7 ms·

I cannot disagree with this. When I was young not a day went by were I did not see some butterflies in the summer and autumn. Even in the small City where I g

by jmclnx 4y ago

I cannot disagree with this. When I was young not a day went by were I did not see some butterflies in the summer and autumn. Even in the small City where I grew up. Now that I think of it, I have not even seen a butterfly in many years, this includes hiking it the woods. What a shame, well with global warming and the powers that be still doubling down on fossil fuels, a big correction is probably on its way, similar to this story posted here earlier about tree roots. We had 50+ years to do something about climate change, as usual profits came first. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054175 (edit, fixed the link, paste issue)

jimbob45 4y ago
Saw six butterflies last night while walking in a highly developed area. I’ll probably see six more tonight. Are anecdotes really how we want to measure this?
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >"Are anecdotes really how we want to measure this?" Anecdotes aren't always bad, or even inappropriate. We're on an internet forum having a casual discussion so my expectations for intellectual rigor are quite low.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  No, anecdotes are unreliable. It would be better to do a systematic study, and publish the results in a scientific journal like Current Biology. Then maybe to help get the word out, publish a summary on a website like Science.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    I wonder if some DIY computer vision video set on such a planter box of native flowers could be some indication if sufficiently crowdsourced.
    - Shatnerz 4y ago
      I don't see why not? Citizen science has been pretty important to fields like ornithology. I'd actually be surprised if something like this wasn't already happening somewhere at small scale at least. edit: There is even a "Butterfly Count" section on the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science
    - snowwrestler 4y ago
      Sounds like an interesting idea!
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    Anecdotes have a degree of unreliability and a degree of reliability. Outright dismissing an anecdote as completely baseless and invalid is highly, highly unwise and a sign that the person is not logical. First off, anecdotes have extreme speed. You can get some sort of answer much faster and at a hugely lower cost then a "study". Second, studies are not to be trusted either. There's huge incentive to doctor these things and with the replication crisis this "doctoring" has been shown to be common place. Third, even an "honest" study can be wildly off depending on the data gathered and most of the time these studies only find correlative associations rather then causative (most people don't even know how to conduct a causative experiment). A good example of this is smoking Cannabis and Tobacco. Depending on the time both were deemed healthy to consume by research via multitudes of biased research and and a lack of unbiased studies. But with a little anecdotal common sense it's easy to see that breathing burnt plants into your lungs is likely just bad overall.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  But that's an anecdote....
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Yes we should be sharing anecdotes. The charts going down to the right and the maps showing territory shrinking are both important. That’s why they’re posted here frequently. It’s also important to remember what those charts and maps mean, which is future generations having magic and beauty and wonder stolen from them. The destruction of the environment is heartbreaking on its own, but the destruction of the human experience is a whole additional layer of tragedy.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
    We have also added to the human experience. We are able to fly above the clouds at hundreds of miles an hour, an experienced that throughout human history was in the realm of legends and stories about gods. I can also talk and video conference with relatives living thousands of miles away.
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      What an experience that is! Crammed between people and hardly being able to move for hours while significantly contributing to CO2 and noise pollution just so you can sit indoors in a remote place for work or at a beach for fun which you could've just done localy for pretty much the same experience
      - irrational 4y ago
        You think most people have nice warm beaches locally?
      - pb7 4y ago
        >Crammed between people and hardly being able to move for hours Do you know why it's so cramped? To maximize the number of people on the flight and therefore reduce the per-passenger carbon emissions and cost. I can tell you've never traveled if you think every place is like every other. The creek in your podunk town is not the same as the beaches in French Polynesia.
        4y ago
- Natsu 4y ago
  Lucky. I haven't been seeing anything for a long time and due to old habits from studying entomology, I habitually identify any butterfly I see. I can tell a Monarch from a Viceroy at a distance just because the latter flies differently. I haven't seen either one since early covid, when they were suddenly more common for whatever reason.
dylan604 4y ago
i'm building a couple of planter boxes in my backyard specifically to plant native wild flowers. it will merely be a drop in the bucket, but it's what i can do where i'm at currently. i'm hoping to see any type of insect attraction. i have a running water fountain that i see bees coming to drink, so i'm really hoping wild flowers will attract them as well as the butterflies.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- toss1 4y ago
  Excellent move! It's amazing whet even a drop in the bucket can do! We had just a bit of milkweed growing wild off to one side of the yard, but since we've specifically left it anywhere it can establish itself in the gardens, we've definitely seen more Monarch butterflies, even got to watch some make a chrysalis on our porch, and emerge to fly away! Also key is to plant or let grow fully native cultivars of flowering plants. The hybridized ones are often completely unattractive and non-nutirtional to the plants, but since we've let some of them go, we've got a lot more bees and types of bees. Clover is also better than lawn. Not only is it fantastic because it fixes it's own nitrogen and enriches instead of depleting the soil, it also attracts bees, and keeps the bunnies occupied so they don't bother the garden so much. (This is in the Northeast US, north of Boston. Where are you?) Enjoy!
aceazzameen 4y ago
I don't doubt numbers are declining. Yet, where I live in the suburbs outside a city in the US northeast, I see bees, butterflies, and fireflies all the time when it's warm out. There was a time period when I didn't. But I may not have been as observant then.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Anecdotally, I noticed a pronounced drop in bugs in general after a nasty heat wave we had back in like 2018. Took several years, but they seem to have bounced back a bit now. Seems to be some degree of fluctuation in populations after these big climate events.
userabchn 4y ago
You single out only fossil fuels, but there are so many other ways in which we are damaging the environment that we also need to worry about - PFAS everywhere, noise and light pollution, pesticides and many other chemicals in rivers, expanses of monocultures, etc. It concerns me that there is so much fixation on one form of harm, which I fear may result in less attention to the many others that we are inflicting.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Ammonia from dairy operations doesn't help.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  Here's one that I don't think people are even considering. I've seen insects flying repeatedly into brightly colored non flower objects. They get stuck doing it. So even something as simple as a small piece of colored fabric can throw bees off and there's no such thing as a forest so untouched that there isn't some human left object in it. Brightly colored objects are more common than ever too.
- mc32 4y ago
  There are lots of speculative culprits and maybe it's a combination, but we won't get anywhere unless we find out which ones are responsible for fouling habitability by desirable insects and selectively addressing those pollutants. If it's, for example, fertilizers... it would not be likely we pull back on farming output with resulting starvation in other countries that depend on affordable agricultural products in a global market (yes, we rich countries can afford a 2x or 3x cost of food, but not people in poor countries from which in a global economy we'd be sucking up their agricultural production and outbidding the locals.
- webdood90 4y ago
  I would argue that literally every single issue you mentioned is a consequence of fossil fuels
  - bawolff 4y ago
ladyattis 4y ago
I remember in the 80s that there were bees all over the grounds at my elementary school, they had dandelions, clover, and a few other weed/grass species in the mix but bees went whole hog on them. About a decade ago I went back to that school during summer and noticed not a single bee was around the grounds. It's wild how fast insects are dying off these days. Heck, I remember summers in my hometown where it was a bad idea for me to be out since mosquitos would bite me furiously but now I rarely see them.
mykowebhn 4y ago
Not butterfly- or bee-related, but growing up in the suburbs of Toronto in the 70s (hence, an urban environment), I remember seeing several grasshoppers per day in our neighborhood during the summer. These days, I'm lucky to have seen a single grasshopper in the past several years, and I spend a lot of time in nature. Very sad and disconcerting.
mplanchard 4y ago
Echoing someone else, I live in the heart of Austin and generally rarely see bees/butterflies, but last year we planted a bunch of native wildflowers in the yard and we had a) an absolutely beautiful explosion of color, and b) TONS of bees and butterflies hanging out all day in the flowers. So, regardless of where you are, I think it's worth planting some native plants to give the little guys somewhere to hang out.
- h0l0cube 4y ago
  Insect hotels can also be useful for attracting solitary bees, wasps, and butterflies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_hotel
  - Faaak 4y ago
    However, insect hotels should be cleaned (emptied out) periodically or they can harbor viruses/bacteria and contaminate more insects.
- bartislartfast 4y ago
  plus one for this, I had wildflowers and while the number of bees was disappointing I saw a lot of butterflies. they were in the house every other day over summer. We also planted a mint plant which went to flower, and that was like catnip to them. Anytime you looked out the window there were seven or eight butterflies on this one plant, no flowers free.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  One thing I've noticed is that bugs don't hit my windshield while driving anymore. I used to have to stop at the gas station almost daily to clean the bug splatter. That just doesn't happen anymore - and I'm still driving the same car I was 30 years ago. The overall population of insects has plummeted.
vondur 4y ago
Weirdly enough, it seems like the last few years here in SoCal I’ve seen more butterflies than normal. I’ve seen more bees than normal, but I’ve planted some native plants that they seem to love.

by jmclnx 4y ago

jimbob45 4y ago

Saw six butterflies last night while walking in a highly developed area. I’ll probably see six more tonight. Are anecdotes really how we want to measure this?

BitwiseFool 4y ago
>"Are anecdotes really how we want to measure this?" Anecdotes aren't always bad, or even inappropriate. We're on an internet forum having a casual discussion so my expectations for intellectual rigor are quite low.
snowwrestler 4y ago
No, anecdotes are unreliable. It would be better to do a systematic study, and publish the results in a scientific journal like Current Biology. Then maybe to help get the word out, publish a summary on a website like Science.
- jxramos 4y ago
  I wonder if some DIY computer vision video set on such a planter box of native flowers could be some indication if sufficiently crowdsourced.
  - Shatnerz 4y ago
    I don't see why not? Citizen science has been pretty important to fields like ornithology. I'd actually be surprised if something like this wasn't already happening somewhere at small scale at least. edit: There is even a "Butterfly Count" section on the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    Sounds like an interesting idea!
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Anecdotes have a degree of unreliability and a degree of reliability. Outright dismissing an anecdote as completely baseless and invalid is highly, highly unwise and a sign that the person is not logical. First off, anecdotes have extreme speed. You can get some sort of answer much faster and at a hugely lower cost then a "study". Second, studies are not to be trusted either. There's huge incentive to doctor these things and with the replication crisis this "doctoring" has been shown to be common place. Third, even an "honest" study can be wildly off depending on the data gathered and most of the time these studies only find correlative associations rather then causative (most people don't even know how to conduct a causative experiment). A good example of this is smoking Cannabis and Tobacco. Depending on the time both were deemed healthy to consume by research via multitudes of biased research and and a lack of unbiased studies. But with a little anecdotal common sense it's easy to see that breathing burnt plants into your lungs is likely just bad overall.
CalRobert 4y ago
But that's an anecdote....
ethanbond 4y ago
Yes we should be sharing anecdotes. The charts going down to the right and the maps showing territory shrinking are both important. That’s why they’re posted here frequently. It’s also important to remember what those charts and maps mean, which is future generations having magic and beauty and wonder stolen from them. The destruction of the environment is heartbreaking on its own, but the destruction of the human experience is a whole additional layer of tragedy.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  We have also added to the human experience. We are able to fly above the clouds at hundreds of miles an hour, an experienced that throughout human history was in the realm of legends and stories about gods. I can also talk and video conference with relatives living thousands of miles away.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    What an experience that is! Crammed between people and hardly being able to move for hours while significantly contributing to CO2 and noise pollution just so you can sit indoors in a remote place for work or at a beach for fun which you could've just done localy for pretty much the same experience
    - irrational 4y ago
      You think most people have nice warm beaches locally?
    - pb7 4y ago
      >Crammed between people and hardly being able to move for hours Do you know why it's so cramped? To maximize the number of people on the flight and therefore reduce the per-passenger carbon emissions and cost. I can tell you've never traveled if you think every place is like every other. The creek in your podunk town is not the same as the beaches in French Polynesia.
      - 4y ago
Natsu 4y ago
Lucky. I haven't been seeing anything for a long time and due to old habits from studying entomology, I habitually identify any butterfly I see. I can tell a Monarch from a Viceroy at a distance just because the latter flies differently. I haven't seen either one since early covid, when they were suddenly more common for whatever reason.

dylan604 4y ago

i'm building a couple of planter boxes in my backyard specifically to plant native wild flowers. it will merely be a drop in the bucket, but it's what i can do where i'm at currently. i'm hoping to see any type of insect attraction. i have a running water fountain that i see bees coming to drink, so i'm really hoping wild flowers will attract them as well as the butterflies.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
toss1 4y ago
Excellent move! It's amazing whet even a drop in the bucket can do! We had just a bit of milkweed growing wild off to one side of the yard, but since we've specifically left it anywhere it can establish itself in the gardens, we've definitely seen more Monarch butterflies, even got to watch some make a chrysalis on our porch, and emerge to fly away! Also key is to plant or let grow fully native cultivars of flowering plants. The hybridized ones are often completely unattractive and non-nutirtional to the plants, but since we've let some of them go, we've got a lot more bees and types of bees. Clover is also better than lawn. Not only is it fantastic because it fixes it's own nitrogen and enriches instead of depleting the soil, it also attracts bees, and keeps the bunnies occupied so they don't bother the garden so much. (This is in the Northeast US, north of Boston. Where are you?) Enjoy!

aceazzameen 4y ago

I don't doubt numbers are declining. Yet, where I live in the suburbs outside a city in the US northeast, I see bees, butterflies, and fireflies all the time when it's warm out. There was a time period when I didn't. But I may not have been as observant then.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Anecdotally, I noticed a pronounced drop in bugs in general after a nasty heat wave we had back in like 2018. Took several years, but they seem to have bounced back a bit now. Seems to be some degree of fluctuation in populations after these big climate events.

userabchn 4y ago

You single out only fossil fuels, but there are so many other ways in which we are damaging the environment that we also need to worry about - PFAS everywhere, noise and light pollution, pesticides and many other chemicals in rivers, expanses of monocultures, etc. It concerns me that there is so much fixation on one form of harm, which I fear may result in less attention to the many others that we are inflicting.

CalRobert 4y ago
Ammonia from dairy operations doesn't help.
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
Here's one that I don't think people are even considering. I've seen insects flying repeatedly into brightly colored non flower objects. They get stuck doing it. So even something as simple as a small piece of colored fabric can throw bees off and there's no such thing as a forest so untouched that there isn't some human left object in it. Brightly colored objects are more common than ever too.
mc32 4y ago
There are lots of speculative culprits and maybe it's a combination, but we won't get anywhere unless we find out which ones are responsible for fouling habitability by desirable insects and selectively addressing those pollutants. If it's, for example, fertilizers... it would not be likely we pull back on farming output with resulting starvation in other countries that depend on affordable agricultural products in a global market (yes, we rich countries can afford a 2x or 3x cost of food, but not people in poor countries from which in a global economy we'd be sucking up their agricultural production and outbidding the locals.
webdood90 4y ago
I would argue that literally every single issue you mentioned is a consequence of fossil fuels
- bawolff 4y ago

ladyattis 4y ago

I remember in the 80s that there were bees all over the grounds at my elementary school, they had dandelions, clover, and a few other weed/grass species in the mix but bees went whole hog on them. About a decade ago I went back to that school during summer and noticed not a single bee was around the grounds. It's wild how fast insects are dying off these days. Heck, I remember summers in my hometown where it was a bad idea for me to be out since mosquitos would bite me furiously but now I rarely see them.

mykowebhn 4y ago

Not butterfly- or bee-related, but growing up in the suburbs of Toronto in the 70s (hence, an urban environment), I remember seeing several grasshoppers per day in our neighborhood during the summer. These days, I'm lucky to have seen a single grasshopper in the past several years, and I spend a lot of time in nature. Very sad and disconcerting.

mplanchard 4y ago

Echoing someone else, I live in the heart of Austin and generally rarely see bees/butterflies, but last year we planted a bunch of native wildflowers in the yard and we had a) an absolutely beautiful explosion of color, and b) TONS of bees and butterflies hanging out all day in the flowers. So, regardless of where you are, I think it's worth planting some native plants to give the little guys somewhere to hang out.

h0l0cube 4y ago
Insect hotels can also be useful for attracting solitary bees, wasps, and butterflies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_hotel
- Faaak 4y ago
  However, insect hotels should be cleaned (emptied out) periodically or they can harbor viruses/bacteria and contaminate more insects.
bartislartfast 4y ago
plus one for this, I had wildflowers and while the number of bees was disappointing I saw a lot of butterflies. they were in the house every other day over summer. We also planted a mint plant which went to flower, and that was like catnip to them. Anytime you looked out the window there were seven or eight butterflies on this one plant, no flowers free.
koheripbal 4y ago
One thing I've noticed is that bugs don't hit my windshield while driving anymore. I used to have to stop at the gas station almost daily to clean the bug splatter. That just doesn't happen anymore - and I'm still driving the same car I was 30 years ago. The overall population of insects has plummeted.

vondur 4y ago

Weirdly enough, it seems like the last few years here in SoCal I’ve seen more butterflies than normal. I’ve seen more bees than normal, but I’ve planted some native plants that they seem to love.