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Bumblebees Being Crushed By Climate Change
sciencehabit writes: As the climate changes, plants and animals are on the move. So far, many are redistributing in a similar pattern: As habitat that was once too cold warms up, species are expanding their ranges toward the poles, whereas boundaries closer to the equator have remained more static. Bumblebees, however, appear to be a disturbing exception, according to a new study (abstract) . A comprehensive look at dozens of species finds that many North American and European bumblebees are failing to "track" warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. Simultaneously, they are disappearing from the southern portions of their range.
That's gonna really suck for agriculture. I guess they'll have to have Mexicans running around pollinating.
likely to be quietly retracted next week.
...many North American and European bumblebees are failing to "track" warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. ...
Maybe bumblebees select habitats to colonize based more upon the daylight patterns than temperatures, and that is why they are not following the warmth as it moves towards the poles?
Bumblebees are clearly Communist Ecoterrorists out to destroy our fine, God-fearing Capitalist agricultural industry. We should immediately start executing those evil climatologists. God and the Invisible Hand would never permit massive CO2 emissions to effect humans, and anyone that says so should be taken out and beaten to death.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think that was the rough idea behind creating Africanized honeybees (killer bees). Not so much because of climate change, but just to be able to make honey in the tropics. And it worked, if you ignore the behavioral changes.
More mysterious is their failure to push north. “What we can infer is that temperature in the northern latitudes is not what's limiting their spread,” says Ignasi Bartomeus, a researcher at Spain's Estación Biológica de Doñana in Seville
Wish I could read the actual paper, but it's pay-walled.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As a close friend of bumblebees its hard seeing a familiar face disappear year after year. As for us in the hornet community, we're enjoying a resurgence the likes of which few have ever known. That picnic last month where we stung the living crap out of your dog? yes, good times..and that time you stepped on one of us while mowing the lawn in sandles? goodness we sure shared a chuckle while delivering inexorable sting after sting chasing you into the sliding glass door. Lets also not forget that time you reached into the mailbox! ho ho! surprised you didnt we? So in summation I guess what id like to say is that although the bumble bee and its kind gentle ways are slowly fading from existence, we still loathe, detest, and abhor each and every one of you giant two legged monsters.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I thought bumblebees are everywhere except maybe the desert?
From what I can tell Bumblebee is a genus, so there are about 250+ individual species, each with its own habitat and temperature range it's adapted too.
What seems to be happening is these habitats are getting too warm and the bees, instead of migrating towards cooler temperatures, are dying instead.
I stole this Sig
Repeat after me: it has nothing to do with all the RF from all the fucking cellphone towers everywhere. Still don't believe that? Repeat it again, as many times as necessary...
Actually, this has more to do with pesticide use in the controlling of mosquitos and such than the climate changing. Honey Bees are big business and renting out hives a profitable venture. These hives travel all over the country (I saw three full semi-trucks of Bees just last week heading north) and all this global warming (if true) does is to make the growing season happen sooner and makes the business of bee keeping just move the hives north sooner.
Nothing to see here.... Move on..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Bring in the undomesticated bee strains as pollinators.
The European /North American bees have been bread for docility for centuries to the point where we transport hives on trucks to pollinate where needed, is it any wonder that they are not migrating "naturally" they are for all intents and purposes domesticated, it's like expecting cows to migrate on their own.
I would expect that so called "killer" bees would be adapting better to climate change.
If carpenter bees are considered a type of bumble bee I hope they do extinct ASAP. Not only do they drill holes in any wooden structure they can find, but after they've built a nest the woodpeckers tear it apart and make an even bigger hole.
If I'm reading your multitude of comments on this subject correctly, you're saying, "fuck the wild honeybees, private industry will just make more of them and truck them around more and everything will be okay. yay capitalism!"
Is that about right?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Actually, There was a study a short time ago that said bees become addicted to nicotine based pesticides and prefer it to sugar water or regular food.
Pesticides are likely the issues here.
I thought bumblebees are everywhere except maybe the desert?
Bombus sonorus -- the Sonoran Bumblebee -- is a common North American desert species.
To answer your question every critter has it's range. Even you do. Visited Antarctica recently? Or Mars?
If you were a bumblebee you'd have a range of about a quarter of a kilometer from your nest. In rare instances you might go as far as 800m distant. And therein you can see why climate change poses an adaptation challenge to bumblebees.
Bumblebee colonies die every winter. The old queen perishes and the new queens hibernate until the spring then disperse to a new nest site. So you can see that the species can only relocate northward at a fraction of a kilometer per year -- although it may have better luck moving vertically -- to higher altitudes where a convenient mountain is handy.
Species that adapt well to climate change either have individuals with large ranges, or they hitch a ride on critters that travel long distance. For example mosquito species have lifetime ranges on the order of 2-3 km, but the Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus), which breeds in small containers of water, usually spends its life within 100m or so of where it hatches. The Tiger Mosquito species was introduced to the US at Houston in 1985 and fifteen years later it was found all over the United States. How is this possible if an individual lives its entire life within a 100m radius of its hatching place? I went to a presentation at CDC Fort Collins where their arthropod borne disease doyen plotted out the spread of Ae albopictus and showed it followed the route of the US Interstate Highway system. Eggs and pregnant individuals hitched a ride. That's because cars and trucks provide things that mosquitoes are attracted to: people to bite and tiny pools of water trapped in spare tires or crevices of the machine for egg-laying. Note that Ae albopictus larvae are known to arrive in the US in a shipments of that "lucky bamboo" you can buy in Chinatown; those stalks hold maybe 20-30 ml of water. It takes a "container" with only a tablespoon or two of water to transport viable larvae.
Now back to bumblebees. Because bumblebee colonies are small (typically 50 individuals to 50,000 for honeybees) and temporary, bumblebees don't stockpile honey. So unlike honeybees humans have no reason to transport them deliberately. Likewise cars and trucks aren't attractive to bumblebees so it's rare that a new queen will get an accidental ride north with a human. So bumblebees are poorly adapted to a rapidly changing climate.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I know, no one likes to RTFA. But if you did: "One clue to the importance of climate: Bumblebee ranges began shrinking “even before the neonicotinoid pesticides came into play in the 1980s,” says ecologist and coauthor Alana Pindar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph in Canada."
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Yes, because there is no such thing as disease.
Indeed, this is the case of the cult science of Climate Change vs. the cult science of Evolution. Considering how many warming periods and ice ages bumblebees have survived, it's ludicrous to suggest that they can't adapt to a changing climate through basic "These bees survived because they moved further North. The further North, the more likely the hive is to split and thrive. Therefore, we can predict that the Bumblebees will, as a species, propagate North" which is the least-disagreeable pillar of evolutionary science .
Since the range migration started happening "even before the neonicotinoid pesticides came into play in the 1980s,” both of your theories seem to not be relevant to this particular article. Especially the wacky cellphone tower tinfoil hat guy.
Please at least try to RTFA next time.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Or not: "One clue to the importance of climate: Bumblebee ranges began shrinking 'even before the neonicotinoid pesticides came into play in the 1980s,' says ecologist and coauthor Alana Pindar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph in Canada."
Please RTFA. Thank you.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
This is a basic tenet of the Church of the Invisible Hand. There's no problem that can't be solved by destroying nature and replacing it dollar-generating industries.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You forgot to mention the part where production and sale of neonicitonoids is a huge business, and the pesticide industry is attacking entomologists who are studying the effects of this class of pesticides on bees and other pollinating insects with as much fervor as the fossil fuel industry attacks climatologists.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Who could possibly imagine that altering such a fundamental characteristic of the planet like the amount of energy it retains would have an enormous range of impacts! Science sure is ridiculous!
If you think so...
I'm saying that this whole article is actually hog wash born of the global warming alarmist religion. I don't think this is a problem, nor do I think that the issue is traceable to global warming. Finally, I don't think global warming is man made (but that's a totally different argument).
This does not seem to be a serious problem to me...Even if their conclusions are true.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The question is, if humans never existed, would the bees have died out anyways as the climate would eventually change by the same amount as we are coming out of an ice age.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Nice non sequitur. I was referring to your completely off-the-mark claim that pesticides were killing bees. Once I read that claim, it's hard to believe that there's any sort of logic or science behind your other claim.
To be blunt: it appears you might be just pulling stuff out of your ass.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
It's normal when people are trying to poison the bees with flupyradifurone/neonics and simultaneously taking their habitat away. Of course they're dying out.
Climate change is another issue but you can't debate the dangers of bee toxins being sprayed on agricultural crops, and habitat loss is easy to demonstrate.
Too bad this audience is all basement dwellers, you guys should really take up bee friendly gardening.
$
If I'm reading your multitude of comments on this subject correctly, you're saying, "fuck the wild honeybees, private industry will just make more of them and truck them around more and everything will be okay. yay capitalism!"
Quiet please.
We are having a moment of silence for the wild cows.
Well, judging by your level of education in this matter, as you don't know the difference between bumblebees (the subject of the article) and honeybees (the subject of your multiple anti-global-warming-crusade posts), I think we're done here.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Well, when it is over, I bet there will be absolutely no proof that the human race self-exterminated due to sheer stupidity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It must be psychosomatic just like in humans, since it seemed to happen before the antennas were hooked up as well!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yep. The obvious point that you miss is, if we kill off the bees quicker, do we also kill off ourselves quicker?
Or are you just too shortsighted to see that?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Just log off now. For everyone's sake.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Sensitive much? I don't believe I said anything in that sentence that should indicate that I doubt that the climate is changing, or that humans likely are the cause. I also didn't type anything to indicate that I think we shouldn't study the changing climate to see what effects it will have on our society. I was just wondering if this same thing would happen without the man made climate impacts (slower change). Likely the answer is no, they bees would have had time to adapt and migrate with a slower changing climate.
As far as Ag goes, they should be fine as honeybee =/= bumblebee and moving colonies of honeybees around to farms is actually not a terribly big deal.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Wow, can't take a damn joke?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If the "global warming alarmist religion"'s conclusions are true, then we're fucked. If that doesn't seem a serious problem to you, then I'd hate to see what is.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I don't understand. For the sake of argument. How does an average temperature that's half a degree warmer than it was 40 years ago wipe out the Bummblebee's habitat. Do the flowers stop growing?
Slashdot climate change discussions, man. It's Friday, Friday.
What time does the men's rights activist clickbait get posted? Then the real fun starts.
You are welcome on my lawn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... =/= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Bumblebees are larger and usually fuzzier. That is like mistaking hornets for bees, they are different.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I have never been stung by a bumblebee. Yellowjackets, mostly.
Just like anything else in the natural world, small changes effect the outliers first. Bee colonies living on the edge, just getting by, die off if there is even a slight drop in survivability.
To answer your question; sometimes a reduction in food supply and sometimes the weather gets just a little too warm for bees already living on the edge of survivability. Either one can cause a colony to fail.
You know, the alarmists have been playing the gloom and doom card for 20+ years, so far none of their dire prognostications have been proven true. If they've been so so wrong in the past, why would I believe them now? They confidently made claims in the past which turned out to be false.
Don't you see? They have just kept upping the anti with more and more dire predictions, because that's what it takes to get attention now. It's starting to wear thin if you ask me. I look at their past and it seems like they are just shysters, snake oil sellers who will literally say anything to manipulate folks like you. I suggest you apply a bit more critical thinking when you read stuff like this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So unlike honeybees humans have no reason to transport them deliberately.
Not quite true, bumblebees are used in greenhouses for pollination.
E.g.: https://greenmethods.com/product/bombus-impatiens-pollinating-bumblebee-hives/
But that probably helps only a select few species of bumblebees to migrate.
If this is a trend that predates you then there's a strong chance it's not the current trendy thing people are fixating on NOW.
Or have you run out of things to blame on climate change in the here and now and have to start with historical events.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What's funny is that this was a source of hysteria in the 70s. Those bees were going to migrate up north and cause mass havoc. Not just ecological disruption mind you but actually bothering people that were nowhere near nature.
Didn't seem to pan out. You have the occasional killer bee attack here and there but nothing too bad in the grand scheme of things.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That statement is a self nuke since he's talking about 30 years ago. If the trend started 30 years ago then it is probably NOT climate change.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Gotta love the "Sorry, but" types. It's not racist, what you're reaching for is racially insensitive (and for the record it's not). Let the record show this example of what is currently wrong with society.
Yes, god forbid we not be insensitive to others. That's just the worst.
racially insensitive (and for the record it's not).
Your opinion. And it's a wrong opinion. Try this. Go tell that bee joke to a black guy. See if he finds it funny, racist and/or insensitive.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The real question is, if human beings never existed, would bumble bees have developed intelligence and civilization, as no other species filled that niche.
This really gets to the heart of the debate.
Play Command HQ online
This is a basic tenet of the Church of the Invisible Hand. There's no problem that can't be solved by destroying nature and replacing it dollar-generating industries.
The basic tenet of the Church of the Totalitarian State is that there is no problem that can't be solved by just raising taxes and adding laws. Generally, "destroying nature" and the like can only be accomplished by a corrupt state supporting the big corporations, i.e., campaign donors. Even a corrupt state isn't too big a problem until it grows large. Even the Grant Administration had a limited short term effect because the size and scope of government was vastly smaller. The true Invisible Hand is rarely allowed to operate. Compare that to today where the government can simply force everyone to buy the products of the giant corporations that paid them off.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
There's a basic tenet of the Church of the Invisible Hand that states "There are no consequences"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I note you intentionally left out CO2. Good thing, climatologists are evil fucking commies. We should silence them, so our way of life can be maintained as consequence free as it has always been. Do you agree with me that we should quadruple CO2 emissions every year? After all, CO2 is totally benign, doesn't absorb and re-emit IR like those evil lying communist climatologists claim. Perhaps we should ponder some appropriate punishments for them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bumblebees are clearly Communist Ecoterrorists out to destroy our fine, God-fearing Capitalist agricultural industry. We should immediately start executing those evil climatologists. God and the Invisible Hand would never permit massive CO2 emissions to effect humans, and anyone that says so should be taken out and beaten to death.
Well, get ready to start beating, because apparently the (interim) solution is asexual reproduction:
https://xkcd.com/1259/
I read one theory is that its not the pesticides that are killing them but modern farming in general. As more and more land is put under cultivation and farms industrialize and specialize you get more farm fields and less forest/wet lands/other. Additionally industrialization of agriculture is trading small farms that may have multiple crops on tens of acres each for farms that have a single crop on 100s of acres.
The impact is that rather than having a variety of plants blooming at all different times a large area might have only one or only a few kind of plants the bloom at a specific time. The effect is the bees are left with nothing to eat the rest of the time.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Actual quick fix: breed regular non-modified bumblebees in captivity and sell hives to farmers.
I don't understand. For the sake of argument. How does an average temperature that's half a degree warmer than it was 40 years ago wipe out the bumblebee's habitat?
Think of it in terms of energy. Raising the atmosphere's temperature by half a degree is the energy equivalent of detonating about two million nuclear warheads. The heat capacity of the ocean is a thousand times that of the atmosphere, but I'm not sure if the whole ocean has warmed along with the atmosphere. If it has, that would be two billion nuclear warheads. Earth's atmosphere is a huge, complex, nonlinear system. Adding more energy affects different parts of the world in different ways. (That's the nature of averages.) It can get a lot more than half a degree warmer in some places and a lot more than half a degree colder in others.
On top of that, you also get more chaotic weather. Heat is energy. Energy makes things happen.
Visit the
Yeah, those rotten commie climatologists. We should have them wiped out.
And then we'll go after all the other so called "scientists" with their evil pinko theories that suggest we can damage the environment and wipe them out too. Clearly God and the Invisible Hand have us protected. Let's start really releasing CO2, because we know it cannot do anything at all, and it's all lies by those evil consequence-free socialist fucker traitor climatologists!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bees, like any animal, would follow their main food sources This suggests their main plants are disappearing south faster than they are expanding north.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Same argument for polar bears, which have survived many ice age/warmer-than-now cycles. Like they are idiots that can't hang out on land in northern Canada.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
All evidence points to Julian Simon being right over Malthusian ideas.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth. No, this isn't a troll. I am serious.
We can less recognize the state of technology in 100 years than 1915 could of now. And 1815 vs. 200 years from now. And 1715 vs. 300 years from now.
So, people of 1815, stop panicking over what the world will be like in 2015 because your concerns will be irrelevant and on the ash heap of history. I know you are worried horse dung dust should be 300 feet deep around cities by 2015, and God knows how 2015 will feed 3 billion people when it takes ships 6 months to cross the ocean, even if you could spare that many farmhands to sail the ships.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This news is particularly sad to me on a personal level, as bumblebees are one of the few insects that both tolerate you petting them lightly, and are fuzzy enough to make it rewarding (moths are the other, but they're quite fragile). Unlike honeybees and wasps, they rarely sting, and their slowness cuts the danger even further to making it essentially nil. I've never been stung by a bumblebee. The slow flight also makes it pretty easy to pet them while they're busy feeding on nectar and pollinating, and if you're gentle, they barely react to your touch (just don't touch the wings, obviously).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Hey don't look at me. I want to eliminate climatology entirely. CO2 is wonderful, and we should look at massively increasing emissions. So far as I can tell, you're in agreement. You've have, as so many of us who worship at the exalted throne of the Invisible Hand, discovered that CO2 in the atmosphere is at the very worst merely benign, but more likely increased emissions will in fact help in so many ways. Clearly we both are firm believers that the laws of physics simply do not apply to industrial activity, and we are free to do anything we want and emit anything we care to, without worry of any kind.
So let us join together and destroy the evil pinko commie climatologists. They are ecoterrorists and should be severely physically harmed for trying to destroy our way of life.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...the only exercise Liberals aspire to? The fact that bumblebees are not colonizing new areas "opened up by global warming" - especially in the face of the fact that no warming has been seen for twenty years except by people who expect to make money from it - is clear evidence that their decline has some other cause. It's not like the damned bees are refusing to use the new territory. What? Are they offended about warming and doing a racial suicide to make us feel guilty?
Come on, if you want to keep up the charade at least put a little thought into the story. Is that just too much to ask?
Unfortunately, you are way off. People worried about climate and food as soon as they were able to and most still do so today. Sure, not with a strategic view, but the problem has been mostly unchanged for a long, long time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
How do I figure?
Let's imagine for a minute that bees rely more on the sun and its pisition than the available food sources. We do know after all that bees navigate and communicate by the sun and representations of it.
So why would bees migrate if readily available food sources were already nearby? Or perhaps if they do, it is at a lot slower pace than other animals or insects. So let's assume that the location is relatively static which is why there appears to not be any northern movement. Now we need to figure out why the southern boundaries are shrinking. The food sources are not disappearing and climate change has been happening longer than this observed trend. So what is different in the south than the north? Pests is likely the difference. More pests means more pesticides in use. Those pesticides have gotten more efficient and we know bees get addicted to some of them.
But let's see if we can make a car analogy out of this. Let's suppose we have two different areas. In one area (north) you have a few bars and a mild drug problem. In the other (south ) you have 10 times as many bars per square mile and a heavy heroin problem. Which area is likely to have more deaths from drunken/drugged driving accidents? Which area is likely to have an overall better health?
Considering Polar Bears only evolved their current teeth about 10,000-20,000 years ago, strictly speaking the current species has not survived many cycles.
Polar Bears are marine animals and dependent on hunting seal, so hanging around on land leads to starvation.
Of course they can evolve into Pizzly bears which can live on land but strictly speaking, they're not Polar bears anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
And all along I thought it was Monsanto.
Silly me. It was me all along! I guess I'll have to stop putting teh fossil fuels in my burner.
You must be thinking about WASPs, honey.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Honey Bees would be better as they have 3-4 orders of magnitude more Bees in a hive. Besides the Honey Bee makes hives that are easier to domesticate and sell, imagine digging up a Bumble Bee hive and trying to sell it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I am black, mixed racially really, and I thought it was damned funny.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Remember, that is an average, with almost no change at the equator and maximum change (on average) towards the poles. Then there are the weird outlier years such as this one where I live. Winter ended at least a month early, the drought showed up and it is shaping up to be the hottest year on record (hottest June, driest May and June so far, the bush (wild flowers) is dieing and the watering restriction are getting severe so people don't have as many flowers). The Bees had bad timing with their usual spring crop of Huckleberries and suffered for it. Now there are no Huckleberries and other things are suffering. I feel bad for the bears.
Because Bumble Bees and most of the other native bees build new hives every year, one bad year puts a huge dent in their population, a couple of bad years...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Heh... Imagine how fucked we are if the Abrahamic God is real.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Try to keep up. We're talking about Bumblebees, says right on my browser windows frame, not Honey Bees. Where I live there is no mosquito spraying, no farming and the wild bees, including Bumblebees are having a fuck of a year due to weird weather (everything is 2-4 weeks early except when the wild bees hatch to make new hives). Pollination rates on the wild Huckleberries, which are usually the first crop for the wild bees, is close to zero, which points to the bees not having their usual spring breakfast which they need to establish the new hives (many types of wild bee hives only last a year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's inevitable that business will be more successful by financing a totalitarian state to force people to buy their products. Think about it, one business spends a fortune making a better product and has little money left for advertising etc, another business pays far less to influence the government to force people to use their product and to screw the other company. Which one succeeds?
At least we're no longer in the days when businesses simply hired mercenaries to force people to do what the company wants, though we could still go there if influencing government gets too expensive.
The invisible hand simply favours businesses that are efficient, and it is more efficient to influence government and use taxpayer money instead of the businesses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth. No, this isn't a troll. I am serious.
Before we do that we need to terraform Mars and probably Venus so we can grow enough food to feed a Trantorized Earth. Note that Asimov had 20 nearby agricultural worlds to supply Trantor's food.
Pesticides and AGW are not mutually exclusive, neither issue is "speculative" in the sense they both have hard evidence for their claims. The interesting claim in TFA is that unlike most other lifeforms, bumblebees have stubbornly refused to move poleward with the climate. It's an odd observation, which is a good thing since most scientific discoveries are preceded by the words "that's odd".
Also society can, and does, tackle more than one issue simultaneously, fixing the pesticide issue would certainly boost populations but it will do nothing to encourage them to move with their food source.
Oblig car analogy, We have a flat tyre and broken fan belt, we won't get very far until we fix both problems.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Tomato farmers claim that Bumblebees are superior to regular bees when it comes to pollinating tomatoes, so that's wy there is a market for them.
Yea, global warming. It has not thing to do with the neoniconoids http://www.nature.com/nature/j... . So now we're willing to kill our bees on the global warming alter? What a load of crap. As if bees can't take change. They live from the equator all the way up to the arctic circle.
Don't believe it. More man made global warming BS. Yes, we are warming up. Check out Venice in the 1300s, the Adriatic was coming in way back then. No man made GW back then - obviously. None now. Just a way to take money from all of us and give it to guys like Al Gore and Maurice Strong.
Do you ever get annoyed with all of the white suburbanites fighting racism 'on your behalf/for your benefit'?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Very much so. I can fight my own battles and have done fine on my own. Fighting on my behalf, without my asking, is telling me that I can not do it on my own. This is unacceptable to me. If I want your help I will ask.
However, nobody is really fighting for me. They are fighting for some cause. I am not a member of that cause. I am a member of that race. My causes are my own. I will do what I do based on my beliefs and ability. I do not need help or I would ask for it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I laughed as i thought it was funny. As in nearly all things in which I find some entertainment/amusement someone has to come along and tell me why I am insensitive. Just wait till the SJW's find out the bees are dying due to adopting a gay lifestyle.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
If this is a trend that predates you then there's a strong chance it's not the current trendy thing people are fixating on NOW.
Or have you run out of things to blame on climate change in the here and now and have to start with historical events.
The bees are consuming too much gluten.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Indeed, this is the case of the cult science of Climate Change vs. the cult science of Evolution. Considering how many warming periods and ice ages bumblebees have survived, it's ludicrous to suggest that they can't adapt to a changing climate through basic "These bees survived because they moved further North. The further North, the more likely the hive is to split and thrive. Therefore, we can predict that the Bumblebees will, as a species, propagate North" which is the least-disagreeable pillar of evolutionary science .
It is easy to demonstrate that evolution is false. Dodos were made extinct by hunters. If there was any truth to evolution, a bulletproof dodo would have evolved.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
What's funny is that this was a source of hysteria in the 70s. Those bees were going to migrate up north and cause mass havoc. Not just ecological disruption mind you but actually bothering people that were nowhere near nature.
Didn't seem to pan out. You have the occasional killer bee attack here and there but nothing too bad in the grand scheme of things.
And now, we have even elected one as president.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I don't understand. For the sake of argument. How does an average temperature that's half a degree warmer than it was 40 years ago wipe out the Bummblebee's habitat. Do the flowers stop growing?
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.ph...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
This is a basic tenet of the Church of the Invisible Hand. There's no problem that can't be solved by destroying nature and replacing it dollar-generating industries.
The basic tenet of the Church of the Totalitarian State is that there is no problem that can't be solved by just raising taxes and adding laws. Generally, "destroying nature" and the like can only be accomplished by a corrupt state supporting the big corporations, i.e., campaign donors. Even a corrupt state isn't too big a problem until it grows large. Even the Grant Administration had a limited short term effect because the size and scope of government was vastly smaller. The true Invisible Hand is rarely allowed to operate. Compare that to today where the government can simply force everyone to buy the products of the giant corporations that paid them off.
And just how would we avoid dangerous climate change from CO2 level rise, in the hypothetical condition that conservatives were convinced it was real, and we did not have a large corrupt state supporting big corporations? Stop buying petroleum products and let the free market eventually come up with alternatives?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You know, the alarmists have been playing the gloom and doom card for 20+ years, so far none of their dire prognostications have been proven true. If they've been so so wrong in the past, why would I believe them now? They confidently made claims in the past which turned out to be false.
Don't you see? They have just kept upping the anti with more and more dire predictions, because that's what it takes to get attention now. It's starting to wear thin if you ask me. I look at their past and it seems like they are just shysters, snake oil sellers who will literally say anything to manipulate folks like you. I suggest you apply a bit more critical thinking when you read stuff like this.
What about the AGW alarmists' warnings that Saddam Hussein was about to WMD the US?
Wait, I might have this a bit confused.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... =/= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Bumblebees are larger and usually fuzzier. That is like mistaking hornets for bees, they are different.
It's because we have sports teams with Hornet mascots.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Bravo.. I see what you did there... Way to spin...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I would like to point your attention to this post a little above yours:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
If we can't laugh at our race, where does that leave all the country of origin jokes? Are we not allowed to laugh at polocks? Are we not allowed to laugh at Irish, or French, or whereever?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Science Friday podcast last week interviewed a bumblebee expert. He said there was no evidence that bumblebees do worse in regions that use heavy pesticide vs areas out in the wild where little to no pesticide is detected. According to the guest, climate change really is the largest factor in their decline.
I think you may be referring to honeybees that are more closely related to agriculture and pesticide use.
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...
You didn't "cite" anything. You pulled two theories out of your ass, one of which was wildly off-base, and going by that, why would I think your second theory had any merit, seeing as how you're an idiot?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
See above re: huge, complex, and nonlinear.
http://blogs.agu.org/geospace/...
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