Where have all the insects gone?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I don't know how good/bad of a thing it is, but surely there seems to be something going on.
For what it's worth, people also seem to have rediscovered the forest, and I hope will get more emotionally involved in its maintenance and preservation.
“Small birds are always vulnerable to predation from larger species. ... One reason that the larger birds do well in cities is that they are more likely to benefit from human-created foods (petfood, garbage, foodscraps and carrion) than small birds, which mostly eat insects.”
https://www.birdsinbackyards.net/birds/featured/Small-insect...
The general region is desert, water and food is scarce, but through this agricultural zone there's this dense pocket of food and water on the surface.
I was in a Miata with the top down, and the amount of chemicals they were using to keep the pests/insects away from this lush green oasis in a land of nothing was noxious. I hadn't exited my car, just drove through these fields on the farm roads, and it left me feeling sick with a headache and nausea well into the next day.
Of course I didn't encounter a single insect, spotless windshield.
The distance I traveled through this poison was relatively little:
https://goo.gl/maps/v7MQNgpffP2wNCrc7
It was Box Canyon S down to 111E, stair stepping a bit through the fields...
This is why it is so upsetting that Bill Gates is pushing this kind of chemical intensive farming all over Africa and positioning himself to profit off the transition too. Once again harming the continent and its people for profit while telling them it’s good for them.
EDIT: He's also buying up all the farm land with water rights in the USA. He is the single largest holder of US farmland. So when drought inevitably comes and swaths of farmland become too dry to use, he will profit. If you apply to one of their foundation grants for agriculture, you will see a big emphasis on "bundled services", so they seem to want to build a "farm as a service" system where farmers don't own anything. It's a new enclosure movement where the lords own everything and everyone else pays them to use the land. We have enough in this world we can live pretty cheaply if we work together and share in the right ways. But control of the land is vital or we will all die in poverty from rents.
I don't really know why billionaires do what they do, but he is investing in all that land for some reason.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty#the-number-of-peo...
https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i...
As far as the Green Revolution, again this story that is has saved millions from starvation is a popular one. But we can look at Vandana Shiva for example who says it became a way for multinational corporations to take over the farms and food systems of India, leading to mass farmer suicides, erosion of the soil, and poisoning the land:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/3/30/seeds-of-suicid...
Almost 300,000 acres is a lot of land for one family or private individual to own, but it’s still just a small part of the estimated 911 million acres of farmland in the US." - https://www.vox.com/recode/22528659/bill-gates-largest-farml...
Not sure what is the point of this "Bill Gates is single largest holder of US farmland" narrative. It seems like a conspiracy theory in the making.
When put into perspective, amount of farmland he owes is not that big, if it was in a single square it would be 20x20 miles.
A part of me wants to visit just to fully take in the reality of it all. But I don’t think my family would be too happy.
On the other hand, in my back yard, I grow a lot veggi, strawberry with worm casting from kitchen scraps. I do still lot of insects. A lot of birds nested around my house. Produce 10-15 young birds. I found a very cool looking giant tomato worm a size of my biggest finger. It ate half of (7 ft height ) tomato plant in 2 days.
The Strawberry, cucumbers, other veggies grow with worm casting taste SO much better than from anything store .
(Although, TBF, the Lambo's wing and aero package adds a lot of drag in exchange for much greater downforce)
[1] https://ecomodder.com/wiki/Vehicle_Coefficient_of_Drag_List
"The research also found that modern cars, with a more aerodynamic body shape, killed more insects than boxier vintage cars up to 70 years old."
That said, it’s fun to imagine that we just selected against insects that hang out by the highway.
https://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175054275/birds-evolve-shorte...
Insects still get hit with aerodynamic cars, but the blows are glancing and less likely to cause a “burst”.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
They were saying, IIUC, that it could be that the same amount of bugs are splattered across a larger number of cars, so that if you look at any one car, then it looks like less bugs.
15 years later they no longer do that, just on that road in particular. I don’t know if it’s evolved behavior or learned, but they absolutely changed.
Also one used in scientific study with seemingly dire results:
>The survey of insects hitting car windscreens in rural Denmark used data collected every summer from 1997 to 2017 and found an 80% decline in abundance. It also found a parallel decline in the number of swallows and martins, birds that live on insects.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-spla...
Edit: it was a Hyundai Excel
Really weird
But I've noticed a big change in Texas in recent years. The last two years I haven't had to use pesticide in my residential vegetable garden. I've had to control for mold/fungal infections, but not for insects. And I live up against a nature preserve and try to keep most of my property as natural as possible.
In according to the more usual explanations I've been working if lights along the road might be part of the problem.
But I am one of them! I remember getting my first car in the late eighties and scrubbing tons of splattered insects off my windshield every time I went to the gas station.
Now I barely even notice them.
Antecdote is not data, but I certainly believe people when they say the insects are dying.
Anecdotes are misleading and they are always a huge trick.
Now there are some mosquitoes and crickets. Maybe a few moths sometimes. The walls outside are spotless.
Living in Asia now, I see insects about as much as I saw them back then. I have to wonder if there were even more back in the 90s, or if things are as good as ever here. But it's nice to see life.
We will rebuild stronger together, nature abhores a vacuum and will repair with us if we allow it to manifest. Thank goodness.
If you can find a way to attract Opossum they are net tick destroyers. Keeping out deer will only help so well, as small mammals(chipmunks, mice, etc) are primarily the sustainers of tick populations.
The only pesticide is a line of diatomaceous earth around the house to keep the ants from setting up shop inside.
It ultimately dessicates insects (and other invertebrates) that come in contact with it. It is safe for mammals.
Example with a cockroach: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lAKQO7duPHU
A strange one was a parasitic wasp that would harvest inchworms and leave them in piles in my shed! Took a while to catch it in the act.
Is it an urban environment? Most people's environments isn't a reasonable reference.
The only insect I'm aware of that seems to still be in full force that is native are mosquitos. Dragonflies, lightning bugs, lady bugs, moths, butterflies, etc. are sadly all rare sightings.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/studies-c... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/studies-c...
He’s the subject of a new biography, “Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature” (Doubleday), by the journalist Richard Rhodes. Rhodes, who’s the author of more than twenty books, including “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,”
I plan to do this as long as I can and would encourage others to do the same! I was amazed by the difference.
I've noticed that Monarch butterflies ignore almost all plants in my area but they love Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia). I wonder how much of that is regional, since they're supposed to like Zineas and Verbena but they've shown zero interest in mine.
It looks like queen anne's lace--crowns of many tiny, white flowers. We have a few similar-looking species in the region (Ozarks), and it could be any of them.
Maybe worth a shot finding out if you want some other options for them!
[0] https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/asclepia...
In this particular case, though, it was a similar plant that I normally always see in sunny areas. On the edges of my mowed yard, I was seeing a lot of monarchs for a few days.
A few other plants can also self pollinate, but with reduced yields.
Still scary, in that a single disruption, like a new illness infecting crops, would have a much bigger impact.
For example: Ants are best managed caulking ingress points. Silverfish are best managed by reducing humidity. Bed bugs typically require professional fumigation. Flies & roaches by removing/storing food sources, etc.
zhttps://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/us-pesticide-use-...
For there to be a decline in sales, consumers would need to be purchasing products only in response to an infestation, but with such a service, they aren’t doing that. And the pest control company has no incentive to tell people “by the way, you can cancel the service now because everything is extinct”.
Part of the sales pitch is also “if we treat all your neighbors, then all those bugs are going to come to your yard”. They really have no interest in just pest control; it’s a hard sell to sign up another customer.
I just don't see the causative link as the pesticides are used prophylacticly. Fewer insects would tend, IMO, to reinforce the behaviour, not reduce it.
What is the distinction between “modern science” and “science”? Are you claiming that the development of the Haber-Bosch process and other fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides did not increase yields?
What is “improve farming”? It does not seem to be a small feat to go from feeding 1.5B people to 8B people in 100 years, at far more calories per person.
Granted, the long term effects very well may have destroyed biodiversity and insects, but the immediate problem at the time was hunger and malnutrition. Although, one can make the case that the loss in biodiversity and insects is inevitable with excess human population, in which case the development of technologies increasing yield would be responsible for leading to the possibility of excess humans existing.
Global human-made mass now exceeds all living biomass [0]. We are basically simply pushing the rest of the biosphere to a corner. It responds as the immensely complex, adaptive, system that it is: unpredictably.
Yet, I now feel lucky to see even a few fireflies in a summer, when I remember loving to see fields of them blinking in the evening... wow I miss that.
(and we're in real trouble here)
We can't live like native Americans with iPhones.
I thought you were trying to speak for the insect kingdom here for a moment.
We probably could in the next 100 years through automation, massive reduction in population, and making things to last instead of making things to be replaced. Building a society whose values aren't based around never-ending growth.
We won't, but we could.
If you don't have population growth you still need economic growth to provide upward mobility to people at the bottom. Without growth you have a zero-sum game which again can lead to war.
Ideally improvements in efficiency or a shift values/culture can create a world where we can have economic growth without increasing the burden on the planet.
OR you reset wealth upon death. You don't necessarily need unlimited growth if you prevent wealth from pooling at the top.
HA part of that could be easily solved if suicide weren't so stigmatized. If everyone could just agree that once you're past the age of 80, once you get to a point of being infirm you just take a magic pill and peace out on your own terms, we'd be far better off as a species.
There are of course issues that a lot of the economy is predicated on growth, but again, I'm actually pretty optimistic that markets and humans are pretty resilient and adaptable given enough warning and time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
From the article: "In a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating 'Development is the best contraceptive.'"
We are trending towards having a smaller population in 100 years.
EU Birth rate over time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251516/crude-birth-rate...
US Birth rate is 1.7 kids per female.
pp remarkably off-topic and additionally self-defeating.
Shift your view up a couple levels of abstraction and everything on the planet is ultimately meaningless. People always seem to argue about "saving the planet" as though it has some greater meaning, when in reality it is just a poor proxy for "keep the planet inhabitable for humans".
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3J...
I think we're going to have to make tradeoffs, and spending 20 years of resources on saving a small insect in one area probably isn't worth it.
> spending 20 years of resources
this overly-simple, too simple, example of one person and "the military" is not at all representative of say, the Bison and praries, or frogs and freshwater. And who are the most prolific polluters in the Federal Government, and who is famous for "20 years of resources wasted for no result" .. ?
Its just as abrasive to hear this pre-baked conclusion, as for others to hear the actual truth of say, entire regions of coral going extinct.
It's pretty clear that the human population has grown beyond the ability of the planet to sustain a progression towards universal industrialization. Humans have nowhere else to live and we're eroding what underpins our ability to survive.
We more than tripled the human population in the last 100 years. In my own lifetime, the human population has grown by 42%. It's insanity to believe we can continue this without serious consequences.
Link to article: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-popu...
This has nothing to do with "hating that we exist", however, at a minimum we probably have a responsibility to study, discuss and understand our impacts on the Earth, and not just for what it means for other species, but for what it means for us.
But sometimes I get the sense that people say things like this as a way to derail the conversation. They'd rather talk about other people's motives and beliefs than the the actual observation about the environment.
And we know those people are out there. Some of them get paid a lot to do it.
Given that it required us thousands of years to develop a scientific mindset to even be able to comprehend the scope of our own destruction, I can't see how we could have stopped ourselves any sooner.
The recent uptick in energy consumption is now magnifying the problem at an exponential rate, but it doesn't sound agreeable or practical to prevent people from spreading around to consume all the resources we have, or to smack the newly invented, frivolous and energy-draining devices from their inventors' hands the moment they've been first actualized.
i remember an article about how fireflies are dying out
That's science, that is!
We have systematically reduced the world's ecosystems into smaller and smaller islands and this bloke has demonstrated what happens on smaller islands: loss of diversity, fewer species.
It does seem to be even more global than that though. So global warming is probably the main culprit.
Look out the window next time you're in a jet. In america it seems like we have industrialized everything: food production, suburban housing, etc. The scale of our civilization is terrifying, and America is peanuts in terms of population (but NOT in terms of resource consumption per population, the far more important metric).
The fact is economists can't estimate the value of an ecosystem, habitat, or wilderness. It's just untapped money to them if it's torn down. If economics, which directs 95% of our policy, can't get their heads out of the asses and figure out how to properly account for the existential value of nature, we are doomed.
The fact that a pseudo-mathematical/pseudo-scientific area of study, one filled to the gills with venal denialist ultra-right-wing orthodoxy is the driving force of our future is not encouraging.
Economics is useful in the small and medium scales, and in very limited large scales, I'm not going to sit here and tell you price theory, supply/demand, and game theory are all bunk, but the political force that is "economics" is a key contributor to our dire situation.
Could be you have new neighbors.
Half of my bees are bumbles (at least one nest in my yard), maybe the odd mason, and hoverflies. But I’m on an edge of a garden district, less than a mile from a river, so I see lots of things. I’m pretty sure I’m part of a corridor between the two.
My area of SoCal is HOA/office park “landscaped” with near zero variety of plants for miles around. There are very few flying insects in my yard. I did attract some caterpillars this year, but they are very particular about plants. The caterpillar on the native gooseberry stays there, the tomatoes get hornworms and the other plant gets budworms. Bugs can be very specific and the grass and office park shrub monoculture around is not supportive of a diverse insect population.
But I've got lots and lots of mantises this year. One evening, attracted by the lights of my workshop, I counted 6 mantises climbing around my windows at the same time. I've continued to see them elsewhere, though one at a time. I've never seen more than a few per season, previously.
It is amazing to see every other type of animal come back stronger with the waning of industry.
Where I live, in Europe, several species of bugs have become quite abundant in recent years.
On the other hand, most other kinds of insects, e.g. butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, various kinds of wasps and flies etc. have become exceedingly rare compared to how abundant they were when I was young.
https://reckoning.press/no-more-creepy-crawlies/
The magazine also has a lot of cli-fi stories posted for free, so I recommend checking it out.
What a great example for why we need the Oxford Comma.
"He spent a sabbatical conducting field work on Trinidad and Tobago; and in Suriname."
That sounds very odd indeed — I wouldn't say the sentence with a semicolon-sized gap in it and reading it with one is jarring.
There's nothing wrong with the original sentence. When I read and say it I do so with the same cadence as "He spent a sabbatical conducting field work on Bermuda and in Suriname." The "and" in Trinidad and Tobago is just coincidence — it's not part of the sentence structure. If a reader doesn't know that Trinidad and Tobago is a place then perhaps the sentence's "in x and y and on z" would provoke them into finding this out.
Could be clearer, although "On Trinidad and Tobago" doesn't make sense. "In Trinidad and Tobago", or "On Trinidad", or "On Tobago", sure, but Trinidad and Tobago are two islands (and many smaller)
“in Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname” (aside from any issue with conventional use of “on” for the former) would be awkward.
Since its a two-item list, an Oxford comma would never be appropriate, so it can't signal the need for it.
What we need is a cure for crazy (this whole obsesso, brainbound, machine-pooping culture being a symptom of that).
I'm thinking psychedelics and meditation.
https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-...
No. I recommend finding better friends, or choosing different online reading material. We live in an age of information abundance as well as opinion abundance. Your attention is valuable, and there are better communities and reading options out there.
With respect to changing what I read, I like being exposed to opinions I disagree with, even ones I find abhorrent like this. It's useful to survey the opinions out there, even the nonsense ones.