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Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after insects count drop 75% over 25 years

Vuci

Member
I have seen (and beem bittem by) more mosqitos this year then the last 10 years combinded. I have also seen more flies amd bees in the last week then I have seen all year. I dont douvt the claim, but man it has been anbanner year for flying bugs around me it seems.

Mystery solved!
 
Definitely not in Australia.
When I went to school in Australia, in the city, flies in summer were everywhere, kids got pretty good at catching them, for torture of course.
But now, at least in Sydney, a day featuring the great Australian wave is pretty rare.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Nah. The solution is to do vertical indoor farming. It improves production, creates less waste, and doesn't affect ecological habitats.

Don't know why you suddenly go fo the most extreme solution when there's alternatives.

That's kinda what soylent is. Not the movie version but the book and real life product version.

That's a tough sell even to vegans.

I'd like to believe GMO tech can solve the pesticide problem but we all know how held back that is.

As a vegan, I'd be willing to go soylent only if the rest of the population just went vegetarian for most of the time. It'd be a very large step if people could make the sacrifice of giving up just a few replaceable food groups.
 

Neo C.

Member
I believe in vertical farming. There are some bottlenecks, mainly costs, but almost everything involving costs can be solved.
 
Seems like the insect population dropped in that area of Germany.

Extrapolating this out to the whole planet doesn't seem reasonable, but it makes a nice clickbait headline.
 

Majin Boo

Member
I 've always lived on the countryside of south Germany and in my childhood there were butterflies, bees, bumblebees, dragonflies and ladybugs everywhere, now I can't even remember the last time I saw a bee or a bumblebee, dragonflies and butterflies are rare occurrences and all the ladybugs have been replaced by another breed. It's damn sad...
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Seems like the insect population dropped in that area of Germany.

Extrapolating this out to the whole planet doesn't seem reasonable, but it makes a nice clickbait headline.

They go into Britain and North America research as well in the article.

But if that's not enough, you can still fallback to the butterfly and bee problem that has plenty of worldwide evidence.
 
Now that I think about it, I haven't seen a fire ant or a bumble bee in so many years. They were pretty common during spring/summer.
SoCal here.
 
We have been manufacturing and pollinating for years, if not decades already. Even "organic" farmers don't even rely on insects. Are you saying every fruit and plant that's sprouted in the last 10 years have been the work of bees, mosquitoes, and Flys? No, they became irrelevant.

This guy is not just the perfect example of why we're in situations of rapid decline like this ("I refuse to research this, will jump to ridiculous conclusions about why it doesn't matter instead"). He's also the perfect example of why we need population control.
 

Painguy

Member
Kill the environment before it kills you I always say.

as someone who refuses to kill bugs in most situations this makes me sad
 
We've known about the bees for a while, it likely makes sense cause of the increase in temperature change.

One hundred years isn't long in the process of life and if we could speed those one hundred years to make it for in a year on sure we would find the change is drastic.

Losing insects is definitely a cause for real concern. Two hundred years could bring boot more and worse changes beyond just insects. Not that we will ever know
 

Dash_

Member
To hell with us in a hand basket if we don't get our act together as quickly as possible in terms of halting and then attempt to repair the damage we've done in this 250 year spell.

Will we? The signs aren't looking good.

We should have been acting in the 80s. And some people like to think we're not in a mass extinction event, let alone the claims we have no impact on the climate and environment. It'd be laughable if it weren't so tragic.

I don't want it to happen, but if we killed ourselves in hubris or arrogance, I used to say fair enough. We played the game of life and lost in spectacular style. But as a species we are a unique happening in the cycle of life on this planet due to the damage we bring. If we continue on the path we're on or leave it even later than we already have so Earth can't reach homeostasis and host complex life in the same abundance as it once did pre-industrial times, then we are a failure. As much during my darker moments I have wanted us gone for the way we've treated other lifeforms and nature, we're needed if our actions make it so the biosphere can't eventually return back to health. We will have to terraform (I wouldn't trust us) or create technology that can simulate and model how to do so if we can't effectively comprehend all the systems and interactions in play.

I like people. I hate large groups and this system we're placed in. Capitalism dovetailed so very nicely into the Christian propaganda at the advent of the industrial revolution. Human exceptionalism. We are 'better' and 'worth' more than other lifeforms. The world is the Dominion of man.

No. It isn't. We are guests. And look how we've treated this paradise. The only garden world that we currently know of in this universe of ours. Look how we pollute and pillage, how we murder hundreds of millions of animals per year. How, outside of technological innovation to better our living standards, when it comes to anticipating change that we can't immediately or quickly see a positive effect from, we're reactive rather than pro-active.

Fuck that. This world is not your's to do with as you please. And to the small slither of this species who could affect change (the industrialists, the tycoons, the intelligence community supposedly working for 'national security' but perfectly happy to let the likes of Trump go on, the likes of Murdoch to bribe and energy monopolies continue as they are while sabotaging activist organisations that would seek to try to undo some of the damage done)...

Fuck you. Welcome to the anthroprocene, and if things continue on for much longer as business as usual acting as the arm for a handful of neo-liberals, war, famine and complete disaster await.

I pray it doesn't happen.
 
The number of bees, bumblebees and wasps has gone down here for sure. 15 years ago one of those flying into the house was a daily occurrence in the summer, now it's been two years since it happened. I live in the same place and keep the same window(s) open.
 

VegiHam

Member
Bugs are icky and annoying. I think we can all agree a dead sterile post apocalyptic wasteland is better than a diverse ecosystem including creepy crawlies and buzzy bothers.
 

Soph

Member
We have been manufacturing and pollinating for years, if not decades already. Even "organic" farmers don't even rely on insects. Are you saying every fruit and plant that's sprouted in the last 10 years have been the work of bees, mosquitoes, and Flys? No, they became irrelevant.

Go do some research before making an ass out of yourself.
 

Snoopycat

Banned
The bastard wasps seem to be doing ok around here. I walked past 4 bushes yesterday that had loads of them flying around. There was one at the window the other day. The fucker was huge. He was there for so long I thought he was canvassing for the Tories
 
I remember as a kid my parents cars would have their windscreens covered with bugs after a long journey (UK). Yet after driving more than 3000 miles since getting a car myself this year, I haven't noticed a single one.
 

farmerboy

Member
Sorry guys, I'll try to kill less this week.

Seriously though, I find this hard to believe as many insects are becoming resistant to pesticides.

To the point where I now choose to implement an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to help keep the pests at bay.

Added bonus, IPM only targets the pests and lets the beneficial insects thrive.

Sustainable food production will become a huge problem over the coming decades. A National Geographic article I read recently made note that in the next 30 years as we grow to 10 billion, we'll need to grow as much food as we have grown in the last 10000 years (since the dawn of agriculture).

Sobering stuff. I hope we get it right.
 
Odd that a 75% drop didn’t create more noticible ecological problems. Haven’t read much about a pollination crisis or drop in the bird population.

In Minnesota anyway, I have anecdotally noticed the mosquito population is way lower than it was as a kid (80s). No complaints from me thus far.
 
Odd that a 75% drop didn’t create more noticible ecological problems. Haven’t read much about a pollination crisis or drop in the bird population.

In Minnesota anyway, I have anecdotally noticed the mosquito population is way lower than it was as a kid (80s). No complaints from me thus far.

I'm asking this as well - a 75% drop does seem like a catastrophic disruption that should have a (bigger) impact further up the food chain. I also wonder (not having any background or knowledge in this area) if such a wild fluctuation is really an aberration or part of a larger pattern in insect populations across centuries.
 

Vitten

Member
Insects are resilient little buggers who bounce back effortlessy as they can breed by the billions in a matter of weeks.

Perhaps diversity may indeed suffer because of ecosystem damage but I'm not too worried about quantity.
 
Now that I think about it, I haven't seen a fire ant or a bumble bee in so many years. They were pretty common during spring/summer.
SoCal here.

Same here in NC. When I was a kid there were thousands upon thousands of grass hoppers just in my parents field. I've only seen one this entire year. Bumblebees and honey bees are still around but not near as many as when I was younger. Same with june bugs and Japanese Beatles. We got way too many stink bugs now though. Not sure if it's from the rise in temps here that's forced then to migrate elsewhere or more man made issues like pesticides.
 
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