[littleg]

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where is all the butterflies this year? Is it to early or what I got flowers blooming everywhere
and not a single butterfly. Perhaps to much rain

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[Awakening]

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where is all the butterflies this year? Is it to early or what I got flowers blooming everywhere
and not a single butterfly. Perhaps to much rain

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Number of downloads: 0  60_1_.gif (59.09K)
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Our natural systems are breaking down. We live in such a plastic reality we are the only ones in the world who aren't aware how bad things have gotten.

The bees are dying, the bats are dying, the frogs are dying, and there are fewer insects than I can ever remember. Scientists are calling it the beginning of the sixth great extinction.

Another thing you will notice is that the atmostphere isn't nearly as clear anymore. We get a lot more hazy days than we did in the past.

The radiation from the sun is much more intense. My skin tans very easily and I rarely got a sunburn. That has all changed, two hours in the sun and you will be in pain. I played golf the other day under total cloud cover and still had a sunburn. I'm sure most of you remember when sunscreen came into wide use. Only the fairskinned people used it and you could get it in 2, 4, 8, and for the vampires 12. Now 15 is considered low protection and most people are using in the 20 to 30 range and some go as high as 75.

This post has been edited by Awakening: 11 June 2009 - 09:21 PM

[littleg]

Our natural systems are breaking down. We live in such a plastic reality we are the only ones in the world who aren't aware how bad things have gotten.

The bees are dying, the bats are dying, the frogs are dying, and there are fewer insects than I can ever remember. Scientists are calling it the beginning of the sixth great extinction.

Another thing you will notice is that the atmostphere isn't nearly as clear anymore. We get a lot more hazy days than we did in the past.

The radiation from the sun is much more intense. My skin tans very easily and I rarely got a sunburn. That has all changed, two hours in the sun and you will be in pain. I played golf the other day under total cloud cover and still had a sunburn. I'm sure most of you remember when sunscreen came into wide use. Only the fairskinned people used it and you could get it in 2, 4, 8, and for the vampires 12. Now 15 is considered low protection and most people are using in the 20 to 30 range and some go as high as 75.

i hope the bees dont die my jack o latern flowers need pollinated this year

[Awakening]

i hope the bees dont die my jack o latern flowers need pollinated this year

The worlds food supply does as well.

[Harl Delos]

The worlds food supply does as well.

Not really.

Some old-world crops are highly dependent on honeybees for pollenation, but crops like potatoes, tomatoes, and corn, crops which originated in the new world, don't need honeybees. In fact, there weren't any honeybees in America until the pilgrims brought them. The species they brought was a domesticated species. Wild bees in North and South America are basically escapees from kept colonies, all of that original species.

The land grant universities are studying CCD - colony collapse disorder - which appears to be caused by a disease. They aren't even sure of that. But since all the domestic bees derive from the original Pilgrims' colonies, they have almost identical DNA. (There would be minor differences due to mutation, but it hasn't been long enough for many mutations to have developed.)

Africanized bees are different. If a male bee from Africa gets blown by a storm to South America, and happens across a queen bee in flight, you end up with a colony that has "africanized" bees in it. Normally, a queen only gets her eggs fertilized by the males which she herself has given birth to.

Climate change might affect the butterfly population, but I suspect that a lot more of it is due to agriculture. When I was living in Ohio, I noticed a dramatic drop in the population of butterflies after farmers started using certain agricultural chemicals, especially atrazine and treflan, and then another drop when farmers started using Roundup.

Butterfly caterpillars are pretty selective about what plants they eat, and lay their eggs on, and different species like different plants, so different new herbicides will affect different species of butterflies.

Since the time of Galileo, we've evaluated scientific theory on its ability to predict the future. Hansen keeps changing the computer model he uses to justify his claims of global warming, so that it better predicts the past, but it still doesn't predict the future worth a darn. The climate is changing, there's no question about that, but it's been cooling for the last decade overall, and what's of greater concern is that some areas are warming while others are cooling.

Some scientists have conjectured that we're about to see a major change in the earth's magnetic fields. The north and south magnetic poles have always moved about a bit, but the movements are greater of late. Significant? Nobody knows. But Monarch butterflies migrate annually, and of late, significant numbers of Monarch butterflies have been losing their way. Maybe it's because of the earth's shifting magnetic poles - or maybe not. We don't know how butterflies know where to go. Do they have an organ that senses magnetic fields? Do they fly by sense of smell? Do they orient themselves by the rising and setting sun?

We don't begin to have enough answers. While it's silly to keep pumping toxins into the air - everyone here knows that CO2 is a poison, right? - without limit, it's even sillier to declare that global warming is "settled business" and that we don't need to do more research. If anything, we need to step up research tenfold or more. If you don't know what the question is, it's premature to implement an answer.

[mam0412]

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where is all the butterflies this year? Is it to early or what I got flowers blooming everywhere
and not a single butterfly. Perhaps to much rain

 00005_1_.gif (50.61K)
Number of downloads: 0  60_1_.gif (59.09K)
Number of downloads: 0

I love your graphics littleg! I sure hope the butterflies come to your door!