
The Insect Apocalypse Is Here - surbas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
======
gmoes
I think the American suburban yard may be equally responsible with agriculture
for a lot of this in the US. The use of herbicides and pesticides is
completely unregulated. Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time
for most people and have a large carbon footprint. I had a small native plant
yard that attracted hundreds of pollinators and arachnids. I was treated like
and criminal forced to cut most of it down. I still get a fair amount of
terrestrial arthropods but not as much.

It sickens me when I see workers with those sprayer packs or trucks that look
like small chemical plants.

Before I decided to comment I submitted my write up, if you are interested you
can read that you can read here:

[http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-
ya...](http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-yard-to-
reverse.html)

Edit: I did want to mention that I definitely seen a massive decline in
butterflies and moths over the last 15 years.

Update: I quoted 40 million acres below, which is for turf grass which
probably includes athletic fields. I am not against everyone having a lawn or
athletic fields. I do think people should be able to cultivate their native
environment on their suburban property and this should be encouraged and even
incentivized. My neighbor’s kids play in their backyard, so they have a need
for it. Of course a non herbicide non monoculture lawn should work ok too.
That’s what I grew up with.

Also I think that gas powered devices need to be replaced with electric
devices. I think something like 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled alone
in relation to lawn maintenance.

The thing that scares me is the normality of spraying for mosquitoes. In my
area it’s the invasive Aedes mosquito species, the native species are a lot
less aggressive. Also with some of these other very scary invasive species
like the marmorated stink bug, ash borer, lantern fly, that new Asian tick,
etc. Are we going to end up using more and more insecticides and subsequently
kill more and more of our native fauna?

~~~
gambler
Lawns are one of the most ridiculous human inventions I have ever observed.
You take normal self-sufficient grass out, then reseed with some sort of
crippled grass that needs constant fertilization and watering. To make things
worse, you mandate it to be unnaturally short, so people have to constantly
mow and use herbicides to keep the normal grass out. And all of this is made
mandatory for some reason. Aside from creating grass mono-cultures, this is
just a gigantic waster of time and resources that doesn't produce _anything_
in return.

~~~
whatshisface
Lawns are useful for standing on outdoors, given that they are not up to your
knees, not concrete, and not dirt. That's why most people maintain them. If
you never go outside then there is not much need for a lawn.

~~~
maxxxxx
I rarely see anybody standing on their lawn in my neighborhood. In Florida
they even warned us to not let our dog on the lawn because it was so toxic.

I think lawns are mainly for looks.

~~~
justinator
I think it was mainly a status thing, in that you could afford to have vast
amounts of land that weren't producing anything, and the workforce to maintain
it. Like, it's something a French king would do at a Chateau to complement
their rose gardens.

It's just crazy to think that now it can be against the law (or at least
against HOA rules) to _not_ have a lawn. Like it's illegal to plant a
vegetable garden in your front yard.

~~~
stplsd
>or at least against HOA rules

WTF!? I am from Europe, is this really a thing? Although,it wouldn't surprise
me, watching American Movies, lawn and suburbia seems inseparable.

~~~
whatshisface
The homeowner's association has a lot of power in the US, so it is inevitable
that it will be misused and used incompetently. However only in the most
close-minded and controlling of suburbs can you not plant a vegetable garden.

~~~
stplsd
But what is their reasoning for this?

~~~
maxxxxx
I think it's about the looks. Everything needs to be tidy and clean.

~~~
ew6082
HOA's and HOA bylaws are normally mandated and created by the bank doing the
construction loan. They do this to protect the value of the property while
they hold interest in the remaining lots. The mortgage industry also loves
this since in the end they may be stuck with a property if there is a default.

~~~
macawfish
HOAs are a fascist alternative to actual community.

------
bambax
OT, but as I grow older I find it harder and harder to read those hyper-
storified newspaper "stories". I don't care about the life story of all those
people and their kids and how and why they were riding a bike in the forest 30
years ago.

It's supposed to be a great progress in journalism to put people first and
make stories relatable, but it's gone too far -- and it always sound the same.

Bugs population is in sharp decline, here are the numbers, here are what
scientists think are the causes, and the possible consequences, and the
possible remedies -- is what I want to read.

Sorry for the rant.

~~~
lh7777
I just immediately close the tab on any article that starts with "[person's
name I don't recognize] was [doing something not directly related to the
article's title]". If it's a topic of particular interest (like this one),
I'll come here to see if there are comments.

~~~
djsumdog
Pretty much what I did. I tried skimming a bunch but it was paragraphs of
narrative crap. I use to read articles in The Atlantic when I was younger, but
I've grown tired of this long form journalism.

One thing I do enjoy are long form podcasts, because I can listen to them on
the train or on long drives.

~~~
el_cid
I do the same thing every time and I am glad to see there are so many others
who feel the same way.

------
williamstein
I remember being a kid in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. Whenever we went
to a pond or lake in the woods, there would be little frogs and salamanders
everywhere in the water. Now there aren't and I find this mass extinction
right before my eyes really, really disturbing.
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-
countdown/am...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-
countdown/amphibians-declining-alarming/)

~~~
novaleaf
Going to a Pacific Northwest beach today vs 30-40 years ago, You may also
notice a lack of seagulls on beaches. I remember Kalaloch on the Olympic
Peninsula used to have thousands of the vermin. Go there now, and you are
lucky to see 10 in an entire day.

~~~
tjr225
While I find all of this stuff totally disturbing - claiming that you'd be
lucky to see 10 seagulls at Kalaloch Beach is insane.

I used to live in Olympia and would visit Kalaloch/Ruby Beach on a monthly
basis - even camped there a couple weekends ago. There are seagulls(and Bald
Eagles, and even Pelicans) all around there to this day. I even have
photographic evidence(shot on a medium format toy camera right in front of
Kalaloch Lodge earlier this year):
[https://i.imgur.com/hMwDuXs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/hMwDuXs.jpg)

I'm not sure what these birds' patterns are wrt to collecting food but a
cursory dig in my photos shows that I've captured pictures of anywhere from a
handful to hundreds of birds on this strip of coast on different occasions
over the course of the last year and a half or so.

~~~
novaleaf
To elaborate on my observation: aprox 30 years ago in the summer you would see
thousands of seagulls on Kalaloch. Perhaps 50-100 in eye view at all times.
Over the last few years I've gone to Kalaloch in summer you are lucky to see
more than 2 at a time.

Seagulls still exist obviously, but there numbers are drastically smaller. As
they are basically rats with wings, perhaps it's just better trash management,
but the observation still stands.

~~~
tjr225
You said something far more alarming and also flat out wrong - that's what I'm
refuting. This 2 or 10 or whatever tiny amount of birds at a time thing you
are claiming to experience...doesn't match my experience whatsoever. I can
provide more photographs if you don't believe me.

I can't speak to the pacific northwest 30 years ago so I'll take your word for
it that there were more birds on the coast then.

~~~
novaleaf
Sorry you don't believe me.

Here's my own photo evidence from South Beach in July 2017.
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/JzporX8XmFFswgSu8](https://photos.app.goo.gl/JzporX8XmFFswgSu8)

I didn't go in 2018, but 2016 and 2017 I was there for about a week. same
empty beaches both trips.

You being there in Nov may be why you see seagulls, I never have been there in
winter.

I don't have any photos handy from the 1980's to scan, but it truly is a stark
difference.

------
verytrivial
Plausibly one of the Horsemen of the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)
.

Edit: Actually, I regret being flippant with this. I find this development
gravely troubling.

~~~
almost_usual
Biomass of mammals on Earth as of 2018 \- Livestock, mostly cattle and pigs
(60%) \- Humans (36%) \- Wild animals (4%)

Wow.

~~~
anfilt
Keep in mind we are able to sustain our livestock populations beyond what a
natural ecosystem for the same area could support.

What would be more interesting is to see how the natural mammal biomass has
changed.

------
mikestew
Reading this in the NYT this morning, added to other coming global disasters,
it occurred to me that given there isn't a _whole_ lot I can do, my only
regret is that I won't live long enough to see the end of the movie.

Choke ourselves with CO2? Kill all the insects and the crops die off? (Maybe
_that_ was the disaster in _The Road_.) Something else even worse that we're
currently fucking up, and don't even know it yet? Growing up, I thought it was
going to be nuclear war, but I'm starting to think it will be not with a bang,
but a whimper. But unfortunately, I can't flip to the last chapter. I just
want to know how it ends. :-)

~~~
lixtra
> Choke ourselves with CO2? If you look at the units of the Keeling Curvy [1]
> you will notice that we are around 410 ppm of CO2. The PEL is 5000 ppm [2],
> so no, we won't choke soon especially because plants grow faster[3] with
> more CO2 so there is a negative feedback loop (to some extend).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide)

[3] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-
experts-d...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-
rising-co2-benefit-plants1/)

~~~
DennisP
Your second link says that 1000ppm CO2 has significant negative effects on
human cognition after only 2.5 hours exposure.

Your third link says that while increased CO2 in isolation makes plants grow
faster, the negative effects that come with it would overwhelm any positive
effects. Negative effects include drought, heat stress, invasive insects and
disease, and increased forest fires.

It also says that for wild plants that don't get artificial fertilizer,
availability of materials like nitrogen limits their growth regardless of CO2
availability.

------
hyperion2010
I wonder whether there might not also be additional factors that we have not
considered. For example, insect viruses. We know that when human populations
mixed between continents upwards of 95% of one population vanished due to
disease. Very few people study insect diseases (and are usually just happy
that a 'pest' has been killed), and there are so many species it would be a
nearly impossible task to study them all. Globalization is now mixing members
of all species and their diseases with them. It would not surprise me if part
of this drastic decline was also due to massively virulent diseases sweeping
through completely unprepared populations just as European diseases did to the
indigenous populations of the Americas.

~~~
sdenton4
Possible... But we know from a previous pesticide problem - DDT - just how
disastrous a single chemical can be. And that was in the seventies: Big Ag has
only gotten bigger since. I think agriculture has to be treated as the main
cause unless definitive evidence to the contrary is produced. (And at the
scales we're talking about, that evidence should be pretty easy to turn up, if
it exists...)

~~~
nyolfen
this is some really weak reasoning, lol. it most likely has many causes. as
others have said elsewhere, it impacts rural uncultivated areas like
rainforests as well

------
christophilus
I think we could fix this before it's too late. Anectdata, but I have my own
yard, and a big chunk of it is now overgrown with strawberries (it basically
looks like ivy, so the neighbors think it's fine). Insects love that patch of
the yard. Combined with a handful of "wild" areas where I let the natives and
wildflowers grow untended all season, my yard was swarming with fireflies,
June bugs, butterflies, random pollinators I've never seen before and the
occasional chipmunk.

None of my neighbor's yards are remotely close to the biodiversity I have. My
neighbors all spray for weed and mosquito control. If we mandated that a
certain portion of our green spaces had to be reserved for insect and bird
life, if we mandated a certain portion be meadows, basically, unsprayed,
untreated, untouched, I think it'd go a long way to improving things.

------
post_break
I forget where I was reading about this but it was a trucker commenting on
this. He had been driving trucks since the 70's supposedly and everyone was
saying how there are no bugs on the windshields. He said he noticed that it
came in waves. Some years, tons of bugs, others none. Now I know this is some
unverified person on the internet that I can't find the source to, but it was
interesting to hear if true.

~~~
Ensorceled
Well, I grew up in northern Ontario and we were talking about it at my family
reunion and EVERYBODY remarked how few bugs there were these days compared to
when we were kids. June Bugs, moths, grasshoppers ... every species has been
hit. And this is all across Ontario; Kenora to Toronto, Sault Ste. Marie to
Ottawa.

~~~
3pt14159
Same. I spent summers there too. Anywhere close to humans has been slammed. I
used to have trouble sleeping because of how loud the frogs were at the pond
by the lake. There were tens of thousands of them. Might be a hundred at the
same pond today.

The Anthropocene isn't going to last.

~~~
Ensorceled
Or crickets! I can't remember the last time I heard a cricket let alone the
steady din of a field full of them.

------
scottlocklin
I like how the conversation here degenerated into arguments about watering
your lawn; something which isn't really done in Germany, where this phenomenon
was first noticed.

FWIIW I noticed the lack of bugs mostly by noticing Spain seems to still have
a lot of bugs sticking to the windshield (not so in Germany). Also the total
lack of lightning bugs when I moved back to New England after two decades.

------
nakedrobot2
There is not one mention of glyphosate (or Roundup) in this article. Why?

If I had to bet on one overriding cause of this, it's glyphosate.

~~~
odovdor
Glyphosate is a herbicide. Why blame it when there are dozens of insecticides
used in agriculture?

~~~
radiorental
There's recent reporting that Glyphosate affects insect gut bacteria.

[https://cen.acs.org/environment/pesticides/Glyphosate-
disrup...](https://cen.acs.org/environment/pesticides/Glyphosate-disrupts-
honey-bee-gut/96/web/2018/09)

I think the larger point being, the more chemicals we insert into the
environment without a holistic understanding of their interactions and impact
on various ecosystems, the more we run the risk of collateral damage.

------
maxnocker
I live in northern Italy and cannot confirm this thesis and I would say even
the opposite for my region. I never noticed so many insect than now and every
year are coming new species. The population of this new species is multiplying
rapidly!

~~~
dreamcompiler
I just drove across central Italy from Rome to the Adriatic--mostly at night
on the Autostrada--and got maybe two bug strikes on my windshield. That seems
pretty thin to me.

~~~
maxnocker
I know it because we have a farm at home and I see the diversity of insects
constantly and the amout of some new species causes problems in the farms

------
lixtra
Can this be explained due to changed land usage? For example [1]? Anecdotaly,
I experience huge differences. The wild places seems to be humming as 20 years
ago but there are less and less wild places.

[1] [http://archive.is/UUgzj](http://archive.is/UUgzj)

Edit: Improved English.

~~~
justin66
It's a problem for sure, but it's not _the_ problem. It's not like there's
just _one thing_ that we're changing in a way that effects ecosystems.

------
partiallypro
Strangely I've been reading the opposite should be occurring:
[https://www.uvm.edu/gund/news/global-warming-more-insects-
hu...](https://www.uvm.edu/gund/news/global-warming-more-insects-hungrier-
crops)

Global warming should be increasing insect metabolism and their populations.

I think it's very possible that we actually don't know what's happening, or if
our solutions are making things worse as we try to engineer nature back to
what we believe to be the "natural state." The only thing we can do is try to
be as clean as possible, but I often wonder if what we find as solutions now
are just going to cause massive problems in the future. There is no way to
really tell.

~~~
Diederich
Global warming/climate change is, above all, one result of an experiment of
unprecedented scope. "What happens to this planet when we release vast
quantities of heat trapping material into the air?"

This is the very first time we've run this experiment, and the experiment is
ongoing.

In other words, there are and will continue to be enormous uncertainties about
the details of what's ahead of us.

> if our solutions are making things worse as we try to engineer

As what one might call a 'climate change alarmist', going back a couple of
decades now, I hear you and I don't necessarily disagree. I am far less eager
to push forward with, for example, geoengineering and other grand responses
than my fellow climate change 'true believers', simply because of how
uncertain all of this is.

Having said that, we as a civilization need to increase all manner of related
research 100x or 10,000x, as soon as possible.

In the same way that we have been forced to directly manage all kinds of
natural resources because of our actions (for example: deer populations), so
also will we be likely required to directly manage our atmosphere in various
ways.

But we need to be really fucking careful about it.

------
LiterallyDoge
In case you were as annoyed as me by the verbosity:

"[A] 2014 review in Science tried to quantify these declines by synthesizing
the findings of existing studies and found that a majority of monitored
species were declining, on average by 45 percent."

------
agumonkey
Another thing that strikes me is that this 'science' comes from informal~
groups of passionated people. No market to be seen here. Yet it's the
foundation of our lives..

------
acdanger
In an ecological sense, what are the downsides of humanity killing itself off
in the very near future? It seems like nothing but a net-positive for the rest
of life residing on earth.

~~~
jeffmcmahan
So what you're saying is, "in an ecological sense" you're fine with it if my
children die of starvation? Well good for you.

------
bumble_
While it seems sensible to turn and look at our use of pesticides for the
cause of the decline in insect populations there appears to be another, much
more sinister, element at play.

"Goldenrod, a wildflower many consider a weed, is extremely important to bees.
It flowers late in the season, and its pollen provides an important source of
protein for bees as they head into the harshness of winter. Since goldenrod is
wild and humans haven’t bred it into new strains, it hasn’t changed over time
as much as, say, corn or wheat. And the Smithsonian Institution also happens
to have hundreds of samples of goldenrod, dating back to 1842, in its massive
historical archive—which gave Ziska and his colleagues a chance to figure out
how one plant has changed over time.

They found that the protein content of goldenrod pollen has declined by a
third since the industrial revolution—and the change closely tracks with the
rise in CO2. Scientists have been trying to figure out why bee populations
around the world have been in decline, which threatens many crops that rely on
bees for pollination. Ziska’s paper suggested that a decline in protein prior
to winter could be an additional factor making it hard for bees to survive
other stressors."

I suspect there are multiple vectors involved in the observed declines and we
have reached the tipping point where past colony sizes can simply no longer be
sustained given the increasing pressures on multiple fronts.

Source: [https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-
nutrie...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-
carbon-dioxide-000511)

------
giardini
This study appears to be yet another alarmist rehash of what has been
previously discussed on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323533)

Here's one of the original papers:

[https://www.farmlandbirds.net/sites/default/files/Orbrioch%2...](https://www.farmlandbirds.net/sites/default/files/Orbrioch%2..).

The 75% decline number appears to be from two data points from a 220-acre
plot. From that paper:

"What follows is a description of measured Insect-Biomasses from samples
collected in the Orbroich Bruch Nature Reserve, near Krefeld, using Malaise
Insect Traps. The results show that, in the same two areas, sampled in the
years 1989 and 2013, there was a dramatic fall in the number of flying
insects. Using the same traps, in the same areas, significant reductions of
insect populations, of more than 75%, were found. Our data confirms, that in
the areas studied, less than 25% of the original number of flying insects
collected in 1989, were still present in 2013."

"The Orboicher Bruch, to the Northwest of Krefeld, is a designated Nature
Reserve of around 100 hectares (220 acres). Due to the reserve’s relatively
remote location and its rugged landscape, intensive farming came to the area
only recently."

So alarmists are extrapolating from two data points (years 1989 and 2013) for
a 220-hectare plot of German farmland to the entire world. I think that is a
bit of a stretch, even for statistics.

Since different bugs breed in different seasons, and numbers depend on the
fruitfulness of previous generations, food supply, predation, disease,
temperature and so on, this bug weight could vary considerably from year to
year (or site to site) for any number of reasons. While one year cicadas
thrive, the next year there may be none.

BTW they're measuring the weight of dead bugs - not how many bugs or what
species of bugs - just the weight of bugs. Actually they're not even measuring
that, they're measuring the weight of dead bugs' soaked in 70-80% alcohol.

I could go on and on about controls in statistical experiments but I think you
get the idea.

See the original HN posting for discussions pointers to the earlier papers.

~~~
moultano
There have been many subsequent studies in different regions all cited in the
article and all finding a precipitous decline.

~~~
giardini
moultano says> _" There have been many subsequent studies in different regions
all cited in the article and all finding a precipitous decline."_.

Nope, wrong on both counts. All the article says is that professional
researchers are _looking_for_data_sets_! From the article [underscores mine]:

 _" Since the Krefeld study came out, researchers have begun searching for
other forgotten repositories of information that might offer windows into the
past. Some of the Radboud researchers have analyzed long-term data, belonging
to _Dutch entomological societies _, about beetles and moths in certain
reserves; they found significant drops (72 percent, 54 percent) that mirrored
the Krefeld ones. Roel van Klink, ...is _looking_for_ historical data sets...
So far he has found forgotten data from 140 old data sets for 1,500 locations
that _could_be_resampled_.

In the United States, one of the few long-term data sets about insect
abundance comes from the work of Arthur Shapiro, an entomologist at the
University of California, Davis. In 1972, he began walking transects in the
Central Valley and the Sierras, counting butterflies. He planned to do a study
on how short-term weather variations affected butterfly populations. But the
longer he sampled, the more valuable his data became, offering a signal
through the noise of seasonal ups and downs. “And so here I am in Year 46,” he
said, nearly half a century of spending five days a week, from late spring to
the end of autumn, observing butterflies. In that time he has watched overall
numbers decline and seen some species that used to be everywhere — even
species that “everyone regarded as a junk species” only a few decades ago —
all but disappear. Shapiro believes that Krefeld-level declines are likely to
be happening all over the globe. “But, of course, I don’t cover the entire
globe,” he added. “_I_cover_I-80_.”

... One is a pilot project in Germany similar to the Danish car study. _

~~~
moultano
I don't think you even read the quotes you posted, let alone the whole
article. How does the second one you posted not meet your criteria? You also
missed one.

 _a study just out from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that
he labeled, “Krefeld comes to Puerto Rico.” The study included data from the
1970s and from the early 2010s, when a tropical ecologist named Brad Lister
returned to the rain forest where he had studied lizards — and, crucially,
their prey — 40 years earlier. Lister set out sticky traps and swept nets
across foliage in the same places he had in the 1970s, but this time he and
his co-author, Andres Garcia, caught much, much less: 10 to 60 times less
arthropod biomass than before. (It’s easy to read that number as 60 percent
less, but it’s sixtyfold less: Where once he caught 473 milligrams of bugs,
Lister was now catching just eight milligrams.)_

~~~
giardini
You said> _" _many_ subsequent studies in different regions _all_ cited in the
article and _all_ finding a _precipitous_ decline."_

There aren't "many" there are only a few. Those are scattered in content, some
are unpublished, some are unpublished data, all by varying types of
researchers in different fields and with varying methodologies. One study is
about spiders, another about insects, etc. This is hardly "Insect Apocalypse"
\- it is just "Insect Madness". I'm willing to wait until more serious
research is done and collated.

The fact is this article and many others about "Insect Armageddon/Apocalypse"
were triggered by a single study of a a single 220-acre area of German
wilderness by a bunch of amateur bug-chasers. Here they are:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/world/europe/krefeld-
germ...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/world/europe/krefeld-germany-
insect-armageddon.html)

And here's their paper that started it all:

[http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-
content/uploads/20...](http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/Orbrioch-Nature-reserve.pdf)

Read it and weep. A study of 220 acres in Germany. See

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323533)

for criticisms and notes.

Not that their work isn't worthwhile (I'll leave that for others to decide).
But from their original article we now have many, many misleading and
alarmingly shrill articles, all predicting a worldwide insect population
collapse based on very little scientific evidence.

------
mensetmanusman
This would seem like a good time to invest in urban, vertical, pestacide-free
farming enterprises. Anyone have recommended trading companies?

On another note, evolution is an interesting discussion point.
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/are-birds-
evolving...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/are-birds-evolving-to-
avoid-cars-3530859/)

I’m reminded of Henry Ford’s attempt to industrialize natural rubber
production and the evolution of the insects in response that made his endeavor
very challenging. Are some insects simply avoiding ‘grey patches of death’ ?

~~~
therealdrag0
I think vertical, pesticide-free farming could be beneficial. But I don't see
any reason to make it urban. We benefit from farming being very specialized,
and it seems like putting it around other human activity would just make it
more difficult than it needs to be.

~~~
mensetmanusman
Urban would just reduce time/cost of transport of food to cities.

Would also increase resiliance of cities to catastrophies to be entirely food
supply independent assuming it can generate sufficient energy.

------
fallingfrog
I’m seeing a lot of people giving anecdata here but it’s very easy to fool
yourself and imho this feels like a story that is going to need a lot more
study for us to understand what’s really going on. I can’t think of any
obvious reason that either climate change or pesticide use in areas hundreds
of miles away would affect insect populations. But, there’s a lot I don’t
know. So let’s find out but not panic.

------
brianlweiner
Is it not possible to breed insects to try and replace some portion of the
natural base population? Obviously other changes causing the population loss
would also have to occur (e.g more responsible use of insecticides, less
reliance on monoculture agriculture) - but insects are pretty good at
reproducing so I'd think this is at least something we could try and
ameliorate.

~~~
gambler
This is a problem likely caused by humans trying to manage too much in nature.
Does it really sound reasonable to respond by taking over the working of even
larger chunk of nature?

I think a much more reasonable approach would be to scale down pesticide use,
scale down our overall biomass footprint by reducing meat consumption and
scale down anything that involves cutting down "wild" trees or "re-purposing"
forest landmass.

~~~
akiselev
We may already be so deep in the uncanny valley of geoengineering, so to
speak, that we're past the point of no return and our only chance for survival
is to take control of the unintented consequences of human civilization with
intentional large scale action. At this point, the losses we've seen so far
and our predictions seem so bad that it may be worth the risk of even more
damage to gain valuable experience in geoengineering that could be eventually
used to turn our planet around.

------
pbreit
Isn't there an "insect apocalypse" every few years and never actually coming
to any sort of fruition?

~~~
steego
> Isn't there an "insect apocalypse" every few years and never actually coming
> to any sort of fruition?

Would you call an 82% drop "coming to any sort of fruition" or are you holding
out for a higher threshold?

Seriously, what's your threshold for giving the idea a second thought?

Do you need an actual full-on insect apocalypse with tangible and irrefutable
economic consequences before you utter the words, "I'm not saying I'm sold on
this whole insect apocalypse thing, but I think we ought to at least listen to
what the entomologists are saying."

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about the subject, but what's your
threshold for simply not dismissing it?

~~~
pbreit
This is the fruition I'm referring to: "could alter the planet". Never seems
to be the case.

------
agumonkey
Should we build tiny insect/animal greenhouses ? to compensate and restart
their population ?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
If we stop spraying them with stuff specifically designed to kill them
hopefully they'll come back all on their own.

~~~
agumonkey
obviously but so far industrial farming is not near pesticide-free, so maybe
people who have time can create small pockets of biodiversity

------
dawnerd
Noticed fewer spiders in my house this year. Last year I couldn’t go a day
without a couple on the walls. Other bug populations seem higher though here
in the PNW. Been finding a lot of little beetles? On my walls, plenty of ants
and flys.

------
crispinb
Anyone still think a hominid with cognitive facilities honed by evolutionary
processes for small group interactions is (magically) up to the task of
managing a global civilisation?

~~~
jeffmcmahan
They're evidently capable of doing advanced mathematics and of producing
microprocessors among many other things, so whatever we think about them
managing the globe, their intellectual equipment goes well beyond "small group
interactions".

~~~
crispinb
That's fair: we have managed a pretty remarkable act of scaffolding up from an
impressive evolved set of cognitive abilities. My sloppy throwaway line didn't
capture my thought, which should have encompassed far more than 'cognitive',
and made clearer that it's specifically large group decision-making I don't
believe us to be capable of. We only survived the 20th century by the skin of
our teeth (it was dumb luck), few ecosystems (which constitute our home) will
survive the 21st, and I doubt global civilisation can survive for long as
their collapse proceeds apace.

------
kakarot
I'd always thought the Insect Apocalypse would be a little different. You
know, like Evolution or Killer Bees or basically any scenario where _we 're_
the ones dying.

~~~
esarbe
Not to spoil the ending for you but...

...if we continue to sabotage earth's ecosystem, we will be the ones dying.

~~~
ryandvm
Sci-fi daydreamers: "Don't worry, we'll just go live on Mars." [Where
_everything_ is dead...]

~~~
esarbe
Oh yes, I love these. There are also the 'we just build our own closed
ecosystem' types. Hilarious.

~~~
overcast
...and why would you even go all the way to Mars to do it? Why not just do it
right on Earth where you already are.

~~~
anfilt
Honestly, why not both.

------
PavlovsCat
How would one donate money to these specific people? What others are similarly
no-nonsense and worthy of support?

> _For some scientists, the study created a moment of reckoning. “Scientists
> thought this data was too boring,” Dunn says. “But these people found it
> beautiful, and they loved it. They were the ones paying attention to Earth
> for all the rest of us.”_

Why don't we support that more? That was my first thought, and then I remember
we instead kinda empower those that subvert it, e.g

> _In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful
> environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such
> as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the
> People 's Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace. Similar trends are at
> play in the UK, where the case of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy revealed
> the extent of the state's involvement in monitoring the environmental direct
> action movement._

> _A University of Bath study citing the Kennedy case, and based on
> confidential sources, found that a whole range of corporations - such as
> McDonald 's, Nestle and the oil major Shell, "use covert methods to gather
> intelligence on activist groups, counter criticism of their strategies and
> practices, and evade accountability."_

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-
insight/2013/j...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-
insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism)

Collectively, we're kinda like a youth on a motorbike riding without a helmet
because their peers might find that "gay". By that I mean, the main hindrance
is in our head, it's not that it's _so_ hard to put a helmet on, compared to
the power of habit, memes, peer pressure. And yes, when you actually are in
that situation, it can be powerful -- but in hindsight, you sometimes realize
all the options you had but dismissed.

> _It 's pretty ironic that the so-called 'least advantaged' people are the
> ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and
> most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to
> destruction._

\-- Noam Chomsky

Just take that "paying for popularity can be fraud" article. I found it
interesting from a technical/legal perspective, but the discussion itself is
in big parts around the morality of it, namely how it's fine because
"everybody does it, that's what a startup _needs_ to do, etc.". My point isn't
that that's so horrible and the reason the insects are gone, but compare that
with this:

> _And his insect work is really all he wants to talk about. “We think details
> about nature and biodiversity declines are important, not details about life
> histories of entomologists,” Sorg explained after he and Werner Stenmans, a
> society member whose name appeared alongside Sorg’s on the 2017 paper,
> dismissed my questions about their day jobs. Leery of an article that
> focused on him as a person, Sorg also didn’t want to talk about what drew
> him to entomology as a child or even what it was about certain types of
> wasps that had made him want to devote so much of his life to studying
> them._

That's not sexy, that's not "how it's done in the modern world" \-- but it
could be argued that it's how it _should_ be done, and if we were more
serious, too, then being so "dry" would be no problem at all. Just like not
paying for popularity would be fine if _nobody_ does it, and might make the
marketplace a lot more efficient and friendly, as well save a lot of energy
and resources. The notion of Kant's categorical imperative doesn't _have_ to
be completely absent from our thinking, we could rediscover it. Then maybe we
could be talking about our survival as a species in a world that's worth
living in.

Sorry for being being polemic, but frankly, my initial reaction to this
article was to actually sob for a few minutes. This hurts like hell. I was
alarmed by talk of bees disappearing over 10 years ago, but like everybody
else I had "other shit to do", and I simply can't bear see it all play out in
my lifetime. Because I know all the CRAP we distracted ourselves with, and I
see how we lie about that later on. First the smug condescion towards those
taking anything "too seriously" we don't want to take seriously or don't
understand yet, and then instantly jumping to "oh well, it's too late, nothing
anyone could have done". There always were and are small little voices, and we
always mostly ignore them, and pretend that's being mature and realistic,
instead of cowardly or foolish.

Let's change. We actually can. And let's start with stopping to excuse our own
(in)actions with what everybody does, or "how humans are".

    
    
        Let nothing be called natural
        In an age of bloody confusion,
        Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
        And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
        Be held unalterable!
    

\-- Bertolt Brecht, "The Exception and the Rule" (1937)

    
    
        But go not "back to the sediment"
        In the slime of the moaning sea,
        For a better world belongs to you,
        And a better friend to me.
    

\-- Voltairine de Cleyre

~~~
jly
> How would one donate money to these specific people? ... Why don't we
> support that more?

Insects and other arthropods are generally considered gross and annoying by
most people. In many urban environments, less is usually considered better.
Conservation efforts are a lot more attractive when they focus on big animals
more like us.

There are some great organizations focusing on habitat restoring and arthropod
conservation. Xerces in the US is one worthy of support to reach the kind of
people doing this work -- [https://xerces.org/](https://xerces.org/)

~~~
PavlovsCat
And then there's the effort put into making us even more squeamish. Kinda like
you can't sell pointless cleaning products to people who aren't paranoid about
"germs" etc. Yes, nobody wants insects in their home, but there's still a
difference between that and finding them "gross" when they're outside doing
their thing IMO. I wouldn't assume that our distance from insects is just a
result of our "natural" being grossed out by them, it might also be the other
way around. Probably a bit of both. I'm sure there's a lot baked in for good
reason evolutionarily, insects do transmit diseases after all. But still, we
also have a lot of great ways to deal with that without outright having to
turn everything into a wasteland.

Maggots and fruit flies and spiders are one thing, but if people are grossed
out by a butterfly, the problem is with them. Yes, I also jump when a big fat
spider crawls on me when I don't expect it, but other than that, it's a matter
of practice and perspective. ("it's even more scared of you than you of it"
and all that). If we can't grow up to even that level we're truly hopeless.

------
thrower123
The Times is really going hard on the gloom and doom lately

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com)

~~~
acheron
Not surprising. I'm sure it gets the clicks and the ad eyeballs, plus as a
bonus it supports their political agenda.

~~~
m0skit0
Which political agenda is that?

~~~
jerf
How do you feel reading this article? Who benefits from that feeling? Is there
anyone you're more likely to give money or votes to? Are there any actions
with economic impact you feel like you should take? And most cynically, isn't
there a part of you that feels like you're morally superior or have secret
knowledge that the other people below you on your social scale don't share,
and you now despise that other group for not "seeing the truth" that much
more, solidifying an "us vs. them" mentality with another brick in the wall?

Yes, there's politics here. Being "political" doesn't mean it's wrong, though
we have that default reaction for a fairly solid reason, but, still, being
"political" doesn't mean it's wrong. There's definitely politics, though.

~~~
mturmon
> ...part of you that feels like you're morally superior or have secret
> knowledge that the other people below you on your social scale don't
> share...

I see where you’re going, but can’t this criticism be applied to any factual
journalism?

And isn’t it therefore vacuous?

~~~
jerf
"I see where you’re going, but can’t this criticism be applied to any factual
journalism?"

Selection of what facts to present is intrinsically political. (Related, I
can't find it in myself to get too upset about "filter bubbles", because you
_can 't_ simply absorb "all data", and consequently, you are always going to
be in a filter bubble merely due to that fact. You can question the nature of
your current bubble, but you can't "escape" the way some people seem to think
they can.)

The _specific_ case of prompting you to feel an in-group reaction is not
always a primary goal, though anyone would be excused for thinking otherwise
if they consume too much mass media or explicitly political media. Of course
if you try hard enough you can always pattern match to a given story somehow,
but it's certainly sometimes a more explicit goal than other times. As an
example, a straight-up insult targeted at a group may prompt in-group
feelings, but not necessarily any "secret knowledge" feelings.

"And isn’t it therefore vacuous?"

In the strictly logical Aristotelian sense of "statement is true or false and
nothing in between", yes, all statements are political, and the statement is
vacuous since it fails to distinguish between cases. In a logical system with
degrees of truth, some statements are definitely more political than others
("Vote $PARTY" vs. "Wheat is a staple crop of humanity" vs. "Vote $PARTY or
you are despicable human being unworthy of life"), even if you never really
reach true zero. In the human sense of "things that are vacuously true but you
still need to keep in mind even so", it's something to keep in mind. There's a
surprising number of statements that are obviously or vacuously true, yet we
still need near-constant reminding of or we just somehow forget them.

------
apatters
I clicked mainly because the clickbaitiness of the headline annoyed me and I
wanted to inform myself a bit before complaining about it. The NYT rewarded me
by telling me I have one less free article this month. That annoyed me even
more so I hit back.

They are very smart over there, and the NYT didn't get where it is thanks to
short term thinking. Surely they have thought about what a bad experience
clickbait is and how much it damages their brand.

~~~
bbddg
I love that 90% of the top comments on hn are people complaining about website
design. Extremely relevant and not at all boring.

~~~
newsbinator
This is silly, but in some ways the design and flaws of major news and content
sites is a topic more relevant/interesting to a discussion forum for hackers
than ongoing environmental collapse is.

Sure, the latter is a much bigger deal and affects hackers as much as it
affects all life on Earth.

But doctors talk about medicine and care. Teachers talk about education and
learning. Hackers talk about design, UX, etc.

We should all be talking about ecosystem collapse. Yet it's not a thing we
interact with every day (yet), whereas NY Times' paywall is.

Human brains are lousy at risk, it's true.

------
jason46
Why won't all the fleas die

~~~
Koshkin
Because if they do, something even more nasty will come in their stead.

------
dmitriid
What is it with modern journalism that everything has to start with two
screens of personal stories?

The article stands on its own without the story of a boy, and his father, and
their ancestors, and personal experiences.

~~~
post_break
It's like they are getting ideas from recipes. Want to know how to make
muffins? My grandmother died and left me the recipe. She was a nice old lady,
etc etc.

~~~
bohadi
I know you're just kidding, but to the OP, this is from the magazine section.
I haven't read the article yet, but sometimes at least, enjoy the occasional
story in my news.

~~~
thefifthsetpin
I think they're serious. Recipe websites make for great content farms as they
naturally get page views that last for several minutes while requiring no
creative writing skills for the recipe content. Prefixing the pages with some
prose that the user has to skim through while searching for the start of the
recipe affects engagement for the ads which monitor that.

