[HN Gopher] Bee and butterfly numbers are falling, even in undis...
___________________________________________________________________
Bee and butterfly numbers are falling, even in undisturbed forests
Author : pseudolus
Score : 317 points
Date : 2023-03-08 11:33 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| DeadMouseFive wrote:
| Because of glyphosate and similar chemicals. Petrochemical
| society will be the death of us all.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Environmentalists are like capitalists in that they always want
| the numbers going up. Growth, growth! Wherein reality, nature
| ebbs and flows.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Did that sound a lot better in your head or something?
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| It's only been ebbing lately.
| olivermuty wrote:
| The squashed bug studies along highways worries me almost even
| more. Where are all the insects going?
|
| I have been driving for exactly 21 years now. My first car I
| remember the drudge of cold soaking it through the summer to get
| off the layers of bugs.
|
| I don't see more than the odd bug on my current car through the
| summer.
|
| It is anecdotal, but it tracks the science and feels very real
| when it is so observeable personally too.
| aeternum wrote:
| It's the pesticides. Consider the world from the POV of an
| insect. Even if you're a bee, your metabolism is similar to
| other insect pests. There are huge fields of dense crops with
| plenty of pollen but if you partake, you die.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Couldn't evolution partially explain this? Bugs that avoid
| roads, cars, etc. would have an advantage. They'd be able to
| live longer, and be more likely to reproduce. Over time the
| bugs that get hit by cars would be replaced by the bugs who've
| adapted to not get hit by cars.
|
| Bugs reproduce pretty quickly, so this trait could have
| propagated pretty quickly.
| aksss wrote:
| I would also suspect that as people get older they are less
| adventurous in their driving habits. Your to/from work commute
| and grocery trips expose the ol' jalopy to a very different
| ecosystem than the road-trips you would do as a younger person
| looking for trouble/adventure/memories.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I remember it from my _parents_ driving, mostly. I haven 't
| cleaned my windshield at a gas station since something like
| 2006 or 2007, though it used to be needed constantly. I
| remember air so thick with insects that the space illuminated
| by the headlights was _alive_ --and that wasn't unusual. I
| haven't seen that since the 90s.
| olivermuty wrote:
| For me it is actually the opposite, I drive much more cross
| country now since I moved to other side of Norway and both me
| and my wifes family lives a 400km drive away.
| kyleyeats wrote:
| It's cars. You killed them all!
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments
| to HN?
| kyleyeats wrote:
| Sorry, just exasperated. It's like a plains settler
| throwing more buffalo skulls on the pile, then thoughtfully
| pontificating about why the piles have been getting smaller
| over the years.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I've read much of this is improved aerodynamics of cars that
| prevents the collisions.
| frereubu wrote:
| You may be partially right, but IIRC one of the studies which
| found a significant decrease was specifically taking bug
| samples from number plates rather than windscreens because
| number plates have been the same shape and in the same
| orientation for years.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Looking at the massive front grill of a modern truck or SUV I
| very much doubt this.
| dylan604 wrote:
| what does aerodynamics of cars have to do with modern truck
| or SUV?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| And actually those grills are deceptively well tuned.
| https://www.motortrend.com/news/2015-ford-f-150-is-most-
| aero...
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Non aerodynamic vehicles would have bugs squashed in them
| if aerodynamics was the main reason for lack of bugs
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| It's still an anecdote, but I've been driving the same truck
| for 15 years now. It definitely feels like I don't have to
| clean my windshield nearly as often as I used to in the
| summers.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Studies using the number plates, or old cars, have shown this
| is not the cause.
|
| Not to mention
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon
|
| "The research also found that modern cars, with a more
| aerodynamic body shape, killed more insects than boxier
| vintage cars"
| ROTMetro wrote:
| When we moved to the mountains my son really wanted to see a
| porcupine. I talked to an oldtimer forrester friend and he said
| that in the 60s/70s they sprayed to kill all the underbrush to
| make logging easier and that that changed the fauna quite a bit
| and that was when porcupine's became uncommon. I thought it sad
| we thought we were hiking through natural forests but they had
| been heavily changed by an expedited business practice from a few
| decades in the last century.
|
| We saw everything from otters and beavers to lynx, grizzlies and
| cougars in our journeys, but never a porcupine.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Interesting. I live in the city and I see porcupines just
| walking the dog. Usually they're up in oak trees. They seem
| well adapted to city life since they just need to live in and
| eat tree tops.
| EGreg wrote:
| This is far more pressing than the climate crisis, but people
| don't seem to prioritize it:
|
| One third of all arable farmland has become desertified in the
| last couple decades as people are in a race to the bottom (just
| as USA was in the Great Depression leading to the dust bowl)
|
| Biodiversity has plummeted as species go extinct, only to be
| replaced by farms and monocultures
|
| Insect populations are plummeting
|
| Forests are being decimated
|
| The boomer through millenial generations think they're smarter
| than previous ones but they are in fact like an irresponsible kid
| living on an ecological credit card, that their children will
| have to pay.
|
| Child mortality was solved but humanity was slow to adjust their
| birth rates to compensate for it.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Why does Gen X get a pass? lol
| irrational wrote:
| It's not called the forgotten generation for no reason.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Falling birth rates have little to do with child mortality and
| everything to do with child labor becoming less valuable due to
| legality as well as industrialization. Children became
| liabilities instead of assets to parents, parents had less
| kids. And the current problem is actually not enough people are
| going to be around to maintain the current economy of scale
| both in terms of production and consumption. The demographic
| cliff looming in Italy and China for instance will probably
| alleviate some of these environmental issues we are discussing,
| but at the cost of political instability.
| irrational wrote:
| > child labor becoming less valuable due to legality
|
| It's ironic you post this on the day that Governor Sarah
| Huckabee rolled back child labor laws.
| pc86 wrote:
| I'm curious how you can view this as separate from climate
| change and not inextricably linked.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| If climate change would be causing this then insects and
| butterfly would move into colder zones like many other
| animals and plants in fact do. Instead, they are disappearing
| everywhere. It is due to pesticides and monoculture
| agriculture.
| ars wrote:
| No, the two are quite different.
|
| Which is worse in your opinion: smoke, or CO2? (Defining
| smoke broadly.)
|
| It's a real question: Diesel motors make less CO2, but more
| smoke (of lots of types).
|
| Would you rather spray some pesticide on crops? Or would it
| be better to use an energy intensive tractor (lots of CO2) to
| handle the situation mechanically?
|
| The world currently is obsessed with CO2, and I think that's
| a huge mistake - the other types of pollution are worse.
| goatlover wrote:
| Because not everything is related to climate change. You have
| to show there's an "inextricable" link first.
| EGreg wrote:
| It may not have anything to do with the greenhouse gas effect
| and emission of fossil fuels.
|
| The desertification has to do with farmers planting too much
| and extracting all nutrients from the soil - same as happened
| in the 1930s which didnt have to do with cars and cows and
| methane in the atmosphere.
|
| The overfishing - same thing
|
| The collapse of insect populations is highly unlikely due to
| the slight aberage temperature changes or carbon
| concentrations in the atmosphere. It may be due to wireless
| radio signals, or light pollution, or pesticides and GMO
| plants.
|
| The collapse of kelp forests or bleaching of coral reefs also
| has less to do with acidification of the oceans, and more
| with local pollution and ecosystem collapse.
|
| The extinction of some species is due to hunting.
|
| And so on. You could say the anthopocene is behind all these
| things -- but that is not the same as saying that climate
| change is CAUSING these things.
|
| If A (human activity) is causing B and C, and nearly all we
| talk about is C, then it is valid to say that B is more
| pressing, and that we should focus on A causing B. The
| response that "C is linked to B" is not enough because C
| doesn't cause B and talking about C doesn't do anything to
| stop B.
| pohl wrote:
| FTA:
|
| _The team suspects climate change may be warming the
| region and affecting bee and possibly butterfly survival._
| ars wrote:
| You are unlikely to find a biology paper that _doesn 't_
| say that.
|
| If it were true there should be an equivalent change in
| insect population as you move north/south.
| all2 wrote:
| Or shifting biodiversity as new species move into a now
| warmer region, rather than net decline.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > The boomer through millennial generations
|
| I'm a millennial, this is the first time I've personally
| noticed my own generation sharing the blame and it makes me
| defensive. I suppose it's true enough though.
|
| I do vote on these issues, and I do what little I can for the
| environment; I don't use pesticides on my 100 square foot farm
| (more commonly called a "garden"). So long as we're on the
| topic of blaming entire generations though -- will more than
| 30% of Gen Z join us in voting any time soon? We could use the
| votes.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| The power of naming.
|
| Where I am, we don't have these poppy names for The
| Generations: people are just younger and older. As a
| consequence (perhaps), there's less boxing of people into
| clearly delineated (like Millenial: roughly born 1980-1998 or
| something) groups for other groups to piss and moan about.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Millennials are every bit as good as the boomers for having a
| blizzard of excuses about why they can't possibly be
| inconvenienced, it just sounds a bit more nuanced. This
| website is full of it.
|
| And the idea that voting does anything real is kind of cute,
| that's literally the least you can do and should take all of
| 5 minutes every couple of months these days.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Millennials are every bit as good as the boomers for
| having a blizzard of excuses about why they can't possibly
| be inconvenienced, it just sounds a bit more nuanced. This
| website is full of it.
|
| The idea that this problem is solvable by individuals
| changing their behavior when there is a vast ocean of money
| being deployed to keep everything (roughly) the same is
| pretty laughable. Changing the behaviour of a large
| population first requires them to agree on what the problem
| is in the first place. "Energy" interests have done a good
| job of clouding the issue and providing enough plausible
| deniability for continuing the status quo.
|
| Here's a relevant example: a generation of people have been
| convinced to recycle - but those efforts were largely
| wasted because the collected material was shipped to China
| (!) and sometimes dumped in the ocean (!!). So individuals
| did their part, but "the system" is still going to optimize
| for cost-efficiency and not for environmental impact.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| No way, man! You just have to do things like recycle
| plastic... not wait, that was a propaganda campaign by
| the plastic industry in order to market plastic as being
| more long-term viable for the environment and
| "sustainability".
|
| Well, you can reduce your carbon footprint!... wait,
| British Petroleum invented that slogan, didn't they...
| lamontcg wrote:
| > The idea that this problem is solvable by individuals
| changing their behavior
|
| I don't think that individuals can solve climate change
| without having government and corporations change.
|
| But governments and corporations won't ever change
| without action by individuals to pressure them to change.
|
| Activism on the part of individuals turning into
| collective action is the kind of thing that would produce
| actual change, not actions like plastic recycling.
|
| But again there's a failure of the Millennial generation
| for you. You've figured out the individual actions which
| don't work and which you've been led down an alley by
| moneyed interests into thinking they're effective, but
| you have no answers to effecting change past pointing
| blame.
| kornhole wrote:
| I know its a drop in the bucket, but I hope this can inspire more
| drops in the bucket. I tend my yard with plenty of plants that
| make food and habitat for bees and butterflies. This includes
| native milkweed for the monarchs, carrots, fennel, and parsley
| for the swallowtails, and many other flowering plants for the
| bees. Chemical warfare is completely banned from my property. All
| kinds of insects are here and in balance providing food for the
| rest of the ecosystem.
| gE6n9m wrote:
| This is the way. I'm going to do the same even though I only
| have a balcony. I was thinking of building a fountain for birds
| too to help them cool down and bath in the dreadful hot days.
| That's the least I can do.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > I know its a drop in the bucket
|
| No. It's a hobby.
|
| If I set up my own email server, I'm not fighting the Gmail
| Dominance. I'm pursuing a hobby.
| mattwest wrote:
| Are you saying that intermittent pollinator gardens don't
| serve to bolster the ecological network? Because that would
| be wrong. Every bit helps and even small gardens have a large
| impact.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| If 10 million people set up their own e-mail servers, yes,
| you're fighting GMail. It starts somewhere.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| Same. Milkweed and goldenrod are really beautiful plants.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's almost as if we have spent 50 years ignoring and
| accelerating climate change...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Why just fifty years?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Before 50 years ago, it was at least debatable whether
| everyone knew. Now everyone knows. And has for at least a
| generation.
|
| You fuck things up without realizing, then you get to be
| surprised they're fucked up. You spend 50 years doing it
| knowingly, you don't get to act shocked when insects numbers
| are plummeting and once per century forest fires are
| happening every year and France gets zero rain for all of
| Feb...
|
| Welcome to the new normal. The one we all knowingly ordered.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Drop in insect and butterfly numbers has nothing to do with
| climate change. It is due to pesticides being pumped in
| unprecedented quantities into nature and monoculture
| agriculture.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It doesn't have "nothing" to do with climate change. Climate
| change probably contributes to habitat loss as weather
| becomes less favourable for some species in areas where they
| could probably survive before.
|
| Pesticide use the is cost you pay for cheap food, meat heavy
| diets, and other benefits of living in "western" society.
| Sure we could grow food without pesticides, but it would cost
| more. It might also require more land - which would probably
| also impact insect populations.
| dathinab wrote:
| > undisturbed forests
|
| there are no really undisturbed forests
|
| rain and winds brings contamination into the most remote corners
| of the world
|
| for example the Aral Sea has not dust but salt storm, to top it
| of they are highly toxic due to extrem over use of pesticides
| upstream and toxines from there have been fund as far away as in
| snow in Sweden (probably further away too, I just don't
| remember).
|
| another example dust from the Sahara somewhat frequently get
| carried as far as Germany
|
| and climate warming affects remote regions too
| cwkoss wrote:
| Sahara dust feeds the Amazon rainforest
| https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| background on political action in the USA and elsewhere
|
| https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/the-death-of-environmen...
| lproven wrote:
| 6 upvotes and no comments for the single most important story on
| HN for the year so far.
|
| To quote a poster:
|
| A smiling bee says, "When we go, we're taking you with us!"
|
| The ongoing human-caused insect apocalypse signals that the same
| is coming for humanity. Most flowering dicotyledonous plants
| don't make fruits or seeds without pollinating insects.
|
| There goes many human crops. There go the forests that catch and
| slowly release rainwater to irrigate those crops. There goes much
| of on-land CO2 absorbtion and capture. Here comes the big
| dustbowl, there goes the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, goodbye to
| every coastal town and city in the world.
| stinos wrote:
| _Most flowering dicotyledonous plants don 't make fruits or
| seeds without pollinating insects_
|
| Is it really 'most' (I honestly don't know, I've never
| considered only looking at dicotyledonous plants)?
|
| In any case: I'm very well aware of how dramatic the decline
| is, but imo there are more than enough 'if all the bees die we
| die as well' memes out there and perhaps it's a pet peeve of
| mine but that's a correlation at best and it ignores so many
| nuances it's not funny anymore (not that it ever was, but you
| get the point). It's HN so let's not ignore all other
| pollinators (wasps, flies, butterflies, moths, beetles, bats,
| spiders, birds, ... in no particular order - and of which I
| know many people actually go like 'erm, what, bats?'), nor that
| there's also wind pollation, and also not the fact that there's
| a bunch of crops whos yield doesn't depend on pollinators at
| all and another bunch who'd see dercreased yield without
| pollinators but not quite zero.
| lproven wrote:
| My point was merely that bees are the charismatic
| pollinators. The ones people know.
|
| Yes, there are many others. Most of them are in rapid decline
| too. For instance bats have "white nose syndrome" causing
| mass die-offs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-
| nose_syndrome
|
| Birds are dying in droves worldwide.
|
| N America: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1805123115
| https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/
|
| France: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-bird-populations-
| french-countr...
|
| Compare with amphibians, also collapsing worldwide: https://w
| ww.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/c-di...
|
| Almost all wild mammals are gone bar a few percent:
| https://xkcd.com/1338/
|
| It is a sweeping generalisation, and so are dicots vs
| monocots.
|
| But the familiar monocots are grasses, which are wind-
| pollinated. Many dicots are wind-pollinated, including a lot
| of temperate zone trees, but the familiar useful ones are,
| generalising wildly, insect-pollinated.
|
| Non-angiosperms (gymnosperms, ferns etc.) are either wind
| pollinated, or don't make pollen and reproduce via spores,
| often via an intermediate sexual generation.
|
| As has often been noted, after WW3, the mosses will be fine.
| eimrine wrote:
| >> Most flowering dicotyledonous plants don't make fruits or
| seeds without pollinating insects
|
| > Is it really 'most' (I honestly don't know, I've never
| considered only looking at dicotyledonous plants)?
|
| Flowering plants is way smaller domain than dicos plants and
| flowers use insects (or lucky burst of wind) as the only way
| to make a new organism, I mean a new DNA.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Yes ! However, Conifers are not part of that group, and
| therefore "less" affected.
| Maken wrote:
| To be fair, I do not think many people here (or anywhere) is
| qualified enough to have an informed opinion in the matter.
|
| In fact, the lack of entomologists (a boring, unexciting field
| of study for most of us) may be the cause of how seemly late
| the complete wipe-out of all insect life is being reported.
| Last time this happened, it was killing the birds and people
| noticed it much much earlier.
| belorn wrote:
| There are a few scary solutions if it ever came to the point
| where insect population would start to seriously harm
| pollination for forests and human crops. We can always start
| engineering and breeding insects that are more resistant to
| global warming.
|
| What we will never know for certain is what the long term
| effect will be if we start to do this.
| goatlover wrote:
| It has more votes now that it's been posted several hours, but
| why would it be more important story than recent AI advances on
| a hacker news site?
| ourlordcaffeine wrote:
| Well surely conifer forests will be fine as they are wind
| pollinated
| dtx1 wrote:
| > But what about the poor SUV drivers? And all this green stuff
| is gonna make us poor!
|
| That's basically been the reaction of the boomer generation I
| heard when talking about the looming eco disaster. When getting
| decent bicycle infrastructure in cities is impossible because
| half the population does not only doesn't care but actively
| opposes any change we can forget about changing any of this.
| It's going to happen.
|
| The question then becomes: What can we do to deal with that?
| How can we replace the polinators?
| lproven wrote:
| I don't think we will, TBH.
|
| I am colossally pessimistic but at the rate we are going, I
| think we are heading for between 4-70 C of warming this
| century, 5-10m of sea level rise, the extinction of 95%+ of
| species, and a small remnant of humanity, maybe a few million
| people, living at the poles, after the collapse of our
| technological civilisation.
|
| We're not going to have time to invent magic mini flying
| robots to do pollination when the bees are all dead.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Thats unrealistic. Sure, some countries are going to become
| unlivable for humans, afghanistan, pakistan etc. but large
| parts of now permafrost will become habitable in exchange.
| And there are also many plants that dont rely on
| polinators.
| urfullofsht wrote:
| [dead]
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Latitude isn't as good as altitude for avoiding warming.
| They'll all be perched on the tops of mountain ranges
| hoping for rain.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| What you are witnessing is simply resignation.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Huh I thought we don't know why they are dieing yet.
| lproven wrote:
| It's a question of which causes are the more important ones.
| For example, the rise in Varroa mites is probably a secondary
| effect caused by insecticides, but which insecticides? Colony
| collapse disorder is a thing, but nobody is 100% sure what is
| causing it yet.
|
| So the scientists say "we don't know". Which is true... but
| it is very clear _who_ is causing it. It 's us. Humans. It
| doesn't really matter if it's the chemicals that we make in
| the millions of tonnes specifically to kill insects, or the
| ones we make in the billions of tonnes to do other things
| which happen to kill insects, or the ones we accidentally
| create as byproducts which happen to kill insects, or whether
| it's because we're destroying the wilderness that they need
| to survive, or it's something we don't know yet.
|
| E.g. vultures in India are doing very badly. It's humans, but
| it's by accident.
|
| Some Indian religions practice "air burial". They let
| vultures eat the bodies.
|
| Dying people often feel unwell. They take painkillers.
| Paracetamol is cheap. India is poor. People take a lot of
| paracetamol and then some of them die.
|
| Paracetamol is toxic to vultures.
|
| It's still humans, but it's indirect and accidental, but it's
| 100% our fault.
| macinjosh wrote:
| It is a fallacy to say scientists don't know what is
| causing it but they/we know its humans for sure! Huh?
| What?! That don't make no damn sense. You got to know
| something before you know it, you know?
|
| In your vulture example we know why the vultures died so we
| can tie it to a human behavior. We don't know why the bees
| die or what the deal is with the mites so we can't tie it
| to human behavior. You are still making a leap of faith, no
| matter how logical or likely it seems or in fact is.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| While I agree that it's probably likely that humans are the
| cause I disagree with you outright stating humans are. I
| can still see some non-human probable causes like an
| undiscovered disease in or multiple species.
| mattwest wrote:
| This is accurate, yet most people read one headline or listen
| to a glib podcast and think they know all the answers.
|
| Colony collapse is real but there are numerous theories
| around why.
|
| https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2023/03/03/beepocalypse-m.
| ..
| nerdponx wrote:
| > 6 upvotes and no comments for the single most important story
| on HN for the year so far.
|
| I have nothing to say. I feel powerless and robbed of my own
| future by my parents' generation.
|
| Forget the dustbowl, if we can't pollinate crops, we will all
| either starve or kill each other long before the rest of the
| ecosystem collapses.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| > I have nothing to say. I feel powerless and robbed of my
| own future by my parents' generation.
|
| Beware, O Sinner, for Who Promises You a Tomorrow?
|
| --St. Alphonsus of Ligouri
|
| Just as we pretend the heat death of the universe shall never
| arrive and that time (billions upon billions of years is
| inconceivable to the human mind) we pretended it an infinity,
| never truly paying heed that there would be a last generation
| or that we might be among them.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > by my parents' generation
|
| This is at least unfair. Our parents were people just like
| us, trying to survive in this world, sometimes against all
| odds, having very limited information, and sacrifice a lot
| for their children.
|
| On the other hand, there were some very specific people who,
| through their greediness, and often in spite of the
| information they had, proceeded with their plans destroying
| Earth natural resources and so on. But these people can be
| found in every generation, not just in the one of our
| parents.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| We mechanically pollinate plants all the time, it's not the
| end of our ability to feed ourselves. I think people are
| ignorant to and are overestimating how difficult it is to
| make pollen blow in the air or transfer using mechanical
| means.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| tfourb wrote:
| Please spend a few minutes researching pollination before
| just assuming that "technology" can solve a process that is
| handled by nature after billions of years of specialization
| by thousands of types of insects on thousands of different
| types of plants, trillions of times every year. Just hand
| waving some "mechanical means" is stuff that gets
| civilizations killed.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It's definitely a problem and we need to develop
| technical solutions as workarounds since there is an
| inability to get political traction to do the most
| optimal thing.
| parthianshotgun wrote:
| But but we're hackers! Surely we could tinker and hack
| our way to solving this, maybe with AI or crypto, or, now
| stay with me here, both!
| jwozn wrote:
| I was going to make a joke about bees on the blockchain,
| but it looks like it's actually a real idea...
|
| https://urbanbeelab.org/projects/the-future-of-food-
| saving-t...
| pseudolus wrote:
| There have been stories documenting how the decline of bee
| populations has necessitated the introduction of hand-
| pollination. [0] Hand-pollination seems both tedious and
| difficult to scale. Mechanical pollination might be viable
| in some environments but basically it amounts to
| extensively paying for something that historically has been
| free.
|
| [0] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/life-without-
| bees-h...
| Kye wrote:
| It costs money to rent or maintain bees used in
| agriculture, but it's probably still cheaper.
| stuven wrote:
| ... how much are you willing to stake on that assumption?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| What other options are working? Geopolitics isn't
| changing anytime soon.
| rcme wrote:
| You can pollinate crops using bees kept in captivity. Many
| crops are pollinated this way.
| ambientenv wrote:
| "You can pollinate crops using bees kept in captivity. Many
| crops are pollinated this way." ... as much as I may
| appreciate the sentiment, it seems to me that we - the
| global we - have become adept at finding band-aid solutions
| (especially when it involves technology) to symptoms but
| rarely address and attempt to fix the actual causal
| factors, i.e. the problem. I would hazard to guess this is
| for primarily two reasons. First and foremost, it requires
| grass roots and pervasive change - change in values,
| behaviours, beliefs - and change is often difficult.
| Second, there appears to exist a pervasive view that sees
| us humans as outside of nature rather than an integral and
| dependent part of the whole.
| tfourb wrote:
| Most crops are not. Many plants rely on specific insects
| for pollination. And domesticated honey bees can never hope
| to match the rest of the insect world in numbers.
| rch wrote:
| Mason bees, for instance, do ~3x the pollination work
| per-bee, and are relatively easy to accommodate in any
| garden or yard:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_bee
|
| This doesn't make the overall collapse in biodiversity
| and insect biomass any less serious.
| rcme wrote:
| You wouldn't need domesticated bees to match the rest of
| the insect world's numbers. You'd just need to enough to
| pollinate crops. And bees can pollinate many, many
| different types crops. Also, you can always pollinate by
| hand if need be, which is how vanilla in Madagascar is
| pollinated. I'm not saying declining insect numbers are
| good, I'm just saying worrying about a crop-apocalypse is
| probably unfounded.
| morelisp wrote:
| If every foodstuff costing as much per flower as vanilla
| - a spice usable in famously small quantities - isn't a
| crop-apocalypse, what is?
| tptacek wrote:
| Human crops are generally pollinated by livestock bees, not
| feral pollinators.
|
| If we depended principally on natural produce, most of us would
| have starved to death long ago. Forget about the bees; just
| think about the Haber-Bosch process.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I had read about the company Beemunity a while back.
| https://scitechdaily.com/beemmunity-pollen-sized-technology-...
|
| > An early version of the technology - which detoxified a widely-
| used group of insecticides called organophosphates - is described
| in a new study, "Pollen-Inspired Enzymatic Microparticles to
| Reduce Organophosphate Toxicity in Managed Pollinators,"
| published on May 20, 2021, in Nature Food. The antidote delivery
| method has now been adapted to effectively protect bees from all
| insecticides, and has inspired a new company, Beemmunity, based
| in New York state.
|
| The company (I think it's the same company) currently makes
| flower pots to attract and feed native bees, and they make food
| bricks that help boost bee immunity and robustness. Still a small
| company, and frequently out of stock.
|
| You can click through the "health action" drop downs on their
| lickbrick page to see what each of the ingredients do.
| https://www.beemmunity.co/lickbrick
| xnx wrote:
| Loss of biodiversity follows directly from and is a much bigger
| deal than typical "climate change" headline
| aeternum wrote:
| Why has massive biodiversity losses at multiple previous points
| in earth's history always resulted in an even larger subsequent
| explosion of biodiversity?
| jemmyw wrote:
| It opens the space for less well adapted creatures to evolve
| into and adapt. For a short time (on an evolutionary
| timescale) you get a much larger variety of adaptation
| strategies until the best ones win out.
|
| Unless humanity completely erases life on earth I'm sure
| it'll bounce back. There's still time ahead, although not as
| much as there was behind. However, I'd rather we destroyed
| less and restored more, at least in my lifetime, so we could
| enjoy its existence.
| jt2190 wrote:
| There _could_ be a new explosion of biodiversity, but it
| might exclude humans.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| that's if our species is one of the few that survive the
| extinction event
| mellavora wrote:
| An explosion which sometimes, but not always, includes
| vertebrates.
|
| And which usually happens on a time scale which most of us
| would consider "long"
| xnx wrote:
| I lament we've been given this amazing Eden filled with
| boundless flora and fauna -the complexity and beauty of which
| we can barely comprehend- and we're trading it in for parking
| lots and shiny baubles.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| "You know what I love most about Mars? They still dream. We
| gave up. They're an entire culture dedicated to a common
| goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into
| a garden. _We had a garden and we paved it._ "
|
| -- Franklin Degraaf, The Expanse S1E3
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/TheExpanse
| macinjosh wrote:
| IMO, because the "tournament" of evolution between competing
| species comes to place where "winners" are declared, they
| live. Losers die off. While lamentable, this opens the field
| for the next round of competitors to fill the voids left by
| the losers which drives more diversity and the process
| repeats itself.
| zizee wrote:
| I don't know the answer to that, but I can say that you and I
| are likely to be long gone before any explosion in
| biodiversity will occur. It won't happen for many tens of
| thousands of years (probably many millions).
|
| People often seem to think the whole climate change is
| worrying about the earth and all the animal life. The earth
| will be fine, individual animals will hardly notice (they
| have much more immediate concerns most of the time, like
| being eaten).
|
| It's humanity that is going to suffer, with the risk of many
| of our highly optimised systems becoming unsuited to task
| (think many cities and food production needing to shift,
| leading to starvation/conflict).
| yongjik wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, after the End-Permian Extinction:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Triassic
|
| > Early Triassic faunas lacked biodiversity and were
| relatively homogeneous due to the effects of the extinction.
| The ecological recovery on land took 30 million years.
|
| I guess it eventually works out if you are willing to wait
| very, very long.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| tell that to mar's climate
| twiddling wrote:
| life finds a way, but it does over longer time spans than
| individual human life spans
| everdrive wrote:
| Because the cause of the loss has been temporary. Will this
| one be temporary as well? I hope so.
| snozolli wrote:
| _Five times between 2007 and 2022, researchers surveyed the
| insects in three forested areas in the Oconee National Forest in
| northern Georgia._
|
| That's it? Just one forest in a single US state?
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| There have been other studies like this done in other parts of
| the world, they all have come to similar conclusions. Here was
| one conducted in Germany from 1990-2017:
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| Here's another one that shows a significant decline in Puerto
| Rico:
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1722477115
| pc86 wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that this "undisturbed" forest is
| barely an hour away from the third-fastest growing metro area
| in the country.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| How many forests have you surveyed over the past 15 years?
|
| The tricky thing about science is that it only gets done by
| actually doing things...
| snozolli wrote:
| _How many forests have you surveyed over the past 15 years?_
|
| What's the point of this question? I can't be skeptical
| unless I've personally conducted the same research?
|
| _The tricky thing about science is that it only gets done by
| actually doing things..._
|
| Doubling down on the snark. Why? What do you imagine this
| adds to the conversation?
|
| I have no problem with the study, but I do have a problem
| with the headline, barring the citation of similar studies in
| other areas.
|
| At least the other guy who replied mentioned studies in other
| areas. Your comment added nothing of value whatsoever.
| pb7 wrote:
| Doesn't matter because he's not the one making grand
| assertions. It's ok to criticize research, especially when
| it's limited.
| goatlover wrote:
| Yeah, but if that's used to draw a more general conclusion
| about populations in other forested areas, that's not good
| science, or journalism (more likely).
| pphysch wrote:
| "undisturbed forests" don't mean much to pollinators if 100% of
| surrounding basins and meadows have been turned into toxic
| farms/ranches
| cryptonector wrote:
| In Texas you can have three beehives in your backyard. And if you
| have a few acres you can have pretty much as many as you can
| sustain. I've beehives. It's super fun to care for my bees!
| alyx wrote:
| Maybe they are just moving to beyond-the-ice-wall.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I cannot disagree with this. When I was young not a day went by
| were I did not see some butterflies in the summer and autumn.
| Even in the small City where I grew up.
|
| Now that I think of it, I have not even seen a butterfly in many
| years, this includes hiking it the woods.
|
| What a shame, well with global warming and the powers that be
| still doubling down on fossil fuels, a big correction is probably
| on its way, similar to this story posted here earlier about tree
| roots. We had 50+ years to do something about climate change, as
| usual profits came first.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054175
|
| (edit, fixed the link, paste issue)
| ladyattis wrote:
| I remember in the 80s that there were bees all over the grounds
| at my elementary school, they had dandelions, clover, and a few
| other weed/grass species in the mix but bees went whole hog on
| them. About a decade ago I went back to that school during
| summer and noticed not a single bee was around the grounds.
| It's wild how fast insects are dying off these days. Heck, I
| remember summers in my hometown where it was a bad idea for me
| to be out since mosquitos would bite me furiously but now I
| rarely see them.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Not butterfly- or bee-related, but growing up in the suburbs of
| Toronto in the 70s (hence, an urban environment), I remember
| seeing several grasshoppers per day in our neighborhood during
| the summer. These days, I'm lucky to have seen a single
| grasshopper in the past several years, and I spend a lot of
| time in nature. Very sad and disconcerting.
| vondur wrote:
| Weirdly enough, it seems like the last few years here in SoCal
| I've seen more butterflies than normal. I've seen more bees
| than normal, but I've planted some native plants that they seem
| to love.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I don't doubt numbers are declining. Yet, where I live in the
| suburbs outside a city in the US northeast, I see bees,
| butterflies, and fireflies all the time when it's warm out.
| There was a time period when I didn't. But I may not have been
| as observant then.
| userabchn wrote:
| You single out only fossil fuels, but there are so many other
| ways in which we are damaging the environment that we also need
| to worry about - PFAS everywhere, noise and light pollution,
| pesticides and many other chemicals in rivers, expanses of
| monocultures, etc. It concerns me that there is so much
| fixation on one form of harm, which I fear may result in less
| attention to the many others that we are inflicting.
| webdood90 wrote:
| I would argue that literally every single issue you mentioned
| is a consequence of fossil fuels
| CalRobert wrote:
| Ammonia from dairy operations doesn't help.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Here's one that I don't think people are even considering.
|
| I've seen insects flying repeatedly into brightly colored non
| flower objects. They get stuck doing it.
|
| So even something as simple as a small piece of colored
| fabric can throw bees off and there's no such thing as a
| forest so untouched that there isn't some human left object
| in it.
|
| Brightly colored objects are more common than ever too.
| mc32 wrote:
| There are lots of speculative culprits and maybe it's a
| combination, but we won't get anywhere unless we find out
| which ones are responsible for fouling habitability by
| desirable insects and selectively addressing those
| pollutants.
|
| If it's, for example, fertilizers... it would not be likely
| we pull back on farming output with resulting starvation in
| other countries that depend on affordable agricultural
| products in a global market (yes, we rich countries can
| afford a 2x or 3x cost of food, but not people in poor
| countries from which in a global economy we'd be sucking up
| their agricultural production and outbidding the locals.
| dylan604 wrote:
| i'm building a couple of planter boxes in my backyard
| specifically to plant native wild flowers. it will merely be a
| drop in the bucket, but it's what i can do where i'm at
| currently. i'm hoping to see any type of insect attraction. i
| have a running water fountain that i see bees coming to drink,
| so i'm really hoping wild flowers will attract them as well as
| the butterflies.
| [deleted]
| mplanchard wrote:
| Echoing someone else, I live in the heart of Austin and
| generally rarely see bees/butterflies, but last year we planted
| a bunch of native wildflowers in the yard and we had a) an
| absolutely beautiful explosion of color, and b) TONS of bees
| and butterflies hanging out all day in the flowers. So,
| regardless of where you are, I think it's worth planting some
| native plants to give the little guys somewhere to hang out.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Saw six butterflies last night while walking in a highly
| developed area. I'll probably see six more tonight. Are
| anecdotes really how we want to measure this?
| Natsu wrote:
| Lucky. I haven't been seeing anything for a long time and due
| to old habits from studying entomology, I habitually identify
| any butterfly I see. I can tell a Monarch from a Viceroy at a
| distance just because the latter flies differently.
|
| I haven't seen either one since early covid, when they were
| suddenly more common for whatever reason.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Are anecdotes really how we want to measure this?"
|
| Anecdotes aren't always bad, or even inappropriate. We're on
| an internet forum having a casual discussion so my
| expectations for intellectual rigor are quite low.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| No, anecdotes are unreliable.
|
| It would be better to do a systematic study, and publish the
| results in a scientific journal like _Current Biology_. Then
| maybe to help get the word out, publish a summary on a
| website like _Science_.
| kilgnad wrote:
| Anecdotes have a degree of unreliability and a degree of
| reliability. Outright dismissing an anecdote as completely
| baseless and invalid is highly, highly unwise and a sign
| that the person is not logical.
|
| First off, anecdotes have extreme speed. You can get some
| sort of answer much faster and at a hugely lower cost then
| a "study".
|
| Second, studies are not to be trusted either. There's huge
| incentive to doctor these things and with the replication
| crisis this "doctoring" has been shown to be common place.
|
| Third, even an "honest" study can be wildly off depending
| on the data gathered and most of the time these studies
| only find correlative associations rather then causative
| (most people don't even know how to conduct a causative
| experiment).
|
| A good example of this is smoking Cannabis and Tobacco.
| Depending on the time both were deemed healthy to consume
| by research via multitudes of biased research and and a
| lack of unbiased studies.
|
| But with a little anecdotal common sense it's easy to see
| that breathing burnt plants into your lungs is likely just
| bad overall.
| jxramos wrote:
| I wonder if some DIY computer vision video set on such a
| planter box of native flowers could be some indication if
| sufficiently crowdsourced.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yes we should be sharing anecdotes.
|
| The charts going down to the right and the maps showing
| territory shrinking are both important. That's why they're
| posted here frequently.
|
| It's also important to remember what those charts and maps
| _mean_ , which is future generations having magic and beauty
| and wonder _stolen_ from them. The destruction of the
| environment is heartbreaking on its own, but the destruction
| of _the human experience_ is a whole additional layer of
| tragedy.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| We have also added to the human experience. We are able to
| fly above the clouds at hundreds of miles an hour, an
| experienced that throughout human history was in the realm
| of legends and stories about gods. I can also talk and
| video conference with relatives living thousands of miles
| away.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| What an experience that is! Crammed between people and
| hardly being able to move for hours while significantly
| contributing to CO2 and noise pollution just so you can
| sit indoors in a remote place for work or at a beach for
| fun which you could've just done localy for pretty much
| the same experience
| irrational wrote:
| You think most people have nice warm beaches locally?
| pb7 wrote:
| >Crammed between people and hardly being able to move for
| hours
|
| Do you know why it's so cramped? To maximize the number
| of people on the flight and therefore reduce the per-
| passenger carbon emissions and cost.
|
| I can tell you've never traveled if you think every place
| is like every other. The creek in your podunk town is not
| the same as the beaches in French Polynesia.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Cool, go ahead and share those anecdotes too.
|
| I have a strong suspicion if our descendants learn that
| we traded butterflies for 9 hour plane flights for
| business meetings that are completely feasible over the
| Internet, they'll think very poorly of us.
| pb7 wrote:
| I can confidently say the majority of fliers are not
| traveling for work. This is a strawman.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Where did I say it was?
|
| My position is that every day people make tradeoffs
| without even considering what those tradeoffs are,
| because the benefits are so immediate and local while the
| costs are externalized both in time and space.
|
| It's important to connect everyday decisions (and their
| _real_ benefits) to their externalized costs (which are
| also real, and probably ~impossible to recover once
| incurred).
|
| Once our cohabitants are gone, they're likely gone
| _forever._ We have no reason to believe we 'll ever be
| able to recover a meaningful portion of them. Ecosystems
| are astoundingly complex and the more we learn about
| them, the more we learn how subtle they are.
| CalRobert wrote:
| But that's an anecdote....
| twiddling wrote:
| But hey we have got a lot of brown marmorated stink bugs now!
| craig_s_bell wrote:
| Don't forget their (slightly less dopey) cousins, the boxelder
| bugs.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-08 23:00 UTC)