The number of flying insects in Great Britain has plunged by almost 60% since 2004, according to a survey that counted splats on car registration plates. The scientists behind the survey said the drop was “terrifying”, as life on Earth depends on insects.
Also known as the windshield effect if you grew up taking road trips in the US. Used to be a whole trope of getting your windshield covered in bugs on a long drive especially on the coasts and in the south.
I have personally witnessed the decline and my bio professor was one of a few people sounding the alarm about this back in the early 2000s
The title here is no joke. More than just climate change we have done apocalyptic irreparable damage to the ecosystem as a whole. I fear whatever we do at this point is just harm reduction, the end already passed us by and all there is to do now is ride it out.
I don't want to doxx myself but ecology is kind of my thing so I want to chime in and say that if we abolish capitalism or at least castrate it then we can 100% fix this. Don't let them make you feel hopeless. We do need to do something, however, and the longer the wait the harder it will be to fix
Is there some hope in the fact that insects have short reproductive cycles and produce many young, so if the factor that's killing them can be removed, they can rebound pretty quickly?
The thing about insect numbers is that they can handle a lot of shit, but they're not just dealing with a single threat. It's not just pesticides that's killing them, it's pesticides, habitat loss, climate change and more. These problems compound like weight being added to a table until the table breaks. We can save the table, but if we wait too long to remove some weight, it might break and be hard as fuck to repair.
If we can just remove a couple of stressors, say, pesticides and habitat loss, their ability to handle the other stressors like climate change increases. The more bullshit we remove, the faster they'll bounce back.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/05/flying-insect-numbers-have-plunged-by-60-since-2004-gb-survey-finds
Also known as the windshield effect if you grew up taking road trips in the US. Used to be a whole trope of getting your windshield covered in bugs on a long drive especially on the coasts and in the south.
I have personally witnessed the decline and my bio professor was one of a few people sounding the alarm about this back in the early 2000s
The title here is no joke. More than just climate change we have done apocalyptic irreparable damage to the ecosystem as a whole. I fear whatever we do at this point is just harm reduction, the end already passed us by and all there is to do now is ride it out.
Yeah there's no way out of this one.
We're fucked
I don't want to doxx myself but ecology is kind of my thing so I want to chime in and say that if we abolish capitalism or at least castrate it then we can 100% fix this. Don't let them make you feel hopeless. We do need to do something, however, and the longer the wait the harder it will be to fix
Is there some hope in the fact that insects have short reproductive cycles and produce many young, so if the factor that's killing them can be removed, they can rebound pretty quickly?
For the most part, yes.
The thing about insect numbers is that they can handle a lot of shit, but they're not just dealing with a single threat. It's not just pesticides that's killing them, it's pesticides, habitat loss, climate change and more. These problems compound like weight being added to a table until the table breaks. We can save the table, but if we wait too long to remove some weight, it might break and be hard as fuck to repair.
If we can just remove a couple of stressors, say, pesticides and habitat loss, their ability to handle the other stressors like climate change increases. The more bullshit we remove, the faster they'll bounce back.
More like owlcology probably.
You are probably right though, I won't give up I just honestly do not believe it will happen before it's too late
and even if it does get to be too late, the people responsible should still be [redacted]
All the more reason to be motivated to take action though. Not doing so is just going to compound how bad things are going to get and how quickly.
[REDACTED]