Associate
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2016
- Posts
- 1,967
- Location
- Oh Canada!
I recently read that insect populations world-wide had declined by some 80 percent since 1980. I have witnessed this first hand. There are forests and parks all over the place here. I was always out in the fileds, observing nature. When I was a kid in the 80s, you could walk into one of these fields, and for every step you took, a hundred or so grasshoppers, crickets, and spiders would scurry away from you. There were grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, all manner of spiders, praying mantis, frogs that ate the insects, snakes that ate the frogs. Everywhere. I go to these fields today and there is NOTHING. NOTHING. What happened?
I used to think that it must be environmental pollution, but our air is much cleaner today than it was in the 80s. We have completely stopped burning coal, vehicle emissions are incredibly low, we don't burn garbage any more. No more leaded gasoline.
Then I thought it must be climate change, but honestly, the climate here hasn't changed severely enough to destroy populations of these animals. The amount of time in the year that has conditions for them to live happily is about the same, weather is about the same, their food plants are plentiful. But no insects.
Then I started thinking, what's the number one environmental pollutant that's skyrocketed in the past 30 years? Radio. Microwave radio transmissions. There are cell phone towers everywhere. Everybody has a cell phone. Millions of multi Ghz cellphone connections are flying through the air.
Did you know that microwave ovens are banned in Russia because they did studies that found that microwave ovens greatly disturb the lives of plants and animals in their vicinity for almost a mile in every direction?
I have seen some crazy stuff. Monarch butterflies that used to fly south every year at the beginning of October suddenly not flying south. Finding dozens of them frozen to death in the parking lot behind my building the morning after the first freezing cold night in early November.
We seriously need to reconsider our communications infrastructure. We need insects to live. They pollinate most of the plants we eat. They are the second level of the food chain, after plants. The locust eats the grain, the frog eats the locust, the snake eats the frog, the eagle eats the snake.
I truly believe that I will live to see the end of the world (I was born in 1983) and that children born after the year 2000 or so will not get to live their entire lives, but will probably starve to death or die in some other man-made environmental catastrophe.
I read that, if we don't do anything about our green house gas emissions, many scientists have predicted that by the year 2100, Earth will go into a runaway greenhouse effect which will lead to Earth becoming like Venus. All life destoyed. Oceans evaporated. Destroyed.
I used to think that it must be environmental pollution, but our air is much cleaner today than it was in the 80s. We have completely stopped burning coal, vehicle emissions are incredibly low, we don't burn garbage any more. No more leaded gasoline.
Then I thought it must be climate change, but honestly, the climate here hasn't changed severely enough to destroy populations of these animals. The amount of time in the year that has conditions for them to live happily is about the same, weather is about the same, their food plants are plentiful. But no insects.
Then I started thinking, what's the number one environmental pollutant that's skyrocketed in the past 30 years? Radio. Microwave radio transmissions. There are cell phone towers everywhere. Everybody has a cell phone. Millions of multi Ghz cellphone connections are flying through the air.
Did you know that microwave ovens are banned in Russia because they did studies that found that microwave ovens greatly disturb the lives of plants and animals in their vicinity for almost a mile in every direction?
I have seen some crazy stuff. Monarch butterflies that used to fly south every year at the beginning of October suddenly not flying south. Finding dozens of them frozen to death in the parking lot behind my building the morning after the first freezing cold night in early November.
We seriously need to reconsider our communications infrastructure. We need insects to live. They pollinate most of the plants we eat. They are the second level of the food chain, after plants. The locust eats the grain, the frog eats the locust, the snake eats the frog, the eagle eats the snake.
I truly believe that I will live to see the end of the world (I was born in 1983) and that children born after the year 2000 or so will not get to live their entire lives, but will probably starve to death or die in some other man-made environmental catastrophe.
I read that, if we don't do anything about our green house gas emissions, many scientists have predicted that by the year 2100, Earth will go into a runaway greenhouse effect which will lead to Earth becoming like Venus. All life destoyed. Oceans evaporated. Destroyed.
