2247
literally no clue
(media.infosec.exchange)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
2247 points (98.5% liked)
Memes
45180 readers
1635 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Not just the bees, all bugs in North America have seen a 75% die off in the last 20 years.
Big shocker that songbirds, which eat those bugs, have also seen a massive die off.
Despite those deniers that still blame housecats, the true culprit is almost certainly pollution and pesticides.
House cats are making it worse too
Both things are true
Housecats were actually keeping the bird population healthy for decades by eliminating the weak. Of course now that habitat destruction and toxins made entire populations weak it is a problem.
But removing housecats to solve it is akin to drinking out of paper straws to solve plastic pollution. It helps, but it doesn't do anything substantial.
Both things can be true. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Also we have less pollution and pesticide use than we did in the 60s and 70s. Why is it just becoming a problem now?
I bet that while we have less general pollution and less dumping trash in the environment kinda things, we have developed much more potent insecticides. And if those insecticides do not degrade within a few weeks they will accumulate in the earth and the water.
Edit: Wikipedia about one type of modern pesticides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid
Yeah, pretty sure your lawn has almost nothing to do with insects vanishing. It's much more likely the insane amounts of highly potent pesticides we put directly into our food chain. Those pesticides obviously aren't classified as pollution so we aren't polluting, we're killing the environment on purpose.
Btw. The development and use of neonicotines corelate quiet nicely with the drop in the insects population.
less pollution? that cannot possibly be true. according to dr google 1970s world population was 3.7b, now we're more than double that
I’m the US, the EPA was created in the 1970’s. We definitely have less pollution (of certain types) today than we did in the past. Some notable examples of how disgustingly polluted American skies and waterways were in the past:
The skies of Pittsburgh, PA
the Cuyahoga River fire
Coal Production has also been declining
And then of course less visible examples like the Montreal Protocol stopping corporations from depleting the ozone layer.
My point is in terms of greenhouse gas production we are much higher than in the 60’s and 70’s, but we have massively improved in a lot of areas. Of course there is still room to improve.