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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't it look like the initial reading was the anomaly? Like the 1989 number is twice as big compared to 1991.

In 1991 they could have reported "insects numbers drop 50% in two years!!!!".

I mean there's a definite decline, but it doesn't look like an imminent collapse.

The decline is really noticeable. (I live in Germany.) You can go bicycling in the countryside in summer and never get any insects in your mouth. You can drive your car and not wipe off your windshield.

If you look at the graph you can adda trend line for poor years and one for good. Both point steeply downwards, say -30%/decade. Extrapolate to human lifetimes, and you get a 96% drop in one human lifetime. Wow.

>> You can drive your car and not wipe off your windshield

This. When I was a kid in California a quick trip in summer and it would be carnage on the window and grill. Now I can drive for hours and not get a single bug. Part of this could be increasing traffic. But it is really dramatic and scary.

These are anecdotal, but I have the same experiences in North America of inspect splatter when I was younger versus the last decade, of which there is very little.

Different vehicles maybe? A day-long summer ride through the countryside on my motorcycle and my helmet, jacket and windscreen will be completely covered with bugs.

Has anyone considered this idea? That modern computer-modeled and wind tunnel tested cars are just dramatically more aerodynamic than the insect-killing cars of our youth?

My first car was a 1986 Honda CRX Si, which IIRC had a pretty low Cd of 0.31. I picked up plenty of bugs with it back then.

It's very pleasant to be able to go for a whole-day bicycle trip and not get any insects in my mouth. But even if cars have grown more aerodynamic, I don't think I can thank the car manufacturers for this pleasant development.

In the 1980/90s I used to cycle everywhere as a kid. I must have done at least 10 miles a week as I lived 3 miles from my best friends. And I lived in the country.

I only ever remember swallowing an insect twice. It probably happened more, but it definitely wasn't a regular occurrence and tended to only happen on hills when you were going really fast.

Also the having to clean screen thing was a thing that happened certain years, not every single year. We used to go on trips to France that we drove to, from East England to France, 10 hours of driving, and some years it needed cleaning a lot, some it didn't.

Again, I totally realise that there definitely is something happening, but the way people are talking is that there used to be a swarm of insects every year, when that wasn't the case. It was different year to year, and it looks like 1989 in Germany was definitely a 'heavy' year and not a great baseline.

I think the reduction in aerodynamic drag mostly relates to the flow of air at the back of the car, to reduce the low pressure area.. so wouldn't change what's happening at the front too much. Also, since the 80s, improvements have been minor(?), and besides, road speeds have possibly increased, which you would expect to increase the incidence of squashed bugs.

I own an old utility car (1981) not so aerodynamic and i confirm the drop of insects on the glass in the last 20 years

Another part of this could be improved aerodynamics of cars. Maybe a larger part of the insects gets routed around the cars in a laminar flow.

Could be, but bikes on the roof of the car see a lot less carnage as well. It used to be gross, and you’d need to wash your bike after an hour on the roof, but now, not so.

There even used to be spandex covers you could out over the front of your bike on the roof rack, but I haven’t seen one in years.

Nope. Still driving the same car.

When I was a kid, lightning bugs filled the front yard. Now, I might see one of them if I'm lucky.

How much farmland did you drive thru as a kid vs now? I live in a small city and never get bugs on the windshield or grill. When I drive out of town and thru the surrounding farmland there are tons of them. To be fair, though, I grew up in farming country and it there used to be way more than there are now if my memory serves me. It does appear that there are fewer total insects in those areas. The farmers are getting better at controlling them, I think.

On the east coast it's the same! I don't like walking outside at my parent's house because of the crazy number of bugs but anywhere reasonably developed (like the small college town I live in) doesn't have this problem.

I live in Ireland, in the countryside. The farmers here are mostly livestock so i don't think there's much insecticide use. We used to get hundreds of bugs at kitchen window on summer evenings, the last two or three years there are not as many. Thing is, I've only been in this house a few years. The timescale is too short for it to be meaningful. It could be weather patterns, it could be that they don't get attracted to the LED bulbs as much as the old lighting we had when we moved in. The bird population does not appear to be suffering, they're everywhere you look around here, so there must be bugs to eat.

But memory is unreliable, and anecdotes are not data

Your thought about LED lighting is a good one, one which I'm ashamed to admit hadn't even crossed my mind.

It would be worth a test - an old-style incandescent on one side of the house, a contemporary LED on the other, see which one attracts more bugs!

> It would be worth a test - an old-style incandescent on one side of the house, a contemporary LED on the other, see which one attracts more bugs!

There's already a surprisingly lot of solid info on that out there [0] The gist is pretty much: Most LED don't emit UV and produce less heat, as such they are generally less attractive for flying bugs.

LED ability to change color is an extra advantage, as flying bugs prefer some colors (cool white) over others (warm yellow) and some they supposedly can't even see (red).

I've played around with what color of light to use in my office at night, where the window is pretty much always open due to heat and monitors tend to "collect" all the bugs.

Using only red light really reduces the number of bugs coming in, but then you are sitting in red light all the time, feeling like you are hunting for Red October.

[0] https://www.dodsonbros.com/led-lights-flying-insects/

> You can go bicycling in the countryside in summer and never get any insects in your mouth.

Still happening to me every time in Germany :( That's why I usally were glasses (otherwise small flies get in my eyes).

I've seen maybe 3 bees this year. 2 of them just dropped in the water and would have died wouldn't I have saved them.

I remember thinking the same last year and the year before, but it gets visibly worse without question.

And yes it's not only bees

>> Doesn't it look like the initial reading was the anomaly? Like the 1989 number is twice as big compared to 1991.

There's variation between years but a clear downward trend that leads to a significant reduction overall.

Intuitively, if that was money, someone would be pulling their hair out by the handful.

Last year when I left my kitchen window open at around this time, in a couple of hours I had dozens of flies everywhere. This year - silence. Way less birds as well. When I visit my parents that retired to a village valley without any industry, insects of all types are everywhere.

Same here. Except this year we still have snow on the ground and last year it had all melted a month ago, so that's probably why there's no insects.

Anecdotes aren't helping anything.

The insect splatter or lack thereof has been noticed by a lot of people in different countries though.

Still though, "being noticed" is not evidence of anything. Studies count, people noticing things don't.

There is a significant latency between an observation and scientific study, often in years.

Of course "being noticed" is evidence, if only a small amount.

Anecdata: growing up, all blossoming cherry trees here had hundreds or thousands of bees in them. now there are a dozen bumble bees. that is beyond 'imminent collapse' and beyond sad.

Someone send all people at Monsanto who hid the evidence to jail.

Dane here: last year, all the insects at my mom's farm were gone. No cherries, very few apples - worst harvest we've ever experienced. The buzzing is simply gone and it is chilling.

It is like being in a silent city; wrong.

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