that
| route periodically for about 30 years. Due to economic and
| weather conditions over decades, there are very obvious
| changes in whether you are driving by grassland, irrigated
| crops and orchards, defunct and desiccated crops and
| orchards, or graded and developed human environments. The
| road has also widened and gotten much more traffic.
|
| The general trend is more human presence year over year, but
| the agricultural activity is more cyclic. As I understand it,
| these areas are only viable to irrigate in wet years, because
| the senior water rights are held and used much further north
| and east along the CA-99 corridor. In droughts, these more
| recently developed farms dry up first.
|
| It's also of course very seasonal, with bug populations
| booming and then disappearing much like wild flowers and
| migrating bird flocks along the same route. In the heaviest
| bug carnage periods, driving this section of I-5 can be like
| driving through the US midwest during a grasshopper or cicada
| boom.
| titzer wrote:
| A boom of one particular species is not necessarily
| indicative of a healthy ecosystem. We don't welcome algal
| blooms as signs of life bouncing back; rather, they are
| brutally disruptive to ecosystems. They leave mass death in
| their wake. Without a closer study of which species you're
| observing (they might be human-borne invasive species after
| all), it's not really easy to say if what you're seeing is
| healthy at all. And the timescales are important. This year
| or this decade might be a boom and 20 years from now they've
| managed to deplete their environment of resources and crash.
| fullstop wrote:
| The last time this was discussed I found some articles showing
| that the more boxy and angular windows of older vehicles were
| less likely to have bugs smashed on them. This is why these
| studies often use license plate splatters to get a better count
| -- that really hasn't changed.
| nawgz wrote:
| > some articles showing that the more boxy and angular
| windows of older vehicles were less likely to have bugs
| smashed on them
|
| Do you mean "more likely"?
|
| > This is why these studies often use license plate splatters
| to get a better count -- that really hasn't changed
|
| Do you claim the amount of license plate splatters remains
| consistent today as, say, 30 years ago, or some other time
| frame? I think this claim really needs to be sourced, can you
| produce these studies you allude to? Thanks
| fullstop wrote:
| No, I absolutely meant "less likely". The bugs don't hit as
| often against the old vehicles. The older boxy vehicles
| were more likely to push the insect away, while the modern
| aerodynamic vehicles allowed the bug to hit the windshield
| more frequently. I'll see if I can find the study, I don't
| have it handy at the moment.
|
| As for the license plates, they are no more aerodynamic
| than they were 30 years ago, which makes them a better
| source for insect measurement.
|
| Edit: relevant discussion from a few months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31275879
| nawgz wrote:
| > As for the license plates, they are no more aerodynamic
| than they were 30 years ago, which makes them a better
| source for insect measurement.
|
| I agree with this, but not the claim that there are
| studies showing this number is consistent with the past.
| The linked discussion also seems to imply that sampling
| rate corresponds with the decline in insect populations,
| unless I missed something.
| fullstop wrote:
| I've not said that they (bug splatters) are consistent
| with the past. Perhaps my wording wasn't the best, but I
| was trying to say that the aerodynamic properties of a
| license plate have not changed.
| nawgz wrote:
| I see, "that really hasn't changed" was a statement on
| aerodynamics and not volume of insect collisions. Thanks,
| I agree with what you're saying, good tidbit about the
| more aerodynamic cars leading to lower probability of
| insect survival.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| Same tests have been run on licence plates. As they have
| remained in a similar position for decades, aerodynamics is
| clearly not the major contributing factor.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Maybe because we're in the midst of an anthropogenic mass
| extinction?
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1704949114
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
|
| "The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at
| 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate"
|
| "the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in
| any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth."
|
| "There is widespread consensus among scientists that human
| activity is accelerating the extinction of many animal species
| through the destruction of habitats, the consumption of animals
| as resources, and the elimination of species that humans view as
| threats or competitors."
| pharke wrote:
| Genuinely curious but how is this
|
| > "the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher
| than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of
| Earth."
|
| an accurate statement when there have been a few mass
| extinction events that were (apparently) caused by sudden
| changes?
|
| Is this assuming that the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event
| was caused by gradual changes instead of an impact or volcanic
| event? Same for the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction? I
| think there are also a number of extinction pulses in the
| record that could be attributed to sudden events although I'm
| unsure of how they compare in terms of the number of species
| affected.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This should be obvious. There is some good news in that the
| human population is plateauing, and is projected to gradually
| decline, as a result of urbanization, educated women, mass
| entertainment, secularism, and other influences.
|
| If we want a natural world around us, we have to leave a lot of
| it natural. Sometimes it reminds us that's not really an
| option, but a requirement for survival. One thing we will learn
| from space colonies is that humans cannot thrive in a
| monoculture surrounded by sterility.
| Roark66 wrote:
| Swallows. That and the fact wild animal populations swing widely
| to extremes sometimes. I have been paying close attention to
| swallows in recent few years and the numbers of them as well as
| the bugs they eat are skyrocketing in my area. When I moved to
| the area it was essentially empty field a couple hundred meters
| from anything. The farmer owning it converted a bit in the middle
| into residential building plots, a road was built, electricity
| hooked up etc. Most of the people that buy those plots do it as
| an investment so they don't do anything to them. I have observed
| over last 10 years how nature took over those plots. Hay that
| grows and is not mowed accumulates and besides being a fire
| hazard provides an environment for birds to nest in. Wild trees
| have grown to the point one wouldn't recognise it was a field a
| decade ago. I regularly have hedgehogs, hares, deer, lots of all
| kinds of birds (including a golden Eagle once). Every year there
| are huge numbers of swallows come in the spring. As of last 2
| years there have been moose and even wild wolves. Yes, wolves, in
| a middle of Europe in 2022. I have photos of their dinner I once
| found in addition to other info.
|
| People don't realise nature is very resilient and it will move
| into every area that is not polluted with toxins. Even with
| toxins or radiation (like the famous Chernobyl exclusion zone)
| nature evolves to deal with it.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Pesticides and crop mono-cultures. There is no place for insects
| to live.
|
| When 0.1% of humans dies of a virus, we call it a disaster. When
| 50% of insects dies, we don't give a damn.
| OnuRC wrote:
| Insects are disgusting if we and nature could live without
| them, that would be amazing.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Insect populations are declining in places like New England and
| the upper midwest despite farming both declining and finding
| more efficient ways to use fertilizer and pesticides on the
| same timeline.
|
| If we're going down the road of human introduced chemical
| toxins (like pesticide pollution) I think a fair bit of blame
| also deserves to be laid at the feet of the state (and by proxy
| voters) for poisoning the soil immediately adjacent to roads
| (and to a slightly lesser degree, the watersheds) with various
| salts.
| o_1 wrote:
| Farming bugs is next. Bug monoculture is up at bat, nothing can
| go wrong there.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I actually don't care at all if an insect lives or dies.
| Insects do not have emotions; no other insects mourn if one
| dies. This makes them markedly different from humans and other
| animals; insects are little more than machines and from a moral
| perspective much closer to bacteria than, say, mice.
|
| The only reason I care is because of the broader ecological
| effects. I don't care whether my gut microbes live or die
| either, if it wasn't for the health effects it would have on
| me.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Ants are certainly smarter than mice.
|
| Ants also have a complex range of psychological responses.
| (Not sure I'd call them "emotions" since we're obviously too
| distantly related to them to have a meaningful reference
| here, but whatever.)
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Ants have very interesting learning behaviour, but I don't
| think you can really say they're "smarter" than a mouse, or
| even "intelligent" (depending on your exact definition of
| that). You can teach a computer English better than the
| average human (see e.g. Grammarly), but that does not make
| the computer smarter. The learning behaviour of ants is
| certainly amazing, but very limited in scope.
|
| Ants can response to their environment, but are they even
| "psychological responses" or just a piece of machinery
| responding in a pre-programmed way? When I played the Sims
| 20 years ago my characters would respond in certain pre-
| programmed ways. None of can truly _know_ what it 's like
| to be an ant, but 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.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > 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)
| brain. Secondly, an individual ant really isn't, because
| genetically the ant colony is a single unit.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > 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 are tiny, and ants are probably the
| _smartest_ insects: others have even smaller brains.
|
| Either way, I'm mostly interested in the emotional
| experience of insects and other animals, rather than
| intelligence. I think that's a more important factor in
| deciding whether inflicting harm is morally acceptable or
| not.
|
| Mice, of course, are also not especially clever or have
| rich emotional lives in the same way that a dog or pig
| might have, but there does seem to be _some_ of it,
| whereas I 'm not seeing any in ants or other insects.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| 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.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Insects do not have emotions_
|
| Why wouldn't they?
| luch wrote:
| fascinating answer from someone who chose the nickname
| "beltalowda"
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Why? What do Belters have to do with insects?
| Deegy wrote:
| I know what you mean. The foundational support beams on my
| house are starting to rot away. I don't care how they feel,
| but I hope my house stays upright.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This thinking reminds me of the moral crisis that lagoshi
| from beastars has of the idea of killing an insect.
|
| The scene is very well done. His imagination of the insect
| anthropomorphized is absolutely fascinating...
| jiggawatts wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
| lynguist wrote:
| I've noticed the same with snails. When I was a child in the 90s,
| the sidewalks were full of snails, and during a 10 minute stroll,
| I'd often find tens of small snails.
|
| Today I find 1 or 2 snails after rainfall, if at all.
| onion2k wrote:
| Do you still live in the same place you grew up?
| lynguist wrote:
| Yes.
| psychphysic wrote:
| With snails I suspect its more to do with how a child behaves
| and an adult.
|
| I collect snails from my garden to eat and numbers are fairly
| similar despite my occasionally trying to control them with
| pellets some years.
|
| Similarly with the original article I only got half way down
| but clearly it's more to do with cars than insect numbers.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| Fireflies for me. I live in Italy and between the vineyards it
| was full of them. Now I occasionally see one or two. It's a
| pity not only because it is a concrete sign of habitat
| degradation, but it was also mesmerizing to walk and have them
| filing around you. Something my kids won't experience.
| vidarh wrote:
| Between two long trips to Italy in my childhood, the
| fireflies we could see from the terrace of a small B&B we
| stayed at in a small village not far from Genoa is one of my
| most enduring memories.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| Yeah, they are amazing. I'm not sure about Liguria, but
| where I am from (Garda Lake on the Veneto side) they
| basically disappeared.
| nonninz wrote:
| As a child in the 80s I was living in a house with a
| large garden area (fasce) in Genova, just a bit removed
| from the bulk of the city.
|
| Every summer evening the house and surrounding garden
| were filled with fireflies, it was mesmerizing.
|
| Thanks for making me remember this :)
| mealkh wrote:
| For quite some time I thought fireflies were made up, as I
| have never in my life (and I do live in a rural region) seen
| one.
| scld wrote:
| I'm sure it's a regional impact on different types of
| creatures. I don't notice windshield bugs but my back patio in
| the city gets dozens of snails after every rainfall to this
| day.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| You can come here and take away all the snails you want. It's
| impossible to walk around at night without stepping on them,
| and they have utterly destroyed my garden. I've never seen a
| crop of kale or broccoli fail in 30 years until this year.
| nspattak wrote:
| I bought my first motorcycle in 2004 and my 2nd in 2007. I rode
| 45k km with the first one over these 3 years (mostly on my
| island) and 80k km with the 2nd one between 2007-2015. I can
| confirm that the amount of bugs crashing on my helmet's visor is
| definitely less. I used to clean it after riding for an hour but
| now I can do 4-5-6h and still have no real need to clean it.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Lots of dead bugs in Texas, California, and Oregon.
|
| A mild winter with an early spring, followed by a cold winter
| relapse, will also do in a lot of bugs.
| Eumenes wrote:
| this is not my experience in new england, where i can't even
| stand out in my backyard without getting swarmed with all variety
| of insects, and my truck is absolutely plastered from them, even
| though its been cold for a month now
| mkl95 wrote:
| An Occam's razorish answer is that there are fewer bugs nowadays
| in whatever area this phenomenon is observed. So a better
| question could be why are there fewer bugs?
| julienreszka wrote:
| There are so few bugs on YOUR windshield because they all decided
| to go on mine.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| I just drove from Albuquerque to Phoenix via Flagstaff and my
| entire windshield is plastered with bugs.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| My car was covered with bugs after a recent trip, but hard to say
| if that anecdata is any indication of actual insect population
| stability. If insect populations are truly in decline, it is hard
| to see how insecticides used on crops could be responsible for
| massive worldwide reductions.
|
| Here is an interesting breakdown of how much of the world's
| surface (particularly the part that includes habitable land) is
| used to grow crops: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use (TLDR: it
| is a very small percentage)
| LordHeini wrote:
| Having super quick evolution cycles, could it be that insects
| evolved to avoid roads?
|
| I remember the story of a species of moths living in German
| industrial cities.
|
| These were normally brown like tree bark but evolved to look like
| sooty brick in a few years.
|
| Insects have ears (although highly varying in capability) which
| could lead them to avoid dangerous zones.
|
| Anecdotally i would say i see fewer insects circling around lamps
| too.
| kapsi wrote:
| >These were normally brown like tree bark but evolved to look
| like sooty brick in a few years.
|
| Because the brown ones got eaten. But that's different from
| evolving to recognize where a road is, which is maybe possible
| but probably would take thousands or millions of years.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Having super quick evolution cycles, could it be that insects
| evolved to avoid roads?
|
| No.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I can only comment on my neighborhood in the south SF bay area.
| Given that the region is a former home to orchards it doesn't
| surprise me that there is a lack of insects, but given the amount
| of trees/greenery vs my old SoCal neighborhood I can say that
| there is a startling lack of bugs here, with the exception of
| cockroaches(several varieties are disturbingly plentiful on the
| sidewalks at night), isopods/woodlice/pill bugs, and black widow
| spiders. Going on hikes in the Santa Cruz mountains, it also
| seemed like there were a shortage of insect life compared to
| hikes in SoCal.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| 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.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Night lights do add a bit of security, but insects such as
| moths rely on natural darkness and moonlight to navigate.
|
| We can have a bit of compromise, at least if we had dark sky
| compliant lights there would be a lot less of an issue. Where I
| live the streetlights seem to intentionally point upward and
| it's frustrating that this isn't a priority even when refiting
| them with LEDs (at least here they put in warm lights instead
| of cool ones like where I used to live).
| axiolite wrote:
| > 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 the dominant
| artificial light source.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| 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.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| I guess whatever reason it is local, because last summer drove
| from Lisbon to Berlin and this summer drove from Berlin to Milan
| and every time I stopped at a gas station I had to clean the car
| because boy did it have A LOT of dead bugs.
| throwaway24124 wrote:
| Completely anecdotal, but this does seem to be a North American
| issue, I did a two week roadtrip through Croatia this year and
| I had to stop just to clean bugs off the car more often than
| stopping just for gas. I've done quite a few roadtrips in
| America and never once had to stop just to clean bugs off the
| windshield.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's possible that it's happening more in NA, but the article
| started with a research made on Denmark roads 1996-2017 with
| a 80-97% fall of insect splats in the period.
|
| Anecdotally, I hardly had to clean my windscreen when I was
| living in a city. I'm living in a small town with fields all
| around it now and I never have a clean windscreen anymore.
| However nothing like the one in the first picture of the
| article. That's how my front license plate looks like.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| Yeah, I do quite a lot of road trips and that is always a
| pain. Thankfully all gas stations even have the bucket of
| water and the scraper to clean off the bugs.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Did anybody else notice that the windshield bugs made a comeback
| during the pandemic?
| myshpa wrote:
| Scary thing is how many people don't consider this to be scary.
|
| If we were to blame anyone, we should blame ourselves. But I'll
| return to that in a moment.
|
| We live in a complex system, so we can blame the
| political/financial system for providing wrong incentives, loans
| and subsidies to the big agriculture, based on profitability
| alone.
|
| We can blame agriculture companies for sprayng millions of tons
| of poisons all over our countryside to keep profits up and costs
| down. When you're planting monocrops, and spraying it with
| pesti/herbicides, you're propagating environmental equivalents of
| deserts. Deserts leaking poisons not only on itself, but through
| whole nature (through wind & water cycle).
|
| Both pesticides and herbicides are inbelievably poisonous not
| only to plants and pests, but also to other bugs (we all know at
| least about bees), to all other animals, the animals we feed with
| the produce, and in the end, even to humans. Those poisons'
| bioaccumulate and their neurodegenerative and hormons-altering
| effects are causing havoc not only in bugs, frogs and mice, but
| also in humans (parkinson, etc.).
|
| The solution is something we're actively killing with our current
| agricultural practices. Biodiversity.
|
| For example, we don't need to kill the mice with poisons. We can
| interplant trees into our fields to provide living space for
| predators (e.g. owls and foxes) to manage the mice population and
| not use the poisons to keep those predators alive.
|
| We can't reasonably expect the return of an army of small
| farmers, providing local communities with poison-free grown food,
| not in a reasonable time frame we have until environmental
| collapse and/or extinction of key animal kinds (no pollinators,
| no birds, no small predators, more mice, more bad bugs and
| diseases, famines ...).
|
| But what we can do, we can change our habits. We don't have to
| eat meat/dairy, which is incredibly land/resource/poison
| intensive (we would need 4+ earths to feed the world's population
| same diet as americans have). We don't have to feed other animal
| 20x more food than we would need only to eat its muscles. We
| don't have to cut down forests to grow meat (we would need 1/4 of
| the land to feed the population if everybody were to switch to a
| plant based diet), if we eat the plants ourselves and let the
| nature be and let it repair itself.
|
| We can then change the political/financial/agricultural system
| through our own actions (buying/cooking/eating). When enough
| people do, there won't be the pressure to produce a much as we
| currently do, then we can legislate the change in the agriculture
| , forbid use of poisons, protect the ecosystems, reforest the
| earth, live in sync with the nature, stop exploiting everything
| (and living beings) with our need for financial gains.
|
| Sorry for my bad english. Also, I'm in the system, it's monday,
| no time to write shorter comment, and no time to incorporate
| everything-that-is-wrong and everything-that-should-be-done. It's
| a complex system. But it can be solved in our own kitchens.
| wazoox wrote:
| This article is pretty characteristic of the chemical industry
| influence trying to muddle the waters.
|
| I've watched recently a conference[1] by several renowned
| scientists. They affirm that neonicotinoids / neonics are
| responsible of at least 80% of the decline.
|
| They also affirm that the "merchants of doubt" are working their
| best to muddle the evidence with things like "there are multiple
| factors", "it's complicated", "we need more research" etc.
|
| But just like the overwhelming majority of lung cancer comes from
| smoking, the overwhelming factor in insects decline (and its
| consequences like birds decline) is PESTICIDES and neonicotinoids
| in particular.
|
| [1]: sorry, in French :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FQT7b2ExP4 Another one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLQKs1KBw9Y
|
| Other articles:
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/neonicoti...
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| alexpotato wrote:
| > But just like the overwhelming majority of lung cancer comes
| from smoking
|
| This is true.
|
| It's also true that less than 30% (in Europe as low as 15%) of
| smokers get lung cancer. [0]
|
| I point this out b/c I always believed that "if you smoke, you
| will get lung cancer" whereas the data was "if you get lung
| cancer, odds are it's from smoking"
|
| I wish that more information was presented this way but I also
| get that if your goal is to stop smoking then saying "smoking
| == lung cancer" is a better persuasion play than "odds are you
| won't get lung cancer if you smoke"
|
| 0 - https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/resources/position-
| statem...
| triceratops wrote:
| Smoking increases your risks for a lot of things besides just
| lung cancer. I never thought of lung cancer as the only bad
| outcome of smoking in my impressionable years.
| m00n wrote:
| It is also true that this a 500fold increase in prevalence
| when compared to the general population.
|
| The 5-year survival rate of lung cancer noticed due to e.g a
| sore throat is below 10%.
| wazoox wrote:
| Overall about an half of all smokers die of tobacco-related
| disease. It may be lung cancer, throat cancer, various
| digestive cancers, heart attack, aneurysm and all sort of
| painful diseases. Lung cancer is just the most obvious one.
|
| My neighbour looked like just out of a zombie film complete
| with rotting, stinking lumps of flesh hanging from the side
| of his jaw and slime / pus dropping from his mouth for _two
| frigging years_ (throat and jaw cancer, got fed by catheter
| for 18 months too). He had to get sure no child was around
| before getting out, because the view would have traumatized
| them.
|
| My sister-in-law died three months after retiring of a
| blazing-fast brain cancer, just a couple of days before
| Christmas. First symptoms mid-November. At least it was
| somewhat fast.
|
| Just don't smoke. Don't.
| simplicio wrote:
| 30% seems like a lot!
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Maybe they learned how traffic light work
| dncornholio wrote:
| So we've been killing bugs with our windshields for decades and
| we wonder where they are? I'll rest my case!
|
| Jokes aside, I don't think we take into account how many bugs
| we've killed with windshields, are we?
| bamboozled wrote:
| I thought the same for a long time, surely it has an effect ?
| np- wrote:
| Totally anecdotally: I have to scrub a thick layer of bugs off my
| motorcycle helmet after every single ride but almost never off
| the windshield of my car. Though this could also be a function of
| where I'm going (typically rural back roads on the bike and
| highway/interstate in the car), but even then I'm still not sure,
| since there is a decent amount of overlap in local routes
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The old cars I ride in don't get the bug salad or yore either.
| Roark66 wrote:
| There is nothing that gets one to zip up their motorcycle
| jacket quicker than getting hit with a large bug in the chest
| while doing 100kmh(60mph).
| criddell wrote:
| When I got my first motorcycle, the thing that surprised me
| the most was how much rain hurts on bare skin at 60 mph.
| Moru wrote:
| Yes, the modern car windshields have a much flatter angle than
| old cars but it's not as news worthy. :-)
| boffinism wrote:
| I mean, it's quite news worthy. The Washington Post dedicated
| large parts of an article on insect population decline to
| exploring it.
| andirk wrote:
| Implies a VW Bus gets the most bugs? Bart and Sideshow Bob
| got a lot of bugs on the Wright Brothers plane [0] .
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/RD77nyoEyug?t=112
| doublesocket wrote:
| Having had a VW bus all my life I can confirm they do get a
| lot of bugs, but far fewer these days. In the 80s my father
| used to try all manner of cleaning products to try and
| remove them but it's not such an issue any more.
| pcl wrote:
| Interestingly enough, the article itself discusses
| aerodynamics.
| bamboozled wrote:
| So better aerodynamics is squashing less bugs ?
|
| I think this is real, I'm traveling and borrowed a relatives
| car which is much lower profile and more sleek than my old
| Jeep. I was driving through the countryside the other day and
| there were a lot of critters flying about, I was surprised
| that often, they'd sort of just get "pushed" over the top of
| the car. Not sure what happened to them after that but yeah!
| psychphysic wrote:
| I did some googling to find a comparison of old and new
| cars in wind tunnels without much luck but this articles
| cover is fairly good[0].
|
| > Not sure what happened to them after that but yeah!
|
| One thing I did find is that for aerodynamic purposes the
| one place cars _want_ turbulence is right behind them in
| their wake to disrupt a vacuum.
|
| So I expect those bugs get smashed into the ground or even
| sucked into the radiator of any close behind cars as that
| air seems quite stagnant right behind a car.
|
| [0] https://eu.seacoastonline.com/story/special/2017/01/09/
| cars-...
| klabb3 wrote:
| They account for this factor, and several others, in the
| study. There's an world wide decimation of insect
| populations, and it has received minor coverage relative to
| its likely significance to ecosystems.
| alphabetting wrote:
| what significant effects could there be on ecosystems by a
| decline in bugs? (I'm sure there are some, just curious)
| cad1 wrote:
| Think of a food chain, bugs are near the bottom meaning
| they are a food source for many other creatures like
| birds, reptiles, small mammals, fish. Fewer bugs means
| less food for mice, that means fewer mice, leads to less
| food for snakes, leads to fewer snakes, leads to less
| food for birds of prey, leads to fewer birds of prey.
| There are many chains like this where bugs are a vital
| source of food. If there were zero bugs then these chains
| would collapse. Also, bugs are needed to pollenate many
| fruit bearing plants.
| mjhay wrote:
| Also, a huge portion of food production is dependent on
| bees and other pollinators.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I remember a drive from Devils Lake, ND to Rugby, ND (~60 miles)
| less than a decade ago. The bugs were so bad I had to stop and
| clean my windshield twice because I couldn't see.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I had the same thing happen in very rural Northern Quebec, plus
| the road construction workers wore bee keeper type outfits.
| cryptonector wrote:
| This isn't true. When I go out to the countryside my windshield
| gets very dirty. And by countryside I mean just up the road from
| here, about 40 minutes out.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| What are they talking about? Driving on highways around here is
| like being in a hailstorm or bugs
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Author lives in DC and apparently hasn't been anywhere else. I
| have noticed more bees, wasps, hoverflies, mosquitos, katydids
| and a host of other insects, more so than ever.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I wonder if it's some introduced wide spectrum insect pathogen.
| Sort of like that fungus that's devastating amphibians around the
| world? If so, the part of the world that pathogen came from would
| not be seeing these declines, since the insects there would have
| long before evolved to deal with it (as amphibians in SE Asia, I
| think it was, apparently have done with that fungus.)
|
| Possibly some strain of Wolbachia?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia
| luxuryballs wrote:
| why not just natural selection? the bugs that got splatted never
| got to lay eggs
| chs20 wrote:
| Honestly, I had tons of bugs on my windshield this summer.
| cainxinth wrote:
| The fireflies and ladybugs may be disappearing, but gnats and
| spotted lantern flies are suddenly everywhere by me (Northeast
| U.S.)
| wyldfire wrote:
| If glyphosate+surfactants affects apis, maybe there's other
| insects that are susceptible too.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Probably a large part is due to the increased frequency of cars
| inside broadly the same volume of road space. Assuming that you
| have the same number of bugs per m^3 and the same number of bugs
| entering per m^3 per minute as before, then bugs splattered per
| car will change in inverse proportion to cars per minute.
| badtension wrote:
| I think you grossly overestimate how much space does car
| infrastructure hold in relation to literally millions of km^2
| of free space around it. Assuming your observation is right its
| impact would be minuscule.
| globalise83 wrote:
| But we're not discussing the free space around roads, I'm
| talking about the width of the road X length of road X 2.5m
| where the bugs get splatted. If there are more cars
| travelling in that space, fewer bugs will be splatted by each
| car even if the level overall remains the same.
| badtension wrote:
| I see what you mean. This still seems far fetched
| especially when taking into account rural and remote places
| where even doubling the traffic would mean passing 1 car
| every 10 minutes.
| lm28469 wrote:
| That or the fact that insect population has been proven to
| decline over and over pretty much everywhere in the world
| including natural reserves
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations
| IncRnd wrote:
| There are fewer bugs that hit the windshield even when on a
| rural interstate.
|
| There are many areas that have cars but aren't in the middle of
| cities or in areas with high traffic.
| fleddr wrote:
| 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 20 years. You
| can clearly see how some groups are disappearing whilst others
| remain.
|
| There's several root causes but the primary one is a lack of
| native plant diversity. Since agriculture over here is done in
| close proximity to forests, the soil becomes acid due to the
| nitrogen disposition. This benefits the growth of a handful of
| plants at the expense of all others. In some of our forests, the
| soil is now so acid that snails no longer develop a case and bird
| eggs collapse.
|
| In this plant monoculture, insects depending on a specific host
| plant disappear. Outside (protected) forests, things aren't much
| better. Even the tiniest of strips of grass that would normally
| produce wildflowers, are aggressively mowed down. People's
| gardens are designed to be as hostile to insects as is possible.
|
| Secondary reasons are invasive species and light pollution.
|
| It's a sad state of affairs and one we should be deeply ashamed
| of. We're not talking about some iconic predator requiring
| hundreds of acres of wild forest just to survive. We're talking
| about insects that require little space, healthy soil, a flower,
| and for it to be left alone. We can't even offer that.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > some groups are disappearing whilst others remain
|
| Speaking of those that remain, I can say beyond reasonable
| doubt that there is an insane percentage increase in stinkbug
| populations in recent years. Fuckers get absolutely everywhere.
| bmitc wrote:
| 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 clover as evil. Support multiple
| grass types. Stop using chemical fertilizers and stop trying to
| feed the grass. Feed the soil with organic fertilizers and
| compost.
|
| That's it! It reduces maintenance costs and time, reduces the
| use of gasoline, reduces noise pollution, and vastly improves
| soil health, insect and wildlife health, and increases
| pollination of our own food. It's a literal win-win.
|
| And yet, no one does it. They turn their lawns into wastelands
| and _never even use them_. I 've heard that lawns should be
| compared to deserts but that even that is disregarding the
| biodiversity that deserts have over lawns.
| garfieldnate wrote:
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm totally with you.
|
| I'm annoyed by the climate change (CO2) narrative. It is far
| too narrow. Rather we should be talking about an umbrella of
| unsustainability that includes wildlife decimation,
| biodiversity collapsing, pollution, overfishing,
| deforestation, water and air quality.
|
| We shouldn't just live in a way that expels less CO2, we
| should live in a way that doesn't annihilate the biosphere.
|
| And yes, gardens are a great personal way to make a start.
| Mine too has native flowers which attract lots of insects, in
| turn attracting birds and bats. Plus some mini ponds. It's
| far less work compared to a sterile garden whilst much more
| fun.
| namaria wrote:
| There is no salvation. Whatever was Earth before human
| civilization is in a death spiral. What comes next is
| anyone's guess. Elites are massing wealth to get off planet,
| and when the mass migrations really start and mid income
| countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope
| you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder
| of your time here.
| bmitc wrote:
| I believe that if we acted today, that there could be
| salvation. Institute massive taxes against plastic use. Ban
| it for take-out food and other single-use instances. Start
| heavily taxing other wasteful areas. Heavily encourage if
| not enforce composting and recycling.
|
| Immediately start restoring mowed lawns with native plants.
| Ban the use of chemical fertilizers.
|
| It could be done, but we won't. Salvation is at our
| fingertips, but we close our fists.
| chasil wrote:
| Humans are not particularly destructive to the planet.
|
| Comparatively, "the great dying" was a much more profound
| event, and quite beyond our capability.
|
| Even pushing our planet out of the current icehouse will
| likely require much, much more co2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Ear
| th
| namaria wrote:
| We can't design a solution for the problem of 'too many
| humans devouring Earth's resources'. Locusts can't make
| plans. Galaxies cannot deviate from collision. I don't
| understand why we harbor fantasies about being anything
| other than a natural process that will simply run its
| course.
| bmitc wrote:
| That's an interesting perspective. In many ways, it seems
| to me that evolution did not or cannot account for
| technological development. I have been trying to read
| more about what makes life go, and it seems it's highly
| related to thermodynamics and information theory.
|
| Are you proposing that any life will eventually discover
| technology (namely the ability to access and manipulate
| stored energy and also computation)? If so, it's possible
| that life is accounting for it in ways we don't
| understand yet.
| namaria wrote:
| Whatever we call technology is as natural a process as
| everything else systems in our Universe cobble together.
| I see no difference between termite mounds and the
| Internet. All is bound by the laws of physics. The same
| processes created complex monkey brains create
| datacenters. Physics is very clear: only things that are
| thermodinamically downhill can happen. Human civilization
| is just a natural, 4D phenomenon we get to see unfold.
| All in all it won't amount to more then any passing
| geological pattern on any planet before or since.
| javajosh wrote:
| That's just because humans have not yet acted coherently
| yet as a species. There are all kinds of scenarios likely
| and unlikely that can unfold and none of us know what
| they are. Nature may be indifferent but she does seem to
| give us every chance.
|
| By the way, I think you're in a tiny minority if you
| believe there is no distinction between things that
| evolve and things that are designed.
| namaria wrote:
| I wouldn't me making this argument if I thought everyone
| thought like me. We have a great capacity for
| understanding and changing nature, yes. And also the need
| to believe we are apart and special. But we're not. High
| rise buildings and fiber optic cables are as natural as
| anything else that grows on the planet. Drawing a line
| and calling "artificial" or "designed" on this side is
| completely arbitrary.
| javajosh wrote:
| I get what you're saying, and I actually like it. I
| myself have called Life a singular phenomena that
| describes a (very) complex 4D shape of which we humans
| are all just a part (and as a group are currently only
| about as impactful as a large asteroid!). But if you
| follow this to far you get some nasty results, mostly
| around a feeling of inevitability and hopelessness, which
| I honestly don't think has a rational basis. The world is
| _strange_ and even one good idea, one chance, could turn
| things around for Life in general, and humans in
| particular. It certainly needs to be a big change,
| something like a "phase shift" in human affairs. We
| certainly cannot bring our traditional values into the
| future, which were predicated on living in a world that
| would push back against our ambitions. Nowadays, the ONLY
| thing restraining humans is humans, and yet self-
| restraint has never been so out-of-fashion.
| saxonww wrote:
| If we ban chemical fertilizers (what does this include,
| btw?), will we be able to grow enough food to feed
| everyone? What else would have to change to make that
| possible?
| ls15 wrote:
| Permaculture is soil- and insect-friendly and can be
| productive and resilient, but it requires more manual
| labor and setting up a permaculture system takes a lot of
| knowledge and I think it takes years before it is
| producing competitively, depending on the soil
| conditions.
|
| If we ban synthetic fertilizers (and more importantly
| herbicides/pesticides) abruptly before having established
| organic methods at scale, that will most likely cause
| food insecurity like it did in Sri Lanka.
|
| Slowly phasing them out to a level that is not killing us
| in the long run seems more sensible to me.
| bmitc wrote:
| I was thinking of banning them for residential use and
| then re-evaluating their use in commercial agriculture
| industries. There's no reason that I can think of that
| they should be used in residential applications. All they
| do is keep grass artificially green and destroy soil
| health.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but Earth before humans has
| largely been dead for hundreds or thousands of years,
| depending upon the exact region you're talking about.
| namaria wrote:
| lol talk about human centric dellusions and an example
| walks into the conversation
| [deleted]
| nathan_compton wrote:
| If elites think they can move off planet and somehow
| survive a total collapse of earth's ecosystems, they are in
| for a rude awakening. An independent colony able to
| maintain its inhabitants in any kind of comfort will be
| dependent on the earth for the foreseeable future.
|
| Its actually difficult for me to believe that any elite
| would be stupid enough to think they could survive an earth
| environmental catastrophe in space.
|
| I'm pretty sure at least some of them are dumb enough to
| think they can survive it on earth, though. And they might
| be right!
| zeruch wrote:
| "Its actually difficult for me to believe that any elite
| would be stupid enough to think they could survive an
| earth environmental catastrophe in space." You
| underestimate the raw power of untethered hubris, fueled
| by venality.
| [deleted]
| namaria wrote:
| It's a catch all metaphor. Most likely we will see some
| version of fortress Europe and the US devolving to
| frontier economy. Frontex is already getting bigger
| budgets, more boots on the ground and better kit with
| each passing year.
| dilap wrote:
| If you watch high-altitude time-lapse photography, human
| settlements look exactly like a mold infestation. We spread
| as much as we can, and eventually we'll collapse as we
| exhaust resources.
|
| The earth won't "care", it'll just be another of the many
| boom-bust cycles in the history of nature. We're part of
| it.
|
| It's not going to be pleasant for the humans and animals
| that live through it, though!
|
| While we have enough individual intelligence to see this is
| coming, and wish to avoid it, I don't think we collectively
| have the intelligence to do so. A crowd of humans has its
| own dynamics and kind of thought, and so far, these crowds
| are very short-sighted and prone to all sorts of
| irrationalities and hysterias.
| Cryptonic wrote:
| I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B.
| Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.
| bmitc wrote:
| I agree that it's a fantasy. For one, I think Mars is
| just a power play by the likes of people like Musk and
| Bezos. It doesn't even make sense to view Mars as a
| backup for Earth because, at least currently, Earth is
| still alive and Mars is already completely dead. It's
| like saying "we're going to kill off the only planet that
| can sustain us to get to a planet that cannot sustain
| us". It's mind boggling that we can get people excited
| about electric cars and Mars but cannot get those same
| people to realize the reality that Earth is the only
| planet _known to mankind_ that can sustain us.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Bezos' space corporation, Blue Origin, hasn't yet reached
| the orbit - after 22 years of continuous work. So it
| seems safe to say that Bezos does not place much value on
| space colonization.
|
| Musk, on the other hand, seems to be obsessed by the Mars
| project.
| hedora wrote:
| As far as I can tell, humans can't survive for extended
| periods of time in gravity as low as it is on Mars.
|
| There's also the problem of surface radiation. Given that
| we can't figure out how to build subterranean cities at
| scale on earth, I'm not sure what the plan is for dealing
| with that.
|
| Honestly, a self sustaining space station seems easier to
| achieve than a self sustaining Mars base:
|
| You can spin the space station up to 1 G, park it behind
| a celestial body that acts as a radiation shield and
| power it with nuclear, or beamed solar power.
|
| Maybe I'm missing something obvious about the relative
| difficulty of the two problems.
| bmitc wrote:
| 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?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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
| quarreling or to write a SHA-256 implementation from
| scratch? How would that even be measured?
| raffraffraff wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| namaria wrote:
| Look I get it, dismissing part of my comment on
| technicalities makes it seem less likely to play out. But
| the fact remains that we are clearly headed for disaster
| and rich people are clearly hoarding as much money as
| they can to prepare. To hyper focus on tearing apart just
| one outlandish way in which the elites might or might not
| seek safety is its on form of denial.
| xeromal wrote:
| I wouldn't get so annoyed by it. Nerds will nerd and pick
| apart trivialities. I get your point that the rich are
| planning for this. Whether they do it by building
| underground bunkers, space stations, or communities are
| mars is moot. I'll add though that I don't think it's
| worth concerning ourselves what the super rich are up to.
|
| The rich killed Rome too and they still ended up with no
| society.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Given that we can't figure out how to build subterranean
| cities at scale on earth"
|
| Can't we, or there just isn't any economic case for it?
|
| Cold War militaries were certainly capable of building
| massive buried structures when needed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDeljava_Air_Base
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto_(Bunker)
| namaria wrote:
| Yes it's a fantasy at this point, but a fantasy that a
| lot of very smart people and a lot of resources are
| pursuing. They might succeed. I won't make the call. But
| plan B clearly is some sort of Fortress Europe and god
| knows what cyberpunk western is in store for the US. It's
| plain to me the rich are bracing for disaster and see the
| rest of us as fodder. At this point the best we can do is
| pick a place least likely to be overrun in our lifetime.
| I'm thinking Norway or Switzerland.
| sillystuff wrote:
| 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-of-the-
| richest-9ef6cddd0...
| raffraffraff wrote:
| 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.
| sillystuff wrote:
| Vegan. Grow much of my own food (mill my own flour,
| etc.). I lived without electricity or running water for
| most of a decade '00s (and only added a small DC only
| solar system for electric lighting for the rest of that
| decade). I continue to maintain a small footprint, but
| electric lighting, refrigeration, heat in the winter and
| hot and cold running water are pretty great (hot and cold
| running water is fucking amazing!), and I don't want to
| give those up again. But, none of that matters as much as
| my being a US citizen. The US military has CO2 emissions
| larger than 140 countries combined. My share of those US
| military emissions made my carbon footprint very high
| throughout the 00's in spite of near zero personal
| emissions. Presently, the US pushing for sanctions on
| Russia, led to much higher carbon footprint LNG being
| shipped to Europe to replace Russian pipeline gas (US
| oligarchs are making a killing selling LNG, though). Etc.
|
| If everyone, in the developed world, made similar
| personal choices, to the two of us, things would be
| better, but it would still be insignificant compared to
| US policy decisions like the massive US military
| perpetually deployed across the world. And, if the entire
| world's population was able to share in hot and cold
| running water, heat in the winter, electric lighting,
| refrigeration, etc., much of those gains from personal
| choices of westerners would be negated.
|
| I don't know the answer. Yes, a lot of people need to
| reduce their waste, and share with the rest of humanity
| and non-human life. But, it will not be enough-- somehow
| we must change governmental and corporate policies.
|
| As things currently stand, the average American has near
| zero impact on policy decisions[1]. While our rich and
| powerful elites are driving us off a cliff. The change we
| need will not be led by them, but in the current climate,
| a revolution, in the US, is highly unlikely, and if it
| were to happen would likely result in an extreme far-
| right authoritarian/theocratic regime even more extreme
| than the individual enrichment at any cost, "drill baby
| drill," right to far-right regime that currently rules.
| And, the US currently controls much of the world (see all
| western nations observing US illegal sanctions against
| 1/4-1/3 of the worlds population and also providing
| support for recent US illegal wars of aggression). Maybe
| the rise of China will save us, if the US elites do not
| lash out in desperation to maintain power and e.g., cause
| a nuclear holocaust. But, pinning hopes of halting
| environmental destruction on China is a slim hope.
|
| It is difficult to not lose hope.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Elites are massing wealth to get off planet
|
| Well... no. They're prepping to move to compounds in New
| Zealand. Even a global warming (and nuclear war, let's
| throw that on the pile!) ravaged Earth is _vastly_ easier
| to live on than, say, Mars. Trying to escape that way would
| be a frying-pan-into-the-fire plan.
|
| > and when the mass migrations really start and mid income
| countries start becoming failed states on their path, I
| hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the
| remainder of your time here.
|
| But yeah, that's basically the reason why, I reckon.
| Somewhere sufficiently stable and liberal that's also
| really, really hard to reach without a ship or airplane.
| Avoiding the various climate refugee crises and wars we're
| likely to see in the coming decades probably is their
| motivation. New Zealand's a clear front-runner in that
| race.
| namaria wrote:
| 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.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Humans will never make it off earth. Perhaps we'll make
| extremely brief flights, like the flying fish.
| namaria wrote:
| Sad thing is, we're probably gonna repeat our horrible
| colonial history, but with space ships.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-
| obsession...
|
| This is a good read/listen.
| Cryptonic wrote:
| Fun fact. In Germany this decline is measured in nature
| reserves.
|
| The petrochemical pesticides play a big roll.
|
| Just forbid them.
| newsclues wrote:
| Is there a push to move to smaller regenerative farms
| occurring?
| chickenimprint wrote:
| How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And
| we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or
| food inflation will explode.
|
| Making agriculture unproductive will just push the demand
| outwards like a beaker of toxic reactants boiling over. We
| can't impose more trade restrictions on foreign agricultural
| goods either, for fear of a trade war.
|
| This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop
| farming is misguided. The only solution I see is huge, highly
| efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That,
| and veganism.
| fpoling wrote:
| The current agricultural land in US alone can easily feed
| by various estimates at least 2 billions people. The
| trouble is that most of it is used to grow corn etc. to
| feed animals in the industrial meat production.
| skrbjc wrote:
| One third is used for animal feed, a third for ethanol to
| blend into gasoline and a third for food consumption
| directly.
|
| To me it seems like the ethanol production part would be
| the easiest to put towards human consumption.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _We don 't have enough land as it is._
|
| Only discussing the land statement here, but we have loads
| and loads and loads of unused farmland.
|
| At least, that is true in Canada, and I suspect the US, and
| I know in the EU some are paid not to farm.
|
| In Canada, we have quotas on some things, to prevent over
| production.
|
| There are two real issues:
|
| * drought, or summers with few sunny days, reducing yields
|
| * random new diseases
|
| So we need that fallow land, just in case, which is why
| people are given inventives to have farm land, but not use
| it.
|
| Yet we still have so much farm land, that we sell the best
| of it to developers, who then create housing.
|
| We have loads of unused farmland.
|
| One last thing. China's population is going to almost
| halve, over the next 15 years, Russia will have a major
| population decline, and the most industrialized nations are
| the same.
|
| Canada has solved this top heavy, old age die off, with
| immigration. More than 30% of Canadian citizens, for
| example, we not born in Canada.
|
| But for those with lower immigration numbers, and low birth
| rates (basically the entire industrialized world),
| populations will plummet by 30% to 50% in the next 25
| years.
|
| China had the one child program, and the birth rate in
| Canada is less than 1 for every 2 adults, for Canadians
| boen here. The rest of the West is the same.
|
| So worldwide, our population will plummet very soon.
| rmah wrote:
| Yes, especially on the east coast, vast swaths of what
| was once farmland and pasture is now forest again. For
| example, most of Connecticut's forests were cut down for
| not very productive farms before good transportation
| infrastructure allowed that activity to be moved to more
| suitable areas. It's now forest again and atlantic salmon
| are back for the first time in a century.
| newsclues wrote:
| Same way it did before we had industrialized
| (petrochemical) agriculture.
|
| More people working on farms. More people living close to
| farms. More animals on farms.
|
| Should lead to healthier lifestyles and diets. Better
| environment for people and the planet (and all the
| creatures including BUGS).
|
| Time to make the old new again, and stop building suburbs
| on farm land.
|
| All of this is possible and logical, but there is a massive
| propaganda machine that is convincing people otherwise.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| >we don't have enough land as it is
|
| Small farms are _more_ productive per acre [1] even before
| considering the increased fossil footprint of 'efficient'
| farms.
|
| >we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or
| food inflation will explode.
|
| Additional unskilled jobs might well be worth the tradeoff,
| particularly for the most vulnerable members of society.
|
| >This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop
| farming is misguided.
|
| Russia's Dacha model produces something like 60% of the
| country's food through hobby 'farms' that regular people
| mostly go to on the weekends. It's not a hard model to
| replicate, I'm planting a food shrubland in my suburban
| home. It won't produce a large part of my food budget but
| it'll certainly be resource-positive as opposed to a lawn.
| My labour inputs I'd spend at a gym otherwise. As work-
| from-home becomes more normalized, the average garden size
| will probably increase. The problem isn't economic but
| cultural.
|
| >huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly
| regulated farms. That, and veganism.
|
| There seems to be a correlation between belief in factory
| farming and veganism. Those stances align on pathos but
| diverge on logos and ethos.
|
| [1]1https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 03043...
| mantas wrote:
| > Russia's Dacha model
|
| Well, the hard part to replicate is destroying economy to
| force people to use those collective gardens. Shops were
| next to empty. Commercial variety was non existent. The
| rigid command economy didn't allow enterprise to address
| needs. Thus you had 2 ways to have good food - relatives
| in countryside or your own collective garden lot.
|
| It's both economy in culture. Here in Lithuania those
| gardens survived well into 90s. During the transition,
| many people went on to do substance farming in addition
| to day job. Or, if they were unemployed, in exchange of
| it. But now people work cushy jobs and less and less
| people do that. It's down to gardening enthusiasts in the
| young generation. And even then the pattern is completely
| different. More about trying out exotic stuff for shit
| and giggles. Rather than aiming for good amount of food
| and then conserving it for the winter. Energy costs
| probably make it cheaper to buy jam rather than cook it
| too...
| rmah wrote:
| The linked study uses data from peasant farms in
| developing economies (Madagascar, India, etc.) from half
| a century ago or earlier. From the point of view of the
| west, that it would be measuring the productivity of very
| very small farms vs very small farms where the vast
| majority of labor is done by hand. Skimming over the
| article it seems that it concludes that under pre-
| mechanized conditions, larger farms have less available
| labor per unit land area. And that labor per unit land
| area is an important factor in agricultural productivity.
| This is hardly a surprise.
|
| This is very much not like how farming is done in
| developed nations or even most developing nations today.
| And unless you want to force people to live like dirt
| poor peasants of the past, hopefully won't ever be done
| again.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| There is plenty of land under cultivation. We already
| produce enough calories to feed every person on earth, they
| just aren't distributed sufficiently.
|
| Currently you have most of the California central valley
| planted in high margin crops like almonds and pistachios
| because they maximize farmer profits (despite their
| unsustainable demands on the water supply). If the goal was
| to maximize human nutrition the land use would look very
| different.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is.
|
| With capitalism there can never be enough of any natural
| resource. When there is enough, it will be put to more
| extravagant and wastefull purposes.
|
| The original purpose of a lawn was to show that you are so
| rich and have so much land that you can dedicate some of it
| to just grass.
|
| The purpose of a tough guy wearing a massive golden chain
| in a bad neighbourhood is to show that noone dares touch
| him
|
| And the purpose of a yaht is to show off - the yahts dont
| even cross the ocean, billionaires hire special ships to
| lift the whole yaht and move it across atlantic.
|
| So whether its yahts or aingle use plastic cups, or bitcoin
| mining, there is never enough.
| [deleted]
| WJW wrote:
| Yes, but the farmers are (obviously) not in favor and have
| been protesting heavily.
| jorvi wrote:
| I would replace 'protesting' with 'terrorizing'.
|
| They've been visiting politicians their homes with torches,
| threatening them and explicitly their kids, blockading
| highways with burning rubble, blocking highways with
| _asbestos_ , using their tractors to rip out doors out of
| government buildings.
|
| What is most aggrieving to me is that the police is pseudo
| on the side of the farmers. The head of the police said
| that he 'fully understands the plight of the farmers' and
| will keep on a policy of de-escalation. Scant few fines
| too.
|
| Meanwhile a couple of climate protestors that tie
| themselves to a bridge get their head bashed in and then
| get fines of EUR300-5000.
|
| Clown world.
| kapsi wrote:
| If there were that many of organized climate protesters
| they would be heard as well, it always comes down to
| numbers and potential for violence.
| ryan93 wrote:
| I mean placing the blame for climate change on the backs
| of Dutch farmers was absurd. They should have started
| with severe controls on importing goods from countries
| with high levels of pollution
| wartijn_ wrote:
| Do you have a source of the government "placing the blame
| for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers"? The
| Dutch government wanted[0] to curb emissions, and since
| (high intensity) farms are huge polluters, some of the
| measurements affected farmers.But I can't remember them
| placing the blame on the farmers.
|
| [0] Well, they didn't really want it, but had to
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/dutch-
| official...
| donkeyd wrote:
| > placing the blame for climate change on the backs of
| Dutch farmers was absurd
|
| Nobody is doing that, this is blatant misinformation that
| is being spread by interest groups that profit off Dutch
| farmers.
|
| Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do
| with nitrogen. As the OP mentioned, it is causing
| acidification of nature areas, which is negatively
| impacting all sorts of wildlife. It's a mostly local
| problem, often caused by intensive farming and is mostly
| unrelated to climate change.
| naasking wrote:
| > Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to
| do with nitrogen.
|
| Yes, and nitrogen fertilizer yields nitrous oxide which
| is a greenhouse gas implicated in climate change [1].
| This is not just "misinformation", this is part of the
| reason behind the push to ban nitrogen fertilizer.
|
| [1] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-
| climate-ch...
| donkeyd wrote:
| > this is part of the reason behind the push to ban
| nitrogen fertilizer
|
| Sure, that might be true, but it is definitely blatant
| misinformation that Dutch farmers are being blamed for
| climate change. It is not part of the discussion that's
| currently ongoing in The Netherlands and that is
| purposefully being misrepresented in (mostly American)
| right-wing media. This needs to be clear, because the
| violent protests by framers in The Netherlands are being
| abused by foreign interest groups who frame them as
| protests against those farmers being blamed for climate
| change.
|
| This is a real issue, because this is starting to become
| an actual discussion point for those who are supporting
| the farmers. They are, for example, asking why farmers
| are now targeted and airports are not, while farmers
| cause 88x more nitrogen emissions than flights in the
| Netherlands. Also, those emissions are less focused on
| the problem areas.
|
| Misinformation is incredibly harmful in this discussion
| and therefore it's incredibly important to keep the facts
| straight. Otherwise all discussions and arguments will
| mix and there will never actually be anything done.
| naasking wrote:
| I admit find this response confusing.
|
| Given that climate change is the primary reason for
| restricting nitrogen fertilizer, it's implicit that the
| farmers are contributing to climate change. 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? That would obviously
| be incorrect, but the former claim is absolutely correct.
|
| Maybe it's not part of the conversation in the
| Netherlands, but I'm not seeing what's factually wrong
| about it. Are they actually claiming that climate change
| _is_ part of the discussion in the Netherlands? If this
| isn 't part of the conversation in the Netherlands, what
| exactly are they talking about?
| tremon wrote:
| _Given that climate change is the primary reason for
| restricting nitrogen fertilizer_
|
| That's simply not true. The primary reason for
| restricting nitrogen fertilizer in NL is _habitat change_
| (i.e. it has profound effects on the habitats of native
| species), not climate change.
| wartijn_ wrote:
| > 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
| asbestos, using their tractors to rip out doors out of
| government buildings." by saying "I mean placing the
| blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers
| was absurd."
| naasking wrote:
| Ok, but one HN comment is not a misinformation trend
| throughout right wing media, per the parent comment.
| donkeyd wrote:
| 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.
| naasking wrote:
| Good to know, but I don't see why it's harmful. Here in
| Canada they're also contemplating nitrogen fertilizer
| bans for reasons of climate change, so it's not like this
| argument isn't being made.
| fleddr wrote:
| They were blamed not for climate change, instead for
| nitrogen disposition.
|
| This is a uniquely Dutch problem, largely unrelated to
| CO2. In larger countries, there's clear zoning and
| distance between protected nature and intensive
| agriculture. Not in the Netherlands, where these two
| things are directly bordering each other. Hence, the
| agriculture very directly destroys its surrounding
| nature. Not by CO2, by nitrogen.
| j0057 wrote:
| The highway blockades have lead to accidents too, in one
| case a fatal one:
| https://www.rtvutrecht.nl/nieuws/3443753/twee-
| aanhoudingen-n...
| zip1234 wrote:
| Probably better to stop propping up the small farms and let
| the unproductive land be reclaimed by nature. Extensively use
| pest resistant GMO crops to increase yields on less land and
| overall lessen the land needed for farming. At the same time,
| lessening sprawl would be quite helpful. I see plenty of
| people 'move out to the country' and then spray pesticides
| over their entire 5 acre lawn.
| alexitosrv wrote:
| Your last paragraph nailed it! It's a shame. Today HN is on
| roll of realistic but pessimistic landscape that hits hard.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup. Visited the US Midwest (Minnesota) recently and driving
| from the airport city to another smaller city, started going
| out into farmland.
|
| At first, it seemed like a nice bucolic change. But soon, it
| took on a far darker aspect - this was a barren monoculture, as
| far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles. Where to the
| birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and insects live? The
| land is not only covered with chemicals to kill or repel any
| now-unwelcome residents, but there is simply no usable habitat
| (and a thin row of trees every mile or so doesn't count).
|
| It was a truly dystopian experience, and more so by knowing
| that this goes on for thousands of square miles. This is not
| our grandparent's farmland anymore. This is not nature. This is
| one species becoming a literal plague on the planet. It is not
| sustainable.
| fleddr wrote:
| Yes, we call them billiard sheets. People for leisure cycle
| through these areas and thoroughly enjoy all this "greenery".
| A day spent in "nature".
|
| You're looking at poison and death.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| At one point during the development of California
| agriculture, there was an idea that farms should only be 160
| acres in size, since that was what was manageable and
| profitable for a smallholder family. I wonder what the land
| would be like if we had managed to enforce that. There would
| probably be more crop diversity at least, and habitats in
| between the farms.
|
| Kind of like anti-trust enforcement for the land itself
| willnonya wrote:
| The only thing you can know for sure is that it would have
| driven up prices and reduced supply.
| toss1 wrote:
| Nonsense
|
| It could have just as easily driven innovation towards
| efficiently working those kinds of plots, reduced topsoil
| loss and degradation (reducing fertilizer costs), reduced
| requirements for pesticides (lower costs again), and
| improved yields driving down prices.
|
| Especially now with accelerating agri-robotics
| developments, mid-sized farms like that can take best
| advantage.
|
| That kind of comment shows that you are using zero
| knowledge of growing, farming, or that complexities of
| soil chemistry and soil biology even exist. Not helpful.
| If you have some such actual knowledge, show some.
| Sheesh.
| toss1 wrote:
| Wow, would have been brilliant. (thx for the info)
| jgraham wrote:
| It's good to see a comment that recognises that this "bug
| splatter on the windshield" data is mostly just an easily
| observed hook to connect the measured declines to people's
| everyday life experiences.
|
| The topic seems to come up here ever few months, and there's
| always a significant percentage of the discussion devoted to
| aerodynamic effects, or changes in insect distribution specific
| to roadside habitats. Those converstations often feel like
| "middlebrow dismissal": people who think the fact they can come
| up with a plausible alternate explaination for the data given a
| few seconds thought means it's likely that the studies are
| totally flawed and can be ignored.
|
| Meanwhile if you dig in to the actual evidence, the studies
| based on vehicle data show a small negative correlation between
| vehicle age and number of impacted flying insects (i.e. older
| cars have slightly fewer splats, not more). More importantly,
| the general trends of declining biomass of (especially, but not
| only) flying insects reproduce over a wide range of
| methodologies and habitats. For skeptical readers, there are
| some links to studies in a previous comment I made on a
| previous thread on this same general topic [1].
|
| Having said that, I think you've missed one of the big factors
| that's likely to contribute to the decline: the widespread use
| of insecticides (especially) and herbicides in industrial
| agriculture. Studies on bees show that even insects exposed to
| something much lower than the LD50 of certain insecticides
| experience behavioural changes that dramatically decrease their
| survival rates. And because "pest" insects typicaly have short
| lifecycles and rapid reproduction rates, they're often best
| placed to evolve tolerances for the insecticides, so there's
| pressure on farmers to use more and more to get the same
| effect.
|
| For anyone who's interested in an introduction to this topic
| aimed at the general public (like me!), but written by a
| Professor of Entomology, I can recommend Slient Earth [2].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 [2]
| https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insec...
| Cryptonic wrote:
| I think it might be the same disinformation scheme as the
| climate science "The individual must/can fix it" - No policy
| must force industries to find other ways to make a profit
| with agriculture. There are natural ways to deal with insects
| and unwanted plants.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| You mean The Quiet Earth?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdHoYtBzdX0
| fleddr wrote:
| I happen to study/photograph insects as an amateur and can
| casually confirm the collateral damage pesticides have on
| insect life.
|
| A common manifestation of it is to find lethargic insects.
| Bodily fully intact and seeming healthy, yet barely able to
| move. Insects normally skittish that you can simply pick up.
| I'm not talking about insects at the end of their life cycle
| or them being very cold. There's something very wrong with
| these individuals, I believe studies suggest their brains are
| messed up from the pesticides.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| insecticides kill insects?
|
| Big if true. Sounds like it working as designed.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Insecticides are designed to wipe out global populations of
| insects rather than just controlling pest insects inside a
| limited area? If you have actual evidence for this, it seem
| like it would form the basis of significant lawsuits
| against pesticide companies because we would have evidence
| of intent to cause significant ecological damage.
| _jal wrote:
| After low-effort attempts to dismiss risks fail, mockery
| comes next.
|
| "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you..."
| fleddr wrote:
| The point of an insecticide is to kill the specific insect
| being a pest to the crop. Not to kill every single insect
| altogether.
|
| Maybe people like you should experience what a world
| without insects would look like. I can save you the time.
| There will be no world.
| indymike wrote:
| > The point of an insecticide is to kill the specific
| insect being a pest to the crop.
|
| Even this can cause a collapse by removing a food source
| from other predators.
|
| > I can save you the time. There will be no world.
|
| This is true. Insects are food for a huge number of
| predators, and insect larvae are a really important
| component of having soil capable of growing plants.
| fleddr wrote:
| Not to mention their role in pollination. 80% of plants
| are pollinated by animals, mostly insects. This includes
| 35% of food plants.
| dutchbrit wrote:
| It's also sad to see what people are doing to their gardens
| over here. Fake grass, no plants/just bricks. Not to mention
| the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers
| where insects thrive.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| One thing I've noticed after moving back to the Netherlands
| is how absolutely obsessed people are with keeping things
| "tidy". In a way, it's nice I guess, at least sometimes, but
| it comes with some serious costs too. This is not unique to
| the Netherlands, but we're probably the best (or worst?) at
| it, except maybe Singapore.
| bamboozled wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/24/let-
| fall...
|
| Article from today, "let fallen leaves lie"
| collegeburner wrote:
| wow, that article mentions controversy over the smell of
| leaf mulch... kinda reflective of how sterile those
| cities must be for someone who has never visited, so much
| less surprising they have fewer bugs. Heaven help them if
| someone ever puts in manure or fish compost :)
| jspash wrote:
| From near the end of the article: "Sometimes people find
| it a bit gross when we put the mulch back in plant pots,
| because it smells a bit woody"
|
| Are people really so detached from nature these days that
| the smell of wet wood puts them off? I do despair for
| humankind some days when I read this sort of thing.
| [deleted]
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| seriously, who are these people who are grossed out by
| the smell of mulch? Did they grow up in a laboratory?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| It just so happens I live in Eindoven, so I guess some
| more explaining is needed. They're working with the
| leafeblower now. I hate those contraptions so much.
| dutchbrit wrote:
| As a fellow Eindhovenaar I hate the leaf blowers too!
| noasaservice wrote:
| I blow them off my wood deck, so they don't rot and
| damage the wood.
|
| I let them lie on the rest of my 1.6 acres. And the 1
| acre that's forested, we're working on trying to de-
| invasive-ize the forest and try to help rehabilitate it.
| Its just 2 of us, but we're trying.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Are there any guides on "deinvasiveizing"? It seems like
| a complicated topic. Some non native life is considered
| to be non invasive, having found a homeostasis its new
| nich (common carp as an example). And some native life is
| considered invasive by some because it is so well adapted
| it crowds out all other native life (some bindweeds)
|
| Given the dramatic impacts we have made on a global
| scale, is trying to preserve de-humanified areas
| realistic anymore? Or are we supposed to simply try to
| maximize the diversity of life without regard to what
| life was in a place before humans arrived?
| noasaservice wrote:
| We're looking at the super-low-bar of doing things like
| removing known invasive plants as published in the
| state's DNR. They maintain a yearly list of nasties to
| remove.
|
| We also don't use any chemicals to do the killing, as so
| many of those have terrible side effects. Killing larger
| invasives involves something as simple as "black
| contractor bag enveloping and tied at base". It captures
| all the seeds, kills the plant, and provides easy
| removal.
|
| We also see that a lot of "lawn grasses" are also pretty
| invasive especially to forests. So, we also try to keep
| the lawn encroachment from happening..... as much. Ive
| done the high tech solution of "lay a slab of plywood on
| the grasses at the edge of the forest"!
|
| We're also designing our garden with local plants in
| mind, including rarer plants for our area. If/when those
| flower and seed, we're seeing natives with natives. And
| the non-natives we bring in are checked for invasiveness.
|
| Basically, it's being low-key stewards to the land.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Thanks! One well intentioned mistake we made at a
| previous residence was to plant some flowers for
| pollinators that were not native. They weren't invasive,
| but they were prolific. The issue was that they bloomed
| late enough that the butterflies didn't move on and
| froze.
| stinos wrote:
| _Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of
| grass /plants/flowers where insects thrive._
|
| That lacks an important nuance: in most circumstances
| (regarding soil type/nitrogen deposition), not mowing at all
| would lead to those patches being overgrown by fast growers
| leading to less plant diversity. Can happen in as little as a
| year or 2. So the mowing itself is not the problem, it's the
| amount, how and when.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Mowing itself is the problem. Fast growers are just the
| first step in a recovery process that takes place when a
| previously stunted ecosystem is allowed to heal. Other
| types of plants follow in subsequent years, leading to a
| much more healthy ecosystem than when you mow it all down
| to hell.
| stinos wrote:
| _Mowing itself is the problem_
|
| You really cannot talk about this in statements like they
| apply everywhere. Here's an example: around where I live,
| the number 1 activity by nature preservation groups when
| it comes to restoring grasslands of all kinds, is mowing.
| For a couple of reasons, but the main one being that
| nitrogen deposition fertilizes the soil too much, so it
| gets countered by removing biomass via mowing. Not doing
| that results is fast growers. Not because the'yre
| indicating a recovery process, just because they outgrow
| what was there originally. Which is the opposite of
| recovery.
|
| _leading to a much more healthy ecosystem than when you
| mow it all down to hell._
|
| When I say "it's the amount, how and when" that
| implicates 'not mowing it all down to hell' is _not_ the
| right way :)
| bluGill wrote:
| As the other reply said, each area is unique and so there
| is no general rule that applies to every location on
| earth.
|
| Where I live the native prairie was naturally mowed by
| the bison roaming around, and so not mowing leads to a
| number of problems as the plants around here depend on
| that regular mowing. Various lightening strikes and the
| like ("Indians") caused regular fires as well, which took
| care of overgrowth. Mowing simulates that without the
| fire. (this is both good and bad - it makes for cleaner
| air, but those fires also put charcoal into the ground
| and so made the prairie net carbon negative over the long
| term which is something we desperately need)
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| It would be nice if people realized that they can have a low-
| maintenance, inexpensive, and insect-friendly garden full of
| pretty wild flowers, by planting a perennial meadow. This
| needs to be cut once a year.
|
| In the UK, you can buy perennial meadow seed mixes from
| https://www.scotiaseeds.co.uk , https://wildseed.co.uk ,
| https://www.wildflower.co.uk, and several other companies.
|
| Elsewhere, there should be equivalents.
| addingadimensio wrote:
| I just love picking ticks off my children
| stinos wrote:
| I can stroll through acres of local meadows and not find
| any ticks. Once I dare come close to bushes or go off
| tracks in the woods though, it's a disaster. I.e. I don't
| know why, but in any case the 'grass is riddled with
| ticks' seems highly location-dependent.
| ericd wrote:
| Critter fences are cheap and effective at preventing this
| without requiring you to create a sterile landscape or
| monoculture.
| __alexs wrote:
| Unless you have wild mammals visiting your garden
| regularly it's quite unlikely there will be a single tick
| in it.
| stinos wrote:
| _by planting a perennial meadow_
|
| While this works, an alternative if you have a lawn already
| is to just stop cutting it every x weeks but mow once or
| twice a year. Mow paths where needed. More often than not
| there are already seeds/plants in the soil which just never
| got the chance to grow. And if not, depending on where you
| live, fauna and wind will transport seeds to your garden.
| The end result (mind you, takes years) will usually be
| similar: of the seed mixes bought, a bunch won't grow,
| others might but won't thrive. Whereas starting from
| 'scratch' this also happens. And what's left are those
| which happen to thrive best on the local soil type and
| circumstances, which usually is what works best for the
| local ecosystem.
| nightski wrote:
| Yes that will bring back the insects, in droves. It's a
| nightmare and you won't enjoy being in your yard at all.
| Amezarak wrote:
| If I didn't cut my yard for a year I wouldn't need a
| mower, I'd need a large brush-clearing tractor. It's
| already almost impossible to cut with a mower after four
| to five weeks.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| It's crazy! On one side, I have a neighbour with all slate
| and concrete backyard, and a barrier at the top of the fence
| (to keep the fancy cats in 'o_O ) covered with plastic vines.
| I think they have one actual living tree and maybe a
| flowerpot.
|
| Fortunately, on the other side ... I have the head of the
| groene commissie (neighbourhood gardening enthusiastc) and a
| beautiful tended garden. Mine is the most natural: a barely-
| tended jungle which gets trimmed and brushed once a year. We
| have hedgehogs!
|
| We installed ~200m^2 of green roofs in the neighbourhood and
| there are bug hotels all over the place so we are doing
| relatively well. Quite a few different varieties of bees.
|
| All this green absorbs a lot of heat, and manages rainwater
| which is important at 0 above sea level and 2m below the
| nearby canal.
| djur wrote:
| In far too many parts of the US, what you're doing with
| your yard would be considered "neglect" and might result in
| harassment from your neighbors or even fines.
| geysersam wrote:
| I'm surprised you didn't mention pesticide usage as one of the
| reasons. Or is that not an important factor?
| fleddr wrote:
| It most definitely is. But even without pesticides, insects
| cannot survive without plant diversity. At least most groups
| can't.
| lettergram wrote:
| While I don't disagree with those two points I don't know if
| they're the primary cause.
|
| I also think it's important to put it into context.
|
| 1. These insects weren't really robust to begin with. Take the
| monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed
| primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure
| (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up
| houses and converted land to farms, you're correct we killed
| many of the native species, but those species were HIGHLY tuned
| to a particular niche. In 100-200 years it's likely the insects
| that survived will re-occupy new niches.
|
| 2. Insects _typically_ need a much smaller range to survive, so
| hikes in the same woods as when you were a kid doesn't add up.
| Unless there was another massive environmental issue - such as
| pesticides or chemicals like DDT which have a secondary impact.
| Personally, that bird egg analogy sounds exactly like what the
| US saw with DDT and the collapse of the eagle population.
|
| 3. In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland
| all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The
| insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last
| few decades. Unfortunately, we don't have enough historical
| data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you'd
| have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between
| cornfields. Now, nothing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population...
|
| To me, this indicates a chemical or set there of, as the most
| likely culprits.
|
| EDIT: DET -> DDT
| kapsi wrote:
| What's gonna happen in 100 years? Are the insects waiting for
| something?
| fleddr wrote:
| I strongly object to the framing where a species is
| considered logical to go extinct for it was not "robust"
| enough.
|
| The words "specialist" and "niche" are incredibly misplaced
| as it comes to insects. Consider butterflies, many depending
| on specific host plants. The host plant is in decline hence
| the butterfly disappears.
|
| Weak species. Not "robust". The point that is being missed
| here is that the host plant is supposed to be widely
| available in any half-decent ecosystem. It isn't rare, would
| normally be widespread, and it has very low needs. Just a
| tiny bit of space and healthy soil.
|
| We're not wiping out specialists, we're wiping out the
| underlying habitat and ecosystem altogether.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland
| all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The
| insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last
| few decades. Unfortunately, we don't have enough historical
| data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you'd
| have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between
| cornfields. Now, nothing.
|
| This assumes that farming methods have remained identical
| since the 1950s or 70s, but they haven't. I don't know if the
| parent poster is correct, but I don't think is a good
| argument unless you also account for changes in agricultural
| practices in the last 50+ years.
| bmitc wrote:
| That is a very human-centric viewpoint and a very strange one
| at that. It's almost egocentric.
|
| Were big cats such as mountain lions and bobcats not robust
| enough in America? Because they've been eradicated due to
| habitat loss.
|
| Is it really a surprise that animals that have evolved over
| millions of years to fit within the balance of nature are
| having difficulty adapting in just decades to humanity's
| technology destruction of that balance? The fact that some
| are able to make it through that imbalance is not a
| justification.
|
| It's weird that you basically seem to blame evolution. And
| it's not just about specific populations. It's all about
| their interactions and relationships. We do not fully
| understand how all these things tie together as a system. So
| much of it is disappearing, we really have no idea what could
| happen to our ecosystems. For the most part, it cannot be
| good.
|
| I am in general seriously concerned about soil and insect
| health. We take leaves and grass and native plants off of
| land and then instead needlessly dump water and fertilizer in
| their place because what's left is not self-sustaining. It's
| literally the most wasteful process you can think of for
| managing land, and yet we do it in full force.
|
| I planted native plants and let things grow up in my yard
| this year, and it's amazing how popular the areas get with
| insects. This is just one year. Next year, I am hoping for
| much more, especially now that I know what I'm doing for the
| most part.
| pfdietz wrote:
| An additional problem for monarch butterflies is a pair of
| introduced species, both swallow-worts. These are in the
| milkweed family, and they induce the butterflies to lay eggs
| on them, but the caterpillars die after only a few days.
|
| I wonder how common this sort of thing is. Insects evolve to
| feed on certain plants, and not feed on others, but invasives
| could screw that up.
| vidanay wrote:
| DDT not DET
| data_maan wrote:
| > In 100-200 years it's likely the insects that survived will
| re-occupy new niches.
|
| Do you have any data to back this up?
|
| Also, the problem is that not many insects ARE going to
| survive.
|
| > The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the
| last few decades.
|
| This is probably outright misleading, since you don't have
| the data prior to those decades. The common mistake is that
| people use their own lifespan as a measure for things.
|
| ---
|
| Everybody talks about the gender pay gap and ethnic diversity
| these days, but biodiversity is not on the radar :(
| lettergram wrote:
| Regarding the niche comment. Look at any invasive species.
| Once it arrives within 10-20 years it can dominate the
| region it's in. Evolution occurs the same way; once
| something mutates in a way with competitive advantage it
| expands. With insects this can happen rapidly (because they
| lay so many eggs). I don't have it handy now, but we have
| examples of this in grasshoppers.
|
| Pesticide resistant insects are another example. Now, this
| assumes we don't keep altering pesticides, but we do. If we
| keep trying to reduce insect populations we can, so I don't
| think it'll happen unless we allow it to happen.
|
| As for the other comment, my point is really we have
| records showing massive amount of insects all throughout
| history until the introduction of pesticides. Even during
| the Great Depression in the US we had massive swarms of
| insects. Once pesticides were introduced at scale we
| noticed a decline in recorded swarms until now we don't
| even see them on windshields.
| donkeyd wrote:
| Wow, it's refreshing to see a Dutch person write down the
| impact of nitrogen as facts. Around me, its seems like slowly
| everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and
| whether it's something we need to care about. I'm starting to
| feel less at home in this country by the day because of it (and
| all the upside down flags consequently).
| leokennis wrote:
| 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.
| splitstud wrote:
| kdbeall_ wrote:
| Oh, so the Dutch government should expropriate their land?
| leokennis wrote:
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| Yes, draconian as that seems, they should.
| donkeyd wrote:
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| 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 soon as a tiny
| thing is asked of us to better the course, we resist like a
| maniac.
| donkeyd wrote:
| > as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the
| course
|
| Well, I also see a lot of people who do the tiny thing but
| not the big thing. Plenty of people around me are reducing
| their meat intake (and are vocal about it), because climate
| change, but still fly on airplanes, some multiple times a
| year. It's so incredibly frustrating that many people are
| just green washing their lives, but are oblivious to the
| fact they're not really doing much at all.
|
| I do have massive respect for the people I do know that
| have quit eating meat and are now doing all their travels
| by train.
| fleddr wrote:
| Respectfully, I think your take on this does not work.
|
| If before you have a frequent flyer that regularly eats
| meat, and next they stop eating meat, that is to be
| celebrated. It's still massive progress. Further, their
| footprint from flying may improve over time as airlines
| are investing in sustainability.
|
| From flying 3 times a year to 2 times a year is big
| progress. From eating lots of meat to somewhat less, is
| progress.
|
| By implying footprint perfection, it all becomes very
| reductive and people will reject it. With that mindset,
| you'll be able to find "dirt" on anyone. I mean, how very
| polluting must David Attenborough be?
|
| As for bettering the course regarding insects, I wasn't
| even suggesting CO2 reduction. Just introducing some
| small spaces where wildflowers can grow, and they will
| come. It takes almost nothing.
| donkeyd wrote:
| > From flying 3 times a year to 2 times a year is big
| progress.
|
| These people are going from 0-1 time a year to 2-3 times
| a year, because they're starting to earn more and can
| therefore take more trips. They are ignorant to the fact
| that's more wasteful than eating meat. This is typical
| personal green-washing, which is the part that annoys me.
|
| I understand that perfect is the enemy of good and I'm
| not implying that everyone should be perfect.
| munificent wrote:
| _> 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 were more and more
| ecologically focused on the long-term impacts of natural
| exploitation. Today I live in a dense metro area (Seattle)
| where I've never been around a greater concentration of
| nature-focused people.
| fleddr wrote:
| 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.
| naasking wrote:
| > Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to
| doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something
| we need to care about.
|
| I'm not sure why that's surprising. Our food supply depends
| on using nitrogen at the moment. You can't just ban it cold-
| turkey without transitioning to an alternative that doesn't
| threaten the food supply. Particularly with inflation issues,
| further destabilizing the food supply is insane at this time.
| The whole climate change agenda will be in jeopardy if this
| isn't handled well.
| ls15 wrote:
| > Our food supply depends on using nitrogen at the moment.
|
| And it always will, since all plants require nitrogen for
| growing.
| naasking wrote:
| Sure, but there might be better formulations that don't
| release as much nitrous oxide, which is the greenhouse
| gas of concern.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Although indoor vertical farming is going to be super expensive,
| it does have the possibility of huge benefits such as reducing
| contamination to the environment.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I like the idea of using genetic engineering to knock out
| certain species of pest, limited to the ones specialized to eat
| domesticated crops. You wouldn't need to spray a cornfield if
| the corn moth was no longer around.
|
| And, we could always keep a pristine population of the peat
| locked away in some vault if it turns out making them extinct
| in the wild was a bad idea.
| lb417 wrote:
| Monsanto.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I was thinking about this lack of bugs phenomenon when driving to
| my mom's house a few times over the past 3 or so months. It
| hasn't been the case for me this year. My car is covered with
| dead bugs, more than there used to be ~10 years ago. While I was
| there, I walked around at night (in a small midwestern town), and
| was constantly assaulted by bugs. Is pesticide use down with
| fertilizer use?
| christophilus wrote:
| I have a similar anecdote. I had to make a 5 hour drive this
| weekend up to Raleigh, NC, and for the first time in years, my
| windshield was dotted with bugs.
| [deleted]
| jshprentz wrote:
| Mark Hostetler's analysis of North American windshield splatters
| in 1997 is documented in his book, "That Gunk on Your Car: A
| Unique Guide to Insects of North America." He reports on two
| dozen types of insects, with photos of them splattered and
| intact. His work won the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for entomology [1].
|
| No time to read a whole book? Hostetler's son, Bryce, released a
| free iPhone/iPad app in 2018 [2].
|
| [1] https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig1997
|
| [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/that-gunk-on-your-
| car/id135275...
| callesgg wrote:
| Evolution.
|
| Insects that spend time on the open road have less chance of
| survival and reproduction than those that stay in their natural
| habitat.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| There is something to the aerodynamics of cars today, though
| unlikely the main driver.
|
| When I've towed a caravan it picks up a lot of bugs while the
| windscreen is relatively clean the entire trip. I drive a 7 year
| old vehicle.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Why? Because author lives in Washington DC. Move out of the city
| and you will have plenty of insect friends that are not
| cockroaches and drain flies.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Does anyone else remember the puddles in the road being full of
| worms after a good rainfall? I hardly see any of those anymore
| either.
| eden_hazard wrote:
| I remember that. I used to walk to school and would jump be
| looking down the entire time to avoid stepping on worms. Now I
| hardly see them.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| This is concerning because if it's affecting worms too, then
| it's not just airborne bugs landing on crops with
| insecticide. It means it's already soaked into the soil.
| jrd79 wrote:
| Regarding all the anecdotes, I would have said the same thing 8
| years ago when I moved to my current house in suburban
| Minneapolis. Then we had some landscaping done and added a bunch
| of planting beds to the otherwise boring grass-only yard. And my
| kids threw some milkweed seeds on a slope that is too steep to
| mow. Now we've got tons of bumblebees, honey bees, monarch
| butterflies, and other insects. I think the range of most insects
| is quite small, so maybe people who miss the bugs just need to
| plant a bit more in their yards :).
|
| Second point: the windshield splats proxy is too confounded to be
| useful. Use actual measurements or reasonable people will
| discount the claims (as I have done).
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222888
| alangibson wrote:
| I recently went back to my hometown in the USA after a couple of
| decades away. I was struck by how there we're almost none of the
| fireflies, grasshoppers and assorted other bugs I'd chased as a
| kid. I chalked it up to being a nostalgic old man, but I've never
| shaken that feeling that something is definitely not right.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Sad and frightening to hear. Funny though but here in southern
| Sweden and Denmark I've had the opposite experience.
|
| Sometime around 2018 I started noticing a lot of fireflies, in
| a park in the middle of a major city. Which was not normal to
| me. Since then I've noticed them almost every summer.
|
| And on vacation in Denmark it's the same thing, the air is
| alive with life. It has its downsides too because there are
| more ticks than ever too.
|
| A lot of cities here have started leaving grassy areas uncut,
| they just cut a path through it for people to walk on. Also
| Copenhagen has started building "walls" of twigs, encased in a
| wire mesh. These walls act as safe havens for all sorts of
| insects and small creatures.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. On hot summer evenings
| the fireflies were spectacular. The cooler summers of New
| England meant many fewer fireflies. But, in the past couple
| of years I have noticed more of them where I now live.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I was pleased to see fireflies returning after
| not seeing them post puberty. Not denying general trends at all
| but it makes me wonder what is the cause of counter examples.
| Maybe more neighbors not overgrooming their lawns or the local
| park's native species garden?
| mod wrote:
| In the case of fireflies, they lay eggs in leaf litter. So
| you need some unkempt properties or wild land.
| devmor wrote:
| I saw Fireflies for the first time two years ago after moving
| to the Southeast US.
|
| I saw very few last year. I saw zero this year. I'm glad I got
| to experience them before they were all gone, I guess.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Fireflies (we call them lightning bugs in the south)
| fluctuate yearly. Some years there are very few of them. It's
| always been like that from talking to relatives.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| My kids are 10 and 11 and the saw their first grasshopper
| last summer. They were everywhere when I was a kid. Christmas
| beetles are a rare find these days. I haven't seen a Bogon
| moth in years.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| 5G and emf seems reasonable but will they turn it off for a few
| years and find out? nope
| nemo44x wrote:
| Could be because you aren't there in the grass and fields
| actively looking for them. If you garden and spend time in it,
| it's amazing what you find.
| alangibson wrote:
| I noticed it in my grandmother's backyard, so that variable
| was controlled. Then I noticed it pretty much in all my old
| haunts. Sample size N = 1, etc.
| hiidrew wrote:
| This is terrible and makes me think of the unknown consequences
| that may occur from the death of an insect species, who knows.
|
| Side note: recently moved to the northeast and it has been
| fascinating seeing the city collectively come together to kill an
| invasive bug species. You will witness an adult randomly stomping
| on the corner of the street. I wish we had the same energy when
| it came to protecting existing bugs.
| quantumfissure wrote:
| Let me guess, the Spotted Lanternfly? They are all over here
| (SE PA).
|
| It was entertaining watching the old man (easily 85+) from my
| neighborhood walking around with a broom brushing them off
| trees and smashing them with his walker.
| once_inc wrote:
| > So in our little thought experiment, (...), our bugs-per-
| windshield metric would have been cut by two-thirds even if the
| number of bugs had remained constant. And it hasn't! It's fallen
| precipitously.
|
| This could also be a function of bugs flying less over busy
| roads, and decreasing in volume at the places where most cars
| drive. If so, that would explain the precipitous fall in splats.
| I do not think that this is very far-fetched, since most animals
| instinctively begin to shun areas when predators are introduced.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Previous related post (3 years ago):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18909650
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Aerodynamics, cars are far more aerodynamic now days.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I can attest that. I drive a Land Rover Defender which, you
| know, has the aerodynamics of a wall. It's full of bugs after
| driving on the highway for more than 30 minutes.
| Pephers wrote:
| Sadly, also in Denmark as the article mentions, I've only had
| to clean my windshield once this summer (by clean I mean
| scrubbing, I do use the windshield washer more often). 1995
| Defender.
|
| I only have to look outside at my neighbors winter wheat
| field to find one of the reasons. It's been sprayed 3 times
| already this fall after sowing.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Yeah, it's a pitty. But you do have to scrub it more than a
| normal care. I gave up having a clean wind shield.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I love defenders, I had a series 1 discovery that I simply
| loved, I was even able to successfully complete Hella Revenge
| in Moab with it 100% stock
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Are you from the US? Never thought anyone would drive them
| over there because they tend to need repairs quite often
| and not every shop wants to work on them. And also the
| thing with the spare parts.
|
| I got a TD5 though, so a bit more modern ;)
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Yeah. I bought mine because it was half the price of a
| similar year 4runner or similar. I ended up getting rid
| of it for the reasons you state, but had a blast with it
| while I had it.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| haha, had to be the reason. I would also love a 4Runner,
| love the look. But the mileage and the eletronics, apart
| from the fact that they aren't sold in Germany make it
| nearly impossible.
| boffinism wrote:
| How do you feel about the rebuttal to this claim in the
| article? Particularly the decline in licence plate splats?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It seems like they debunked my theory in the article,
| apologies
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Hey hypotheses are meant to be disapproved, it's an
| important part of the process.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| The article discusses this at length, concluding that it is not
| a major factor.
| hourago wrote:
| > Many smart people we spoke with, including entomologists and
| wheat farmers, speculated that maybe the cars have changed, not
| the bugs. As vehicles become more aerodynamic, the thinking
| goes, their increasingly efficient airflow whisks the bugs away
| from the windshield instead of creating head-on splatters.
|
| > But when we called experts in the arcane art of computational
| fluid dynamics, they sounded skeptical. Yes, today's sleek
| sedans can have half the drag of the land boats that ruled the
| road just a generation or two ago. But that improved airflow
| won't do much for a bug.
|
| > For starters, many aero improvements happen on the rear of
| the car rather than the bug-hitting front. Consider the
| optimally aerodynamic teardrop shape, with its blunt, round
| front and long, sleek tail. But more importantly, it's just
| surprisingly difficult to use air to push a bug out of the way
| of an onrushing Buick.
|
| > If it were possible to design a bug- and debris-proof car,
| then Kevin Golsch probably would have done it by now. An auto-
| industry veteran, Golsch has spent decades around wind tunnels,
| both real and simulated, and is now vice president for
| strategic fluid design and simulation at Altair, a global tech
| company that makes simulation and AI software. Altair's
| customers include massive automakers that would be thrilled if
| airflow could protect both windshields and the delicate sensors
| on self-driving cars.
|
| > "From an aerodynamic standpoint, I've done a lot of studies
| on contamination of sensors, especially for autonomous
| vehicles," Golsch said. "And I think most everybody's given up
| on trying to influence what happens at the vehicle level for
| dust and particles and rain."
|
| > Consider raindrops. They're about the size and weight of a
| larger insect, but nobody thinks fewer raindrops hit our
| windshields these days. Any forces that cleared our windshield
| of bugs would presumably do the same for rain and road debris,
| Golsch said.
|
| > To be sure, one element of modern auto design could be
| reducing bug spatter. Windshields today often have a lower
| slope than the more-vertical front windows of yesteryear, and
| while the broader shift to SUVs and trucks with bigger, steeper
| windshields will negate some of that, it might reduce splats
| for people who are driving similar vehicles.
|
| > "If the windshield was laid back slightly more than another
| windshield, that bug may have a chance of just skipping off and
| going up over the windshield rather than hitting the
| windshield," Golsch said. "It might be a glancing blow at the
| last second rather than a splat."
|
| > But we also saw 60 percent declines in insects between 2004
| and 2021 in a British study from the Kent Wildlife Trust, which
| built on a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds effort in
| which thousands of people used "splatometers" to measure bug
| splatters on license plates, which aren't much affected by
| aerodynamic advances elsewhere.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/pIgFD
| scottmckenzie wrote:
| Have a drive in New Zealand. Plenty of bugs. Butterfly season can
| be harsh.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I can attest that there has been zero slowdown in the prehistoric
| bug death on my windshield in Florida after any stretch of time
| on I-75.
|
| If you've never lived through the lovebug season here, consider
| yourself lucky
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Not just windshields, but the fronts of cars also. I doubt very
| much that aerodynamics accounts for much of it.
| mustafabisic1 wrote:
| I noticed that I didn't use "insect removal" mode on automatic
| car washes in like two years now. Even after long trips.
|
| Gotta say it's a bit scary. Together with air temperature in
| Bosnia being 27 degrees celsius, definitely rings some bad
| alarms.
|
| Totally a gut feeling, but those can be correct often.
| titzer wrote:
| It's partly due to mowing alongside highways and medians. That is
| primarily motivated by keeping the number of small animals down,
| reducing fire risk, and other reasons, but fewer tall grasses
| means drastically fewer bugs. Also, pesticides and general global
| insect decline. This is _not_ primarily due to aerodynamics.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's smart to keep it maintained for safety reasons, but that
| doesn't explain the full story - there's bound to be plenty of
| unkempt grassland and whatnot further away from the road where
| insect populations SHOULD be thriving.
| titzer wrote:
| > where insect populations SHOULD be thriving.
|
| Oh, I know. It's not looking good for bugs globally because
| of a lot of reasons.
| stinos wrote:
| _It 's partly due to mowing alongside highways and medians. ...
| fewer tall grasses means drastically fewer bugs_
|
| This is way too general: in some countries and alongside
| specific highways, the state of grasslands is actually really
| good. Like: good enough to grow rare orchids and having >10 or
| >20 plant species/square meter. Because of correct mowing
| regimes for that vegetation type.
|
| It also lacks nuance because as explained in another comment
| already: not mowing at all can make things worse. Which brings
| us to the tall grasses: meadows featuring a lot of tall grasses
| but hardly any other flowering plants have can have much less
| insects that meadows with a coverage of only like 20% grasses
| where the rest is taken by a diversity of flowering plants.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Anecdotally, my 25-year-old Range Rover, and the 10-year-old
| Landrover Defender (which hasn't changed its basic shape since
| the 1950s) we have at work pick up just as many bugs as cars did
| in the 1970s.
|
| The modern, sleek, aerodynamic cars we have don't pick up any
| bugs at all.
| snwt wrote:
| Neonicotinoids (pesticide coated seeds) started becoming popular
| around the same time that bees started mass dying (early 2000s).
|
| AFAIK, the effect of these pesticides on humans is limited, but
| it's been absolutely devastating for insects.
|
| There is not much profit to be made on insects (aside from bees),
| so research and bills are getting lobbied into limbo by the big
| four neonicotinoid companies and agriculture organizations.
| snwt wrote:
| Here's a documentary the subject: "Bayer and the Bees"
| https://youtu.be/UaNSByf4sLA
| rabuse wrote:
| My motorcycle helmet visor says otherwise. Rarely don't ever have
| them smeared all over, even on a shorter ride.
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