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15531
From: Logan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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Scientists are now warning that the insect population is collapsing worldwide. This is a red flag warning sign for humanity because if the insects collapse, the entire food web will implode, leading to global ecological catastrophe. If this happens, the collapse of humanity won’t be far behind. The cause of this accelerating collapse is the widespread use of toxic agricultural pesticide chemicals that destroy the viability of insect populations. These same chemicals are also being used to poison humanity with disease-causing chemicals such as Glyphosate, a common herbicide that now saturates virtually the entire food supply. While the deceptive scientific “establishment” tries to market the science hoax of “climate change,” they are largely ignoring the far greater threat of mass extinction via widespread chemical contamination of the planet. Why isn’t every scientist and media outlet warning the world about the dangers of pesticides and herbicides? The answer, of course, is because the manufacturers of those deadly poisons are wealthy, influential corporations that pay off the media to bury the truth and spread lies about the “safety” of pesticides. |
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15537
From: Akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Where have all the insects gone?
URL: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone
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for the lazy and incurious... Where have all the insects gone? By Gretchen VogelMay. 10, 2017 "Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. "If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen," says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing. "I'm a very data-driven person," says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. "But it is a visceral reaction when you realize you don't see that mess anymore." Some people argue that cars today are more aerodynamic and therefore less deadly to insects. But Black says his pride and joy as a teenager in Nebraska was his 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1—with some pretty sleek lines. "I used to have to wash my car all the time. It was always covered with insects." Lately, Martin Sorg, an entomologist here, has seen the opposite: "I drive a Land Rover, with the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, and these days it stays clean." Though observations about splattered bugs aren't scientific, few reliable data exist on the fate of important insect species. Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees, monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs. But few have paid attention to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects that buzz and flitter through the warm months. "We have a pretty good track record of ignoring most noncharismatic species," which most insects are, says Joe Nocera, an ecologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Of the scant records that do exist, many come from amateur naturalists, whether butterfly collectors or bird watchers. Now, a new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s. Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites. Hover flies, often mistaken for bees or wasps, are important pollinators. Their numbers have plummeted in nature reserves in Germany. JEF MEUL/NIS/MINDEN PICTURES/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE Such losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact." No one knows how broadly representative the data are of trends elsewhere. But the specificity of the observations offers a unique window into the state of some of the planet's less appreciated species. Germany's "Red List" of endangered insects doesn't look alarming at first glance, says Sorg, who curates the Krefeld society's extensive collection of insect specimens. Few species are listed as extinct because they are still found in one or two sites. But that obscures the fact that many have disappeared from large areas where they were once common. Across Germany, only three bumble bee species have vanished, but the Krefeld region has lost more than half the two dozen bumble bee species that society members documented early in the 20th century. Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, recording, and collecting insects from the region—and around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 members—including teachers, telecommunication technicians, and a book publisher—have become world experts on their favorite insects. Siegfried Cymorek, for instance, who was active in the society from the 1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a local chemical plant. But because of his extensive knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members have written more than 2000 publications on insect taxonomy, ecology, and behavior. The society's headquarters is a former school in the center of Krefeld, an industrial town on the banks of the Rhine that was once famous for producing silk. Disused classrooms store more than a million insect specimens individually pinned and named in display cases. Most were collected nearby, but some come from more exotic locales. Among them are those from the collection of a local priest, an active member in the 1940s and 1950s, who persuaded colleagues at mission stations around the world to send him specimens. (The society's collection and archive are under historical preservation protection.) Weighty disappearances The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years. Tens of millions more insects float in carefully labeled bottles of alcohol— the yield from the society's monitoring projects in nature reserves around the region. The reserves, set aside for their local ecological value, are not pristine wilderness but "seminatural" habitats, such as former hay meadows, full of wildflowers, birds, small mammals—and insects. Some even include parts of agricultural fields, which farmers are free to farm with conventional methods. Heinz Schwan, a retired chemist and longtime society member who has weighed thousands of trap samples, says the society began collecting long-term records of insect abundance partly by chance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, local authorities asked the group for help evaluating how different strategies for managing the reserves affected insect populations and diversity. The members monitored each site only once every few years, but they set up identical insect traps in the same place each time to ensure clean comparisons. Because commercially available traps vary in ways that affect the catch, the group makes their own. Named for the Swedish entomologist René Malaise, who developed the basic design in the 1930s, each trap resembles a floating tent. Black mesh fabric forms the base, topped by a tent of white fabric and, at the summit, a collection container—a plastic jar with an opening into another jar of alcohol. Insects trapped in the fabric fly up to the jar, where the vapors gradually inebriate them and they fall into the alcohol. The traps collect mainly species that fly a meter or so above the ground. For people who worry that the traps themselves might deplete insect populations, Sorg notes that each trap catches just a few grams per day—equivalent to the daily diet of a shrew. Sorg says society members saved all the samples because even in the 1980s they recognized that each represented a snapshot of potentially intriguing insect populations. "We found it fascinating—despite the fact that in 1982 the term ‘biodiversity' barely existed," he says. Many samples have not yet been sorted and cataloged—a painstaking labor of love done with tweezers and a microscope. Nor have the group's full findings been published. But some of the data are emerging piecemeal in talks by society members and at a hearing at the German Bundestag, the national parliament, and they are unsettling. Beyond the striking drop in overall insect biomass, the data point to losses in overlooked groups for which almost no one has kept records. In the Krefeld data, hover flies—important pollinators often mistaken for bees— show a particularly steep decline. In 1989, the group's traps in one reserve collected 17,291 hover flies from 143 species. In 2014, at the same locations, they found only 2737 individuals from 104 species. Since their initial findings in 2013, the group has installed more traps each year. Working with researchers at several universities, society members are looking for correlations with weather, changes in vegetation, and other factors. No simple cause has yet emerged. Even in reserves where plant diversity and abundance have improved, Sorg says, "the insect numbers still plunged."" |
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15539
From: velvet green/san jose, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Where have all the insects gone?
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Here's my dumb comment. It may be meaningful. I moved here three years ago. There were carpenter ants virtually everywhere. However, the previous resident had a dog. After three years, digging through the 30 year old accumulations of discarded wood, which absolutely contained very healthy carpenter ant colonies no longer do, at year 4. It seems to me that the absence of the "dog" has allowed the resident wild turkeys to completely, 100% clear the area of carpenter ants. They had been seen everywhere in everything two years ago. And they have vanished These adorable turkeys visit every day and dig exactly where I have disturbed the area ---courtesy of Cal Fire requests. Cheers! |
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15533
From: Eve, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
URL: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/livestock-feed-is-destroying-the-environment/
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How the Food We Feed Farm Animals Is Destroying the Environment The sun provides energy for grass to grow, herbivores eat the grass, and carnivores eat the herbivores. This is how the most basic food cycle works, right? Right … unless the “herbivores” in this situation are actually livestock … a group of herbivores that humans have overproduced specifically for their own consumption. Livestock can be defined as any domesticated animal that is used as a commodity for agricultural purposes. In the United States, common livestock include cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, poultry, and fish. Over 99 percent of which are raised on factory farms for the food industry. Seeing these animals as commodities, they are mass produced in large “highly-efficient” facilities. Farming animals in this manner disrupts the delicately balanced food cycle – creating more herbivores then there are plants (or more readily, space), and more carnivores (i.e. humans who eat meat). Industrial farming has also shown to have a number of detrimental environmental impacts, including high greenhouse gas emissions, extreme water usage and land exploitation, and air pollution. How could this news get any worse? Well…turns out we’ve altered the natural food cycle so much that even the foods used to raise livestock are damaging the environment and consequently, causing harm to other animals (including YOU!). Don’t Most Farm Animals Eat Grass? When many of us imagine farms the way our childhood storybooks described them to us, we often think of vast rolling green pastures with soft wooden fences and gentle red barns. Along with this image, animals are frolicking, grazing, rooting, or pecking around in the grass. According to cultural media, this all seems fine and dandy. So, why are animals being fed corn, soy, wheat and other grains, bi- products of the remains of other factory farmed animals, and…chicken manure?!? (not to mention added hormones and antibiotics). Corn and soy are protein-rich food bases that cause animals to quickly reach market weight, and are much cheaper than other food options – due to government subsidies. In the United States, 47 percent of soy and 60 percent of corn is used for livestock consumption. Corn is considered very productive and can be grown in a variety of environments. …But wait! Aren’t most farm animals, especially cattle, goats, sheep, and other ruminants naturally supposed to eat sprouted grasses? Well, who cares about farm animal health anyway? Certainly not factory farms. Because if they started to care about the health of the animals they raised, that could cut into their profit margins. It is much cheaper and efficient to feed animals a mixture of corn and soy then to allow them the freedom and space to roam out in pasture. Seeing as animal agriculture corporations don’t care about the health of their animals, then we can’t really expect them to care about the environment. But just because they don’t, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Our survival depends on protecting the environment, however, it is becoming more and more apparent that animal agriculture, and our meat-centric diets are making this a tricky task. In order to produce enough feed to fatten up the billions of livestock being raised on Earth, companies resort to clear-cutting rainforests to make way for crop fields. It is estimated that 33 percent of arable land on the planet is used to produce livestock feed! And the crops of choice of the industry are none too environmentally friendly themselves. Let’s look at how the food that livestock eat is contributing to environmental damage: Corn Corn is immensely overproduced due to government subsidies and thus, is grown across about 97 million acres of land in the United States alone – about the size of California. That’s a lot of land! In fact, corn uses more land than any other U.S. crop. Corn also accounts for more than 1/3 of the United States’ overall food production by calorie content. Corn is a grown in large monocultures, meaning there is little or no crop rotation and thus, corn is more vulnerable to insect infestations. In order to successfully mass-produce nutrient-hungry corn for livestock, more nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides are required than any other crop. Can you believe that every year, over six million tons of nitrogen is used on corn through chemical fertilizers and manure? Corn also reduces soil fertility, rendering the land it is grown on unsuitable for other plant species. Chemical fertilizers used for corn production run into lakes, river and streams, and coastal oceans, causing algae to grow and spread, depleting the water’s oxygen. As a result, dead zones, or areas with less oxygen dissolved in the water, kill many organisms. Genetically modified corn, also known as Bt corn, contains toxins intended to kill pest insects. When pollen or other parts of the plant are washed into various bodies of water, the insect populations within these ecosystems are affected. Since insects are essential to aquatic food webs, many other species are also put at risk. According to researcher and Assistant Professor Todd Royer from Indiana University, “If our goal is to have healthy, functioning ecosystems, we need to protect all the parts. Water resources are something we depend on greatly.” Care about water conservation? Cornfields use massive amounts of water every day and consume over six billion gallons of freshwater each year in the United States. Can you guess which cereal grain is the largest element of global trade? You got it: corn! And most of it is used as animal feed. The United States takes the prize for being the largest corn producer and exporter in the world. One acre of corn is responsible for using on average approximately 60 gallons of fossil fuels for production and distribution. Soybeans Due to the rise of demand for meat, dairy, and eggs in the 1960’s, soy production increased to meet the needs for cheap, high-protein livestock feed. Similar to corn, methods of mass soy production led to monocultures and thus, heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Land that once supported important ecosystems in countries such as Argentina and Brazil is now useless to soy’s soil degradation. In the year 2000, 75.2 million pounds of herbicide were used for United States soybean production, according to the USDA. Unfortunately, with further demand for livestock feed, the amount of chemical insecticides used will continue to increase. Deforestation to make room for soy plantations takes a tremendous toll on the environment by accounting for about fifteen to twenty percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global climate change. Since rainforests store all of their nutrients within living matter, destruction of these forests discharges immense amounts of carbon. In Brazil, for example, over 473 million tons of carbon dioxide was released to make room for soybean plantations. Soybeans are being produced on fragile systems of land, susceptible to soil erosion. Furthermore, soy production causes soil compaction, exhausting the soil of its nutrients and value to the ecosystem. In the late 1990’s, over 100 thousand hectares of land in Bolivia were abandoned because they were so damaged from growing soybeans. Soybean production requires immense quantities of water. Approximately 530 gallons of water are needed to produce a mere two pounds of soybeans. If Not Soy or Grain-Fed Livestock, What Should We Eat?! As much as many of us would like to believe that consuming grass-fed livestock is more ethical and environmentally sustainable, it is important to consider that this may not be true at all. In fact, many “grass-fed” animals are still fattened up with soy, corn, and other grains. Perhaps you should check out how livestock are harming the environment simply by grazing on 41.4 percent of U.S. land and 45 percent of the Earth’s entire terrestrial space! Fortunately, we all have the opportunity to reduce the environmental impacts of livestock feed by reducing or eliminating our demand on animal product consumption. Making changes in your eating choices could even benefit your health! As the leading organization at the forefront of the conscious consumerism movement, it is One Green Planet’s view that our food choices have the power to heal our broken food system, give species a fighting chance for survival, and pave the way for a truly sustainable future. By choosing to eat more plant-based foods, you can drastically cut your carbon footprint, save precious water supplies and help ensure that vital crop resources are fed to people, rather than livestock. With the wealth of available plant-based options available, it has never been easier to eat with the planet in mind. |
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15532
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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!!Natural News source alert (very questionable CT source--please cross check any information with other sources). |
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15534
From: Eve, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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The Death Ranger wrote it, therefore it's unbalanced. |
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15535
From: Eve, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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The Chinese characters are lots of them today but in this thread only when I view the thread itself but not when I open individual posts... |
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15541
From: Johnl, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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I sometimes see chinese characters in a few posts, but not in the posts on this thread today. They sometimes appear and disappear, using my computer. Besides pesticides and GMO crops, another reason for a collapse of the insect population is probably microwaves from cellphone towers. Honey bees, for instance, might depend heavily on magnetic wavelengths in their guidance system. |
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15545
From: Eve, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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Thank you Johnl. |
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15542
From: Alan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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Do you mean electromagnetic wavelengths or just magnetic? As bees do have a magnetoreceptor in their bellies that could be effected if they passed very close by say a MRI scanner in a hospital - though not many of them around in the open up in towers... https://physicsworld.com/a/honey-bees-navigate-using-magnetic-abdomens/ Though simple electric bug killers and motorcylists account for more everyday bug slaughter than most things... 
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15544
From: Johnl, [DNS_Address]
Subject: bee population collapse - scientific study in Switzerland
URL: https://inhabitat.com/its-official-cell-phones-are-killing-bees/
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Scientists may have found the cause of the world’s sudden dwindling population of bees - and cell phones may be to blame. Research conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland has shown that the signal from cell phones not only confuses bees, but also may lead to their death. Over 83 experiments have yielded the same results.... The signals cause the bees to become lost and disoriented. The impact has already been felt the world over, as the population of bees in the U.S. and the U.K. has decreased by almost half in the last thirty years – which coincides with the popularization and acceptance of cell phones as a personal device. Studies as far back as 2008 have found that bees are repelled by cell phone signals. Bees are an integral and necessary part of our agricultural and ecological systems, producing honey, and more importantly pollinating our crops. As it is unlikely that the world will learn to forgo the convenience of cell phones, it is unclear how much they will contribute to the decline of bees, and their impact on the environment. |
15547
From: Alan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: bee population collapse - scientific study in Switzerland
URL: World’s smallest mobile phone set to be very popular in prisons
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"reacted significantly to cell phones that were placed near or in hives in call-making mode. " Seems the same distruptive effect is to be found in prisons when inmates use mobile phones. Solution would be if bee hives only had access to old fashioned cabled landlines and bees were educated on reasons why they shouldn't have smart phones. Unless little bee size tin foil hats would mitigate against their confusing effect. |
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15548
From: Alan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: bee population collapse - scientific study in Switzerland
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The influence of telecommunications networks on bees is a narrative often visited and is based on unproven facts. Naturally this type of misinformation leds to resistances and doubts. To clarify that, we made this article. The idea that theses networks have a negative effect on bees got great attention by media due to a small study made in Germany. That study was conducted based on very particular assumptions, such as the type of telecommunication towers used in the network. However, this study led to ideas and wrong conclusions that were leveraged and promoted by media and social networks. That misinformation led the author of the study himself Stefan Kimmel to publicly declare to Associated Press that there’re no connection between his study and the phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). After that other studies were made about the subject-matter. Daniel Favre in Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping argue that there’s a connection between the decrease of bees population, and cellphones. The methodology of Favre’s experience was to place cellphones inside beehives with bees and listen to the sounds issued by the colonies when the cell was on active mode, inactive, ringing, turned off or on standby. He concluded that bees are not affected by the cellphone when it is inactive or in standby mode, but that when cellphone is ringing or active bees are disturbed. Favre’s experience and his arguments bring more doubts than answers. Inserting one or two cellphones inside a beehive is not undeniable proof that bees suffer with radio frequency. A cellphone is very complex device with a lot of noises that may lead to several effects, due to the radio frequency signals that it receives and sends, the ringing sounds and the vibrations. This inability of Favre’s to be sharp and concise in the causes of the disturbances of bees led to conclude that arguments of the study are limited and in need of further developments. There’s not a temporal connection between the massification of telecommunication networks and CCD phenomenon, which led us to conclude that the cause is more recent. Due to this intense and misinformed buzz the United States Department of Agriculture stated (read article) that neither cellphones nor telecommunication towers had shown any connection to CCD, or poor health of bees. The four main suspects for CCD largely responsible for the fast decrease of bees population are climatic changes, diseases and parasites, lack of food and the proliferation of pesticides. Studies that try to relate the decrease in population of bees and cellphones aren’t taken seriously by the scientific community, because they are pure speculation without real support where the only goal is to mask the real problems. |
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15543
From: Naziriah, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
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15550
From: Harvey, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Insect population COLLAPSE a death warning for all humanity?
| Well, let's face it. The slut deserved it. LOL!! |
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