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"The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years". That number is scary

"The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years". That number is scary. If that number is even close to the same across the world, the planet is in more trouble than anyone realizes

giardini 9y ago
They studied 100 sites, but said only 12 showed declining populations. Only for one site did they give a percentage change. From the article: [in]"one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%" What about the other 88 sites? What about the percentage decline in the other 11 declining sites? How were the sites chosen? How have the sites changed over the years? This is alarmist ecological drama. Some readers on this website are extrapolating the results from a single experiment at a single site to the entire world. And I think Science magazine did a poor job of reporting this correctly. Here's a link to another alarmist post about this study. Note the url: http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/insect-biomass-decline-documented-in-germany/ http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/insect-biomass-declin... Here's a link to AFAICT a copy of the paper that started this brouhaha. Read it and be questionably impressed: http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Orbrioch-Nature-reserve.pdf http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/20... The authors of the paper are doing good work, but the alarmism here on HN far exceeds the scope of any validity of the original paper. People should be wary of their confirmation bias. And if a HN reader cannot make a reasonable judgment about the scope of this study, I doubt that (s)he would be successful in an enterprise such as Machine Learning, given that science and statistics are the very basis of ML. OTOH Woody Allen once said, and I begrudgingly admit he has a strong point, "Showing up is 80 percent of life".
coldpie 9y ago
Just another one of those darn Chinese hoaxes.
- kefka 9y ago
  People really shouldn't forget this is what we're up against. For those that don't know, this is what Trump said (0). Given the rest of the Republican's resistance in stemming pollution, CO2, NOx's, plastics, and other nasties, we have to do this ourselves. I look at the boom of comments on Tesla's Powerwall and solar roof as a great way to help. We also have to do what we can in our communities and state to turn this tide.. We have to make this a National Security issue, and a State Security issue. Who cares about wildlife? But most certainly the farmers care about weather. And everyone affected cares about oil spills from pipelines. It's time to re-frame this, and challenge this on the same plank of "Think of the Children", primarily because that approach does seem to work. (0) https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...
Arizhel 9y ago
This is rather worrisome, but I sure didn't see any lack of mosquitoes last summer :-( Maybe this is affecting the "good" insects while the "bad" ones are thriving...
- notadoc 9y ago
  There is truth to that. Data demonstrates that disease carrying pests like mosquitoes and ticks are proliferating, while pollinators are vanishing. That is really not a good trend.
  - Arizhel 9y ago
    Nature's attempting to curtail the numbers of a particular highly-invasive species.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rojobuffalo 9y ago
That is a very troubling signal. But I wonder if over 24 years, some insects have developed trap avoidance.
- phkahler 9y ago
  Particularly those in the areas of the traps :-)
  - darkerside 9y ago
    Their evolution lifecycle would be vastly quicker than ours

giardini 9y ago

They studied 100 sites, but said only 12 showed declining populations. Only for one site did they give a percentage change. From the article: [in]"one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%" What about the other 88 sites? What about the percentage decline in the other 11 declining sites? How were the sites chosen? How have the sites changed over the years? This is alarmist ecological drama. Some readers on this website are extrapolating the results from a single experiment at a single site to the entire world. And I think Science magazine did a poor job of reporting this correctly. Here's a link to another alarmist post about this study. Note the url: http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/insect-biomass-decline-documented-in-germany/ http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/insect-biomass-declin... Here's a link to AFAICT a copy of the paper that started this brouhaha. Read it and be questionably impressed: http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Orbrioch-Nature-reserve.pdf http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/20... The authors of the paper are doing good work, but the alarmism here on HN far exceeds the scope of any validity of the original paper. People should be wary of their confirmation bias. And if a HN reader cannot make a reasonable judgment about the scope of this study, I doubt that (s)he would be successful in an enterprise such as Machine Learning, given that science and statistics are the very basis of ML. OTOH Woody Allen once said, and I begrudgingly admit he has a strong point, "Showing up is 80 percent of life".

coldpie 9y ago

Just another one of those darn Chinese hoaxes.

kefka 9y ago
People really shouldn't forget this is what we're up against. For those that don't know, this is what Trump said (0). Given the rest of the Republican's resistance in stemming pollution, CO2, NOx's, plastics, and other nasties, we have to do this ourselves. I look at the boom of comments on Tesla's Powerwall and solar roof as a great way to help. We also have to do what we can in our communities and state to turn this tide.. We have to make this a National Security issue, and a State Security issue. Who cares about wildlife? But most certainly the farmers care about weather. And everyone affected cares about oil spills from pipelines. It's time to re-frame this, and challenge this on the same plank of "Think of the Children", primarily because that approach does seem to work. (0) https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...

Arizhel 9y ago

This is rather worrisome, but I sure didn't see any lack of mosquitoes last summer :-( Maybe this is affecting the "good" insects while the "bad" ones are thriving...

notadoc 9y ago
There is truth to that. Data demonstrates that disease carrying pests like mosquitoes and ticks are proliferating, while pollinators are vanishing. That is really not a good trend.
- Arizhel 9y ago
  Nature's attempting to curtail the numbers of a particular highly-invasive species.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

rojobuffalo 9y ago

That is a very troubling signal. But I wonder if over 24 years, some insects have developed trap avoidance.

phkahler 9y ago
Particularly those in the areas of the traps :-)
- darkerside 9y ago
  Their evolution lifecycle would be vastly quicker than ours