Green Group discussion

‘This is very alarming!’: Flying insects vanish from nature preserves

Has anyone seen articles reporting on the populations of non-flying insects or insects living mostly in the ground? All the articles reporting on the insect populations diminishing are based on studies where the insects traps are only designed to catch flying insects.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtm...

Some impulses:

1. The role of neonicotinoids.
2. The entire industrial agriculture. Over-fertilization and leaching of the soil.
3. Sprays such as fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, etc.
4. Use of genetic engineering for hybrid seeds.
5. Contamination of the natural varieties with the stronger hybrid seeds.
6. NRA sprays
7. The effects on animals that are not as popular as bees. But equally important for the ecosystem. Like ants and termites, supposed insect pests, beetles.
8. The ever-increasing resistance of pests and weeds to spray.
9. The dead soils where nothing can grow properly.

I have posted long reviews about some nonfiction topics and I will continue with the most popular and controversial nonfiction books. Yes, that´s some kind of shameless self- promotion, but at least for a good propose.

Best regards

The description Industrial Agriculture probably sums it all up. If we are going to industrialize it, contain it where it can't contaminate anything, put it in a vat, a fermantator, or grow it in tanks and just get over the funky looks it will have.

Pest is a word that only means something to people, not to the natural world. As strange as it seems, all life has a purpose. Nothing is here just for the heck of it. If anything people are pests to the natural world. When so called pests are running amuck, it's not something they did, some other force is directing other motions over which they have no control. Nowadays, it is most likely coming from something we did to make things easier for ourselves.

Robert wrote: "The description Industrial Agriculture probably sums it all up. If we are going to industrialize it, contain it where it can't contaminate anything, put it in a vat, a fermantator, or grow it in ta..."


The real irony is that this is how you breed superweeds and super-pests. And eradicate the useful creatures they were supposed to regulate. The parallel to hospital germs and multidrug-resistant pathogens in livestock breeds is daunting. We systematically eradicate all potential competitors and breed our worst enemies. In the worst case in a pandemic level

I actually think weeds might have the potential to become a big part of agriculture. They automatically adapt, they grow good where they should grow, infinite variety, long track track record, good survival rate. The first choice isn't always the best choice.

Robert wrote: "I actually think weeds might have the potential to become a big part of agriculture. They automatically adapt, they grow good where they should grow, infinite variety, long track record, good..."

The negative used term "weed" alone shows the stubbornness of those involved in an agricultural business. As when talking about "problem animals". In a natural environment, pests and beneficial organisms regulate each other.
But as you said rightly, there is great potential in the resistance of many weeds. Precisely because they easily adapt to any environment.
The ethical dilemma with genetic engineering is great in this case. To incorporate the properties of weeds into crops to extend the cultivation of food crops to much larger areas is positive.
The intervention of man and his incalculable consequences are on the other, negative side.
Hard to say how legitimate it is to speak up for one thing or another.

I was going in another direction, I was thinking of putting the food genes into the weeds. Wrote a sci-fi book about it. Goes against all the grains but we do have a lot of people needing to eat and any natural life that we put on the dinner table now serving 7 billion is going to take quite a bit out of that animals existence.

Once we start fiddling with the genes Pandora's box opens. Just opening the box a little bit doesn't work, it's on a massive spring, it's either closed or open. Once the jeans are out there in the world walking around there is no taking them back, just like publishing on the internet, every word counts whether you mean it or not.

You wrote a book on the subject? That's cool. Respect.
The spirits we called are out of the box long ago. According to my current knowledge of some crops, already almost no uncontaminated crops exist in some cases. I think rapeseed is one of them.
The same applies to genetically modified farmed fish, which will sooner or later escape into the oceans.
In the other, with genetically modified farm animals on land the escape into the wild the problem is less the problem. Rather, the multiple species are dying out, because only the most viable ones are bred. And the others are rarities with small stocks, which at some point the incest problem becomes massive.

Anyway, genetic engineering is unstoppable. One can only positively consider it an accelerated evolution and hope that everything goes well. And despite all concerns, one should not overlook the positive aspects, especially in human medicine. At first I was against it, but meanwhile, I am ambivalent. To demonize something basically reminds me so strongly of the mentality of ardent zealots.

With a change in diet to vegetarian food, all would be fed multiple times. Algae farms and insect farms alone could provide basic nutrient and protein needs. The sea is big and insects multiply very fast.
Or the greenhouse towers, from which more and more prototypes emerge. You will surely know those. Produce their own stream, the cultivation and the breeding of animals follows a sophisticated concept. One could feed tens of thousands. Of course, it is a red cloth for pretty much every major interest group.
It would also work in small with various renewable energies in every garden.

Genetic engineering is good where it is needed, and a disaster when it is used where it should never be used.

Plastic is the same, where it is the only thing that works, it has to be used, but wherever it is a substitute that only cuts corners it is a disaster.

Genes can be exchanged by horizontal transfer between similar species but it is probably only a matter of time before it turns out that horizontal gene transfer works for dissimilar species as well. I suspect that in the natural world they are anchored to things we are not looking at that keep them in their established lanes but when you take one gene and just pluck it out of context and stick it in somewhere else it might not be as likely to stay in place.

The natural world thrives on mutations for emergency developments to meet unexpected changes. The idea that altered genes would only stay in the altered plants is pretty far fetched. It is based on the idea that if we can't see something happening now, it can't be happening later. That's one of the three laws of humanbots.

I just realized that I had not posted the link to the topic yet:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...
And that we have come from insects on industrial agriculture to pests to genetic engineering.
The aspect of horizontal gene transfer referred to is in stark contrast to the proponents claiming that they would introduce protective measures. As if arbitrary mutations could be prevented. Or, as you mentioned, accidental skipping or simple mistakes in the creation of various chimeras.
Another argument is that nature has been operating "normal" genetic engineering in the form of evolution for millions of years. As long as the evolutionary speed remains the same for everyone, the competition is fair. Only when some are artificially pimped, the entire system gets out of balance.
But I value the chances higher than the risks. Without parallel technical progress, humanity could quickly destroy itself. If we lived in a kind of steampunk world. But in a disaster such as a mutant pathogen, pest, or out-of-control mutant wildlife, there are so many ways to counteract it.
And for our future in space, genetic engineering will be one of the key technologies. And even if I say it only with reservations, humanity deserves but then a chance to open up more bastions.
To get back to the actual topic: The entanglement of so many reasons for dying, so the insects make the problem so diverse that you do not even know where to start. One would have to differentiate one aspect peck out and then stick to it, so as not to meander again and again.

I'm wondering if the ones underground are surviving and in fact increasing in numbers as the insects we can see are decreasing thereby making space for others in the insect world.

The same way the mammals survived the dinosaurs, by staying small and out of their sight. Leaving us standing out there in the dinosaurs' shoes in the bright sunlight. Pushing everyone off the center stage of life might not be the best place to be standing on this planet.

The preposterous arrogance of the human species has always been a unique selling proposition.
I suspect that all insects evolve faster through confrontation with so many poisons. Both above and below ground. Those who adapt are equally immune to natural enemies and human killings.
That will be a lot fewer species than initially available. I could not even guess if percent or even just more per thousand remain.
But those who survive will have a massive impact on the destroyed and weakened environment. Especially the ones that form states. Just like the humans.

Species that we relate to are diminishing, but if you get rid of the idea that size matters, it is quite possible that on the scale of a millimeter or smaller, life is doing quite well and is expanding in diversity as we remove it's competition for resources.

Nature in real life always allows equal sharing of the tools to get the resources but doesn't always allow the resources to be equally shared. People don't share the tools, which could rig the entire game before it even starts.

I think some insects, maybe ants in particular have a lot of hydrocarbons besides sugar and proteins in their bodies some of which are probably combustible.

I use to think the environment was being destroyed, but nothing happens on this planet that doesn't fit into some kind of scheme eventually. The ancient life dies, creates hydrocarbon deposits, another life system digs it up and burns it, which is not outside of the normal realm of possibilities and transforms some of it into plastic which is then very thoroughly redistributed back into the ground.

I am wondering what life systems use plastic in a way that is beneficial to them. Maybe they have not evolved yet. There are natural plastics in plants and that must mean that the plastic methodology isn't completely unknown on this planet. So what is going to use the plastic we are so painstakingly distributing everywhere?

Until we kill them off, there are undersea communities whose bodies have bacteria in them that use cold methane as a direct of energy, powering the creatures they live in. There are also communities that have bacteria in their bodies that thrive on sulfides dissolved in 600 degree water. The creatures look exactly like normal shrimp, clams, worms, like we see at the beach, but they never see the light of day. This means that this planet can support abundant life under conditions that resemble Mars or Venus, which makes sense because they are all part of the same solar system.

The environment that we need is being destroyed, but not the environment that life common to this solar system needs to survive.

The pendulum of natural destruction is taking a steady toll on everything over 7 feet in length. Humans are pretty confident it will automatically stop at the 7 foot marker. It is hard to find a reason why it couldn't continue exerting a negative influence on the space between 7 feet and 4 feet. That's another one of Newton's laws, you can't stop on a dime. A body in motion stays in motion until another force acts on it. We are assuming we can control the extinction of animals, which so far we haven't been able to do.

For once I understand rules of grammar, it's not "the" environment because that is the whole thing, it is "our" environment that we are talking about. I wonder if we are so specialized that we could ruin it for ourselves and yet there could still be mammals living in it after we disappear.

Plastic probably always play a key role. No matter in which form it is. Whether alive, composted or in the tank. Still a different kind of energy. It would be interesting if similar elements could develop entirely without life under other physics. I will come to that in detail shortly.

The deep sea and the high mountains are with their extremophiles and specially adapted lifeforms evidence of the tenacity of life. Besides all the human arrogance, this carbon chauvinism is strong. As with the example of plastic, the question arises, why life should not have arisen on completely different bases. For example, mirrored life that has no left-handed amino acids and a right-handed DNA double helix. Or life with more than 20 amino acids. Or life forms in which Arsenic instead of phosphorus plays a central role. Or instead of carbon-silicon. That would be the most blatant because then the vital signs would be confusing to detect accordingly.

Unfortunately, I am tethered shorter and shorter and think it is a pity that there is so little participation from far too less young people in this group.

I think that this group deserves much more attention and members. Your conversations, impulses, reading suggestions and stories are great. You should dramatically increase your social media reach, search for sponsors, use patreon and crowdfunding excessively, start a youtube channel, search engine optimization, and go active on Goodreads and aggressively in multiple world languages.
The youth is very interested in the topic but finds it difficult to access it. Veterans of environmental protection like you can serve them as role models. Not just as abstract ideals, but as real people. For the right exchange.
The fascination with nature could just as well be used as bait as the indignation over the devastation that is done.

This group was close to disappearing when I thought I would take over and started asking people to form a team of moderators. That team idea really worked. We now have several leaders we can count on to keep things going.

If you would like to help us out with some of those suggestions you made, Mario, please feel free to do so. I could add you to our moderator team if you want to be on it. I realize that you are very busy and appreciate all of your comments. It is also important to have regular members who are active, as well as moderators.

If any other members have suggestions on how to make Mario's ideas work, feel free to lend a hand. These topics are critical to the entire planet. There are no boundaries for environmental problems.

Great messages Jimmy and Mario !!

Mentoring our youth is, I feel, the most important thing that we can do, yet I find that while they seem concerned and interested, many do not really practice sustainable actions. The same can be said adults and there are plenty of reasons for this behavior from both groups (corporate greed, political parties striving to be popular, personal entitlement, and our nearly complete dissociation with nature and the rest of the planet are some examples).

My own work at trying to raise awareness has shown little to no success. My latest book, Feasible Planet - A guide to more sustainable living, has flat lined on sales. Other work that I am doing in this area also seems to lack traction, such as a "climate tithing" primer that I am co-authoring or my eco-fiction series, Percipience.

All of this being said, I am uber eager to help out on any suggestions brought forward to promote this topic and this goodreads group. Being successful in social media is a tough nut to crack as you need to compete with a bazillion other sites.

One thought I have would be to partner up with one or more existing "green" sites. The other is for us to co-author articles and then see if we can get them posted on on-line magazines, news sites etc.

Thoughts ??

Ken :)

Posting articles on other sites is a step forward. Part of the problem is that consumerism itself is something we all do which only adds a vote of approval for its continued existence in its present form. Every dollar spent is a vote of approval whether we agree with it or not.

Change has to come from within each person and the banquet of natural resources has to be shared with everyone in the world. That is not practical under the current consumer driven market that uses profits as the ultimate guideline. The idea that raw natural resources don't have any value until they have been transformed into a usable product dictates that the labor used to obtain these valuable products will be paid substandard wages.

But in practice, manipulating the price of oil and holding onto the profits instead of transferring the extra money to every step of the process which needs the money but can't show a profit for its existence, such as clean air and proper disposal of waste products only damages economies and creates false markets.

It is remarkable that the belief system that kept people believing that the Greek and Roman gods mythology had an important part in the running of their lives, which it did, and of which no one knew how the inner workings of the system worked, was so ably transferred to the belief in the technology system that now rules our lives and is a subject of which the vast majority of its users have absolutely no real understanding of how any of it works.

The belief mechanism is apparently independent of the source of information it uses, it is only dependent on the consumerism which accompanies it.

Very well said Robert,

I agree with everything in your post, which leads me to a gloomy train of thought that I am going to have to sleep on before posting.

Re an upthread post, almost no uncontaminated plants like rapeseed are mentioned; the farmers in Europe do not grow GM crops, except in official trial cases which tend to be destroyed mysteriously. So the original varieties are still available.

Flying insects:
"ACTIVISTS from Greenpeace dumped 20 kilos of dead bees in front of the ministry for agriculture building in Madrid on Tuesday.
It was part of campaign to pressure the government to support a pesticide ban in the European Union."
In case you were wondering what that would look like....
https://www.costa-news.com/costa-blan...

I regularly get bumblebees nesting in my woodshed. They pollinate all my fruits.

Book on honeybees.
Reviewer from the Guardian says:

"a book that quietly, beautifully, rewired my heart as I read it."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

That's a beautiful review.

Agreed. I have not seen the book yet but will look for a review copy.

The latest trend in Ireland is to increase / support biodiversity in planning applications. Hence the placing of beehives around your business.
The Facebook data centre, a huge new build on the outskirts of Dublin, has ten beehives and has planted flowering plants and shrubs to feed them. This is a centre powered by 100% renewable wind energy. I am presuming there will be solar panels too.

https://www.independent.ie/business/t...

Here's one to worry Robert:
Artificially genetically engineered insects like aphids could be used as a bioweapon - or an agricultural aid. These are being developed right now to carry added gene tailoring into plants. I can see many problems.
https://gizmodo.com/scathing-report-a...

While drones seem like the ideal spy vehicle of the future, insects that are modified to carry out industrial activities will probably be just as troublesome, as they can go anywhere and are sturdily built in terms of what they are able to accomplish.

I have no doubt animals will eventually be drafted because their bodies are a billion times more complex and hence more useful than a drone that sticks out like a sore thumb. Right now it would probably cost a billion dollars to create a robot the size of a crow that would be as agile, intelligent, and robust as the crow would be. Plus the crow gets its own energy from the wild environment.

A good book about what can go wrong with this concept is Prey by Michael Crichton.

On the good side, Ireland now has a Pollinator Friendly Plan. This is run in conjunction with the Tidy Towns Award at present, sensible as some towns could go overboard on the grass mowing and hedge clipping and leave no flowers. Each town entering can now compete for the Pollinator Award.

http://pollinators.ie/communities/tid...

I have just added Queenspotting: Into the Heart of the Hive in Search of the Mysterious and Fascinating Queen Bee

to the Group bookshelf. However I got a review copy and the book won't be out for a few months.

Oregon State University is studying how forestry helps pollinators to survive.

https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/os...

Dublin Airport is among the places in Ireland actively promoting bees and other pollinators. As the airport is surrounded by farmland to the northwest, I am sure this makes them a good neighbour.

https://www.dublinairport.com/latest-...

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2018/0...

The honey is being sold / made available in the airport luxury services.
I personally would not be keen to sample honey made in an airport, due to the burned and unburned hydrocarbons from aviation fuel, the diesel exhausts, petrol exhausts and particles of brake linings and tyres, all concentrated in this area. Each person should make up their own mind.

Clare wrote: "Dublin Airport is among the places in Ireland actively promoting bees and other pollinators. As the airport is surrounded by farmland to the northwest, I am sure this makes them a good neighbour.
..."

I have to say, Clare, that Ireland and your neighbor Scotland seem to be taking some highly innovative steps to combat climate change, ecosystem disruption, and their effects. Very cool! I pray that the U.S. will follow your lead someday soon!

Thanks Brian! We are hoping for the ripple effect.

Good news for bees; mushroom soup may help in fight against the varroa mite.

https://www.goodnet.org/articles/hone...

" Mycelia, the fungal membranes of the two mushroom species – tinder fungus and Red Reishi – kill hideous Varroa mites without harming a hair on bees’ heads. In fact, it was the bees themselves who pointed this “vaccine” out to researches. The insects had been feeding on water droplets on the mushrooms long before the colony collapse struck them.

Now researchers are feeding honey bees mushroom broth, and the results are promising. The mushroom extract isn’t quite an antiviral drug that immunizes bees against a specific virus. It’s more like an immunity booster for bees. "

Pine processionary caterpillars are being controlled by drones in Spain.
https://www.costa-news.com/costa-blan...

No more at present but you can probably learn more if you google the issue.

A form of tent caterpillars that is poisonous to dogs (I guess if they chew them or get hairs stuck in their fur), also an irritant to people's skin. The caterpillars travel in single file lines which makes it possible to spot them from the air by the drones. They are using birds and natural traps on the caterpillars and knocking down nests with water hoses. The nests could have caterpillars in them whose loose hairs carry the irritant and can land on a person's skin. Sounds like a very cost effective method.

https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-ne...

Thanks!

A very nice move; a London council is planting a seven mile long wildflower corridor to help bees and other pollinators.

https://www.care2.com/causes/london-w...

A mini fast food restaurant is actually a beehive, and these are being placed on top of fast food restaurants. The area around the store is being landscaped with flowers to help the bees.
Branding alert!

https://mymodernmet.com/mcdonalds-mch...

Thought on an upthread post by Ken: raising awareness of this Green Group within Goodreads is most easily done by contributing a post here in the forum.
This post gets added to your feed; and it shows up when readers, followers and site users go to check out your page. Non-authors still have the activity added to their feed and still get checked out as they review books.
The more active this Group is internally, the more it is visible externally - within GR.

As to outside the site, one possibility is the links we post here to sites, blogs, news media. Those sites all use analytics to know where their external and reciprocal links are placed and where they get traffic from, and they see Goodreads as a source.
This can get us attention from readers, writers and influencers on the wider net.
Again, the more active a group, the more attention it gains.

I appreciate we are not all net-savvy, and the convergence of media is adding complexity very fast. So if any reader doesn't understand any of the above, feel free to ask. Several of us here will be able to talk you through the processes.

This is a page about flying insects and pollinator week.
A short film is included about planting seeds coated with neonicotinoid pesticides, or spraying plants with this.

https://www.care2.com/causes/5-ways-t...

Not mentioned, some farmers who do not go overboard on the pesticides, do so because they planted GM crops that make insects eating the crop explode.

A distinctive butterfly, the Purple Admiral, has returned to Norfolk after decades of local extinction.
The reason is explained as habit loss having been reversed.

https://www.dissexpress.co.uk/news/bu...

People have forgotten what our real roles our in the natural world. Like everything else alive we are responsible for distributing specific seeds so that they grow in the right places. For clues as to what seeds we use to handle we only have to look at the primates.

Just because we have retired from the natural world and are pursuing all kinds of plastic fantastic dreams in our made up virtual worlds that are based on money, we are still responsible for distributing seeds. Because we have demolished the natural world's system of seed distribution that every animal and insect has a role in (animals and insects that have been killed off haven't had their seed roles reassigned) people have to take over the undone roles, there is no other option.

We do plant all kinds of seeds but they are strictly only for our use and have nothing to do with maintaining balance or supporting the health and welfare of the natural world. The irony is that we use the natural world to grow the plants we need to survive. The results are immediately evident because we have destroyed the insulation on this planet that used to separate time and space, so changes that are made can be seen immediately.

U.S. Beekeepers File Suit Against Trump EPA, Charging 'Illegal' Approval of Insecticide Linked to Mass Die-Off

https://www.ecowatch.com/us-beekeeper...

Not only flying insects: new research indicates that songbirds are also badly affected by pesticide exposure. The dose made them eat less and they needed more time to feed before they could migrate.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news...

A study counted insects including in Germany, and found a strong and recent die-off.

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-insect-...

That is not surprising, the field in the picture is poisonous to anythings health. Plus you got people spraying their personal property with organic pesticides thinking they are doing good when it kills butterflies just as dead as regular pesticides.

To look at the history of insects in a location, we could look at their predators - specifically bats.
Not the most pleasant maybe but cores of bat guano carry years of information in sheltered caves.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-poop-cl...

EU Commission bans Bayer pesticide linked to harming bees

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2020...