• 'Hyperalarming' study shows massive insect loss
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‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest’s insect-eating animals have gone missing, too. In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves. The latest report, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that this startling loss of insect abundance extends to the Americas. The study’s authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates. Lister and Garcia attribute this crash to climate. In the same 40-year period as the arthropod crash, the average high temperature in the rain forest increased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperatures in the tropics stick to a narrow band. The invertebrates that live there, likewise, are adapted to these temperatures and fare poorly outside them; bugs cannot regulate their internal heat. The loss of insects and arthropods could further rend the rain forest’s food web, Lister warned, causing plant species to go extinct without pollinators. “If the tropical forests go it will be yet another catastrophic failure of the whole Earth system,” he said, “that will feed back on human beings in an almost unimaginable way.”
You always post these horribly sad articles, I wouldn't have the guts. If insects die out welp we'll have no source of non-vegetable protein when livestock don't have enough food because of climate change, assuming sea life dies as well.
Well if it's between eating vegetables and killing myself I think I'll say my goodbyes now
It's pretty depressing, but I like to think spreading awareness helps in terms of climate change related news. Not to mention, the news cycle has been pretty spooky as of late - maybe fitting, given it's October.
I don't know what we can do. We are supposed to change our entire way of life - notably our consumer habits and choices that are so ingrained in our society - almost completely upside down. And preferably right now. It is the life we've lived up to this point, with all our development aimed at the life we've enjoyed up to this point. And only now we've barely beginning to realize that global warming is not some hippie bullshit, and it's not funny anymore. It could be done. We're human and we can do anything we want, but it has to be done now. Did billions of people just change their entire lifestyle as I typed this? Of course they didn't, and that's what makes this the biggest challenge man has ever faced. Spreading awareness does help and falling into desperation doesn't, but in order to make even the slightest dent in terms of helping the cause, a fuck-ton of people have to make drastic changes in their life, and we have to do it now. Literally every passing second we don't change our entire civilization and lifestyle is making the process all the more longer-lasting and its long-term effects even worse and sooner.
good luck getting people behind something so goddamn massive though
And for a good reason too: Living sustainably is less comfortable than living wastefully. Literally every measure people would have to take to reduce the effects of climate change would make their lives less comfortable somehow. Unless you create an immediate incentive for people to live more sustainably, the effort is doomed to fail. The threat of human extinction is too far away to provide sufficient motivation unfortunately.
When young people are already working longer than 40 hour work weeks on average, get compensated less than we would have at any point in the last 40 years, and are expected to curb the consumption of the few things we have to the point of near abstaining, who's surprised? The burden has been put on us, and we got to watch people live good lives, and are actively being told, and having this concept reinforced, we won't get to live good lives, we won't get to pursue our passions, we won't get to live in the world we were told we would. Honestly, we're fucked. I don't know how else to put it. I do my part, tons of other people do their parts, but what can we expect long term when there's just too many people in too precarious of a position to turn our lives upside down for the slim chance of change.
It's something I've actually noticed. I remember when I was a kid when we would drive on the motorway for any amount of time the windshield would be fairly splattered. There really isn't a mark these days, either the insects have learned to stay away from roads or we have indeed seen a massive reduction in our insects, which in turn will get the birds. And then it's the kitties.
We deserve skynet. "Buy guy, Skynet attempted to kill humanity and enslave what survived!" I re-iterate, we deserve skynet.
We're never going to become a multi-planetary civilization and I'm glad of it.
As much as Humanity has alot of growing up to do, I think this is silly. Any moment in time a chunk of rock the size of Germany could come hurtling out of the darkness and swat us like a fly. What humanity has done is terrible, however I don't think any other creature in our position would have done much better. An interplanetary species would be the most important thing to come out of this floating rock in the cosmos. We might even be the most important thing in the Galaxy, although I hope for interests sake that isn't true. I hope we go far, we won't be able to go far if we don't learn to care for things along the way though. I used to view Humanity as a virus, and in many aspects we are but I think we can learn to be less parasitic, if we don't then the rest of the universe has nothing to worry about coming from us.
I'm less concerned about us as an interstellar virus and more concerned about what happens when we inevitably exhaust the resources of several solar systems and have the most spectacularly horrific civilizational collapse imaginable.
Everything ends eventually. I'd like us to get to that stage so we could fail that spectacularly. But we won't even make it to the moon again at this rate
In fairness we knew thirty to fourty years ago. And 25-30 years ago, there was a huge push to get people to change. And what happened was greedy industrialists went "not before I'm dead" and have cockblocked all progress ever since, with the tipping point in close range if not already behind us. Human greed is the cause of every single fucking thing wrong on this planet. The world will achieve a net gain when we go extinct. We've used our intelligence to not only ignore our stewardship of the planet but to actively facefuck it.
I'm not ready to watch the world burn. I hope painless euthanasia is an option to anyone who wants it when shit hits the fan. Not saying I'd give up and die but when the world falls apart I wouldn't blame people for not wanting to see it through, sprawled out somewhere by themselves or with their families starving to death in some kind of hell on Earth situation. Ideally we don't get quite there though.
I believe it shouldn't be about being vegan or being a meat eater at all. Suggesting or forcing people to go vegan who are used to eating meat is not very feasible. I believe that ideally, we should aim for a balanced diet, including everything that our world has to offer in an environmentally-friendly and balanced manner. Add in ethical treatment of animals and we're golden. So we don't have to go vegan at all, and I think "vegan" or "meat-eater" should not be a thing at all, but we just have to eat like 90% less meat and 90% more of everything else, again in a balanced and environmentally-friendly way. After all we own this planet and everything on it, and it's all the more reason to take better care of it in being balanced and enviro-friendly about what we consume. Ideally it would be a beautiful world.
painless euthenasia will almost certainly not be an option. for localized examples, look at the Great Leap Forward famines in China, the Holodomor, or, for famines caused by capitalism, the late 1800s famines in India, China, Brazil, and the horn of Africa
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