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> No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. No one can prove that insecticides are responsible for killing insects? If only s

> No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. No one can prove that insecticides are responsible for killing insects? If only someone would do some sort of study on this, or perhaps if we somehow had some way to know the purpose or function of pesticides and insecticides.

Xeoncross 9y ago
Ask the right people and "Pesticides can also improve the nutritional value of food..." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108117/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108117/ Pesticides contain warnings about being carcinogenic, related to brain and heart failure, harmful to children, deadly to pets, harmful to plants, and destroys helpful bacteria. But other than that, it's part of a balanced breakfast. Reminds me of the "firefighters" in fahrenheit 451
throwaway423447 9y ago
... and two minutes later the name of the brave person will be manure. Not because one's egregiously wrong, not because of lack of ethics, but because it'll be affecting many powerful people and their emissaries in the academia. Common story in the GMO industry. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared for all the ad hominem hit pieces: "Left loony" "commie" "anti-science" ... The conquering grounds for the corporatocracy is also the developing world, a place which naively swallows whatever any of the reigning superpowers throw at it (hint: India is not/never will be a superpower). Very sad this.
- civilian 9y ago
  So I mean, if you're trying to take a stand against pesticides, you should _be in favor_ of the Bt-toxin GMOs. The GMOs that produce their own pesticide are great, because there ends up being _less_ pesticide in the field in general. (The alternative to having a plant producing their own GMOs is that, obviously, they'll just dump the field with pesticides.) Bt-toxin is also fairly specific to which insects it effects: https://gmoanswers.com/ask/how-can-adding-lot-toxic-poison-pesticides-ground-be-good https://gmoanswers.com/ask/how-can-adding-lot-toxic-poison-p... (this is a pro-gmo site, but the guy answering is still an Associate Professor, which has to count for something.) Please note that organic foods still use pesticides, even though the pesticides come from "natural sources". Keep in mind that "natural sources" doesn't mean anything-- arsenic is naturally occurring. :) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience-sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...
  - Stanish 9y ago
    I don't see how any of this makes sense given the very real possibility of not using either standard or endemic pesticides, the long term ecological (and public health) consequences of which we still have very little idea. Yes organic ag uses some techniques whose sustainability is highly dubious. There are, however, plenty of models like silvopasture, agroecology, and permaculture-informed production out there that can produce better, regionally appropriate food in ways that enhance and adapt to--rather than violently work against--the native parameters of the environment. This is the only legitimate and reasonable way forward in my eyes, and it creates so many side benefits like community, beauty, health, carbon sequestration in the soil, etc. Most high-tech industrial/corporate approaches I've seen are really just more filigree on an outdated barbaric WW2-era approach of using highly carbon intensive machinery to burn out soil and grow monocrops, kept on life support by high-"tech", low-wisdom approaches which are at their core incredibly lazy, mediocre, and destructive. My secret wish (I'm a land designer who uses GIS for this purpose) is for people like the ones on this board realizing it and flocking to the field to create data-driven approaches to true agroecology to solve hunger and climate change. P.S. for just one example of an alternative model, see Mark Shepard, a mechanical engineer and ecologist who started a hundred acre farm in Wisconsin 20 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRhvrHeleoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRhvrHeleoI
lolsal 9y ago
The claim was that the generic actor 'pesticides' could not be proven to be the cause of the general decline for these specific tests and locations. No one was asserting that insecticides could not be proven to be responsible for killing insects.
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  The statement is very amusing though since vast sections of our country use pesticides for their intended purpose. It is not hard to find pesticide traces in every part of our country. Especially near cities where almost every landscape and pond is sprayed. On the coast it is very common to see "foggers" driving around spraying pesticides in the air hoping to flood the area with enough chemicals to kill all the mosquitoes.
zeroxfe 9y ago
Guns are responsible for killing people, but they're not responsible for the decline of human population during a plague or a drought. (It's easy to be snarky.)
vivekd 9y ago
The issue of pesticides was considered and some countries did pass legislation based on it. While intuitively the connection between pesticides and insect population collapse looks attractive, the facts are a little more murky. Some scientists suspected that neonectide pesticides were linked to the decline in insect populations, particularly bees. Despite the fact that this connection was not fully proven, many EU countries banned the use of neonectide pesticides in 2013. While bee populations recovered slightly, the issue is that bee populations started recovering before the ban was even issued. Also the recovery was also felt in Canada, where there was no pesticide ban 1. This suggests that the decline in bee population was more related to climate than to insecticides . . . suggesting similar possibilities for other insects. Yes insecticides kill insects but I don't think that's enough to conclude that they are causing the general massive collapse in insect colonies - which is a relatively recent phenomenon, while insecticides have been used for quite some time. 1. http://www.agprofessional.com/news/bee-population-rising-around-world* http://www.agprofessional.com/news/bee-population-rising-aro...
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  Pesticide sales went up 13% between 2006-2007[1] (current growth is about the same[2]). While pesticides have existed for a while, their use is growing quickly and the chemicals used are getting stronger and more refined. This same wild growth pattern is copied by drugs - the other chemical market. Compared to 30 years ago, drugs and pesticides are everyday items now. This could easily explain the more recent detection of insects like bees being affected as levels of pesticides in the environment could now have reached high enough levels. [1]https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/market_estimates2007.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents... [2]:https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizer-and-pesticides/#pesticides https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizer-and-pesticides/#pestic...

Xeoncross 9y ago

Ask the right people and "Pesticides can also improve the nutritional value of food..." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108117/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108117/ Pesticides contain warnings about being carcinogenic, related to brain and heart failure, harmful to children, deadly to pets, harmful to plants, and destroys helpful bacteria. But other than that, it's part of a balanced breakfast. Reminds me of the "firefighters" in fahrenheit 451

throwaway423447 9y ago

... and two minutes later the name of the brave person will be manure. Not because one's egregiously wrong, not because of lack of ethics, but because it'll be affecting many powerful people and their emissaries in the academia. Common story in the GMO industry. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared for all the ad hominem hit pieces: "Left loony" "commie" "anti-science" ... The conquering grounds for the corporatocracy is also the developing world, a place which naively swallows whatever any of the reigning superpowers throw at it (hint: India is not/never will be a superpower). Very sad this.

civilian 9y ago
So I mean, if you're trying to take a stand against pesticides, you should _be in favor_ of the Bt-toxin GMOs. The GMOs that produce their own pesticide are great, because there ends up being _less_ pesticide in the field in general. (The alternative to having a plant producing their own GMOs is that, obviously, they'll just dump the field with pesticides.) Bt-toxin is also fairly specific to which insects it effects: https://gmoanswers.com/ask/how-can-adding-lot-toxic-poison-pesticides-ground-be-good https://gmoanswers.com/ask/how-can-adding-lot-toxic-poison-p... (this is a pro-gmo site, but the guy answering is still an Associate Professor, which has to count for something.) Please note that organic foods still use pesticides, even though the pesticides come from "natural sources". Keep in mind that "natural sources" doesn't mean anything-- arsenic is naturally occurring. :) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience-sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...
- Stanish 9y ago
  I don't see how any of this makes sense given the very real possibility of not using either standard or endemic pesticides, the long term ecological (and public health) consequences of which we still have very little idea. Yes organic ag uses some techniques whose sustainability is highly dubious. There are, however, plenty of models like silvopasture, agroecology, and permaculture-informed production out there that can produce better, regionally appropriate food in ways that enhance and adapt to--rather than violently work against--the native parameters of the environment. This is the only legitimate and reasonable way forward in my eyes, and it creates so many side benefits like community, beauty, health, carbon sequestration in the soil, etc. Most high-tech industrial/corporate approaches I've seen are really just more filigree on an outdated barbaric WW2-era approach of using highly carbon intensive machinery to burn out soil and grow monocrops, kept on life support by high-"tech", low-wisdom approaches which are at their core incredibly lazy, mediocre, and destructive. My secret wish (I'm a land designer who uses GIS for this purpose) is for people like the ones on this board realizing it and flocking to the field to create data-driven approaches to true agroecology to solve hunger and climate change. P.S. for just one example of an alternative model, see Mark Shepard, a mechanical engineer and ecologist who started a hundred acre farm in Wisconsin 20 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRhvrHeleoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRhvrHeleoI

lolsal 9y ago

The claim was that the generic actor 'pesticides' could not be proven to be the cause of the general decline for these specific tests and locations. No one was asserting that insecticides could not be proven to be responsible for killing insects.

Xeoncross 9y ago
The statement is very amusing though since vast sections of our country use pesticides for their intended purpose. It is not hard to find pesticide traces in every part of our country. Especially near cities where almost every landscape and pond is sprayed. On the coast it is very common to see "foggers" driving around spraying pesticides in the air hoping to flood the area with enough chemicals to kill all the mosquitoes.

zeroxfe 9y ago

Guns are responsible for killing people, but they're not responsible for the decline of human population during a plague or a drought. (It's easy to be snarky.)

vivekd 9y ago

The issue of pesticides was considered and some countries did pass legislation based on it. While intuitively the connection between pesticides and insect population collapse looks attractive, the facts are a little more murky. Some scientists suspected that neonectide pesticides were linked to the decline in insect populations, particularly bees. Despite the fact that this connection was not fully proven, many EU countries banned the use of neonectide pesticides in 2013. While bee populations recovered slightly, the issue is that bee populations started recovering before the ban was even issued. Also the recovery was also felt in Canada, where there was no pesticide ban 1. This suggests that the decline in bee population was more related to climate than to insecticides . . . suggesting similar possibilities for other insects. Yes insecticides kill insects but I don't think that's enough to conclude that they are causing the general massive collapse in insect colonies - which is a relatively recent phenomenon, while insecticides have been used for quite some time. 1. http://www.agprofessional.com/news/bee-population-rising-around-world* http://www.agprofessional.com/news/bee-population-rising-aro...

Xeoncross 9y ago
Pesticide sales went up 13% between 2006-2007[1] (current growth is about the same[2]). While pesticides have existed for a while, their use is growing quickly and the chemicals used are getting stronger and more refined. This same wild growth pattern is copied by drugs - the other chemical market. Compared to 30 years ago, drugs and pesticides are everyday items now. This could easily explain the more recent detection of insects like bees being affected as levels of pesticides in the environment could now have reached high enough levels. [1]https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/market_estimates2007.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents... [2]:https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizer-and-pesticides/#pesticides https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizer-and-pesticides/#pestic...