T4> > And I think you'll similarly find that CCD occurs in remote places
There are a lot of bee die-offs that aren't CCD but are mistaken for CCD. I'm no bee expert but I feel confident that the experts *are* on the case. I also believe that banning the substances in the EU will be an important step in proving or disproving neonic's role in what may be a problem of multiple causations.
Their experts apparently feel at least a temporary ban is warranted because of the potential threat to agriculture if "bee trucking" becomes unviable. Reading through the USDA's various monographs on CCD makes it clear how many threats bees face. Sort of like the first time I grew my own tomatoes and discovered the legion of living creatures from fungus to four footed furballs that wanted (and got!) a piece of my tomato patch. Who knew there were so many blights, rots, bugs and furballs with a taste for tomatoes?
Norminn> In a place with no agriculture and no pesticide/herbicide use, there
Then there's that! Frankly I wonder where the missing bees go? Are they carrying a disease that they spread to other hives? The very act of moving vast numbers of one stationary bees to all points on the compass makes me suspect that transportation is part of the problem. Those traveling bees have to ride in the backwash of diesel truck exhausts. I don't like following a big rig, I am sure those tiny little bees don't like it much either.
We have another hard puzzle, like the Malaysian airliner, that may never get solved. From what I've read, the problem with CCD *isn't* getting worse. Perhaps the bee genome contains some mechanism for killing off large numbers of bees every 40 or 50 years. We already know from cicadas that insects can "tell time" for at least 17 years in a row. Why not 40?
One thing for sure, it's a very knotty problem that's proven very hard to get a handle on. It could easily be just a coincidence it appeared at the same time neonic's became the pesticide of choice. Or not.
I'd be happy to see the full story on this, but I suspect that won't be forthcoming. Is relocation of killer bees even legal within the USA? And assuming the anecdotal report is true, it's still meaningless, unless you believe in junk science.
I could claim that measles is caused by watchng TV. So, I take
1000 people and put them on an isolated island, with no contact with other people. They don't get measles, so following your logic, TV is the cause of measles. Oh and for good measure, throw in the fact that killer bees are naturally resistant to CCD disorder to begin with. It's one of the things real scientists working on the problem have established.
Pesticides remain on the list of possible causes, along with just about everything else. The fact that CCD appeared so suddenly and so aggressively, suggests to me that it's more likely a bacteria or virus that has yet to be indentified. CCD like die-offs have occured periodically for over 100 years. This could be from the same cause, or a different cause.
It's clear a lot more research needs to be done. I think part of the problem is that early research was done by the company making the new pesticides. Like new drugs for humans, the company testing is often at variance with the real world results. Thalidomide passed drug safety testing in Canada and Germany and look what happened there.
We're seeing a lot more research being done by independent agencies now and that might change what we know about the problem. A lot of universities have started research programs. I feel pretty confident that we'll get to the bottom of CCD and I wouldn't be at all surprised if environmental contaminants of some kind are at least part of the problems because of reports like yours.
Even a minor brain dysfunction in a bee can mean it can't find its way home and without little bee PET scanners or EEG machines, it's going to be very hard to pick up something that might be disrupted a bee's brain just enough to cause it to wander away.
I am surprised no one's yet accused Obama of running a plot to replace our natural, placid honeybees with Islamic-leaning community-organized Africanized killer Benghazi bees.
Actually, I think you've found the problem. The bees have seen all those ads encouraging folks to get on food stamps. They've seen Obama and the libs rail against the rich and how unfair America is and how we need to redistribute wealth. They heard him say, "You didn't create that". They've seen the labor participation rate hit 30 year lows, where people just give up looking for work. They saw tax increases on those that are the most productive. So, like so many others, they just said to hell with it, we'll just stop working and live off the rest of the hive. Enough do that and the hive collapses. Mystery solved.
The bee deaths are going to be blamed on Climate Change and Climate Change is going to be blamed on humanity. A new junk science report has come out blaming people for Climate Change and our Affirmative Action President and moronic minions with the help of a Democrat run Senate are going to use it as an excuse to slap regulations fees and taxes on business and The American people in order to fix Climate Change. It seems CO2 emissions are going to be a big target. CO2 emissions could be drastically reduced if Democrats would just stop breathing. Heck, become martyrs and take one for humanity and Gaia. ^_^
Pretty clever, Trader. I wish I had time to respond in detail today - but I will, sooner or later. I have a slightly different take on the poor schmoes we call "worker bees" and what happens to them and the honey (wealth) they create for their landlords and masters, the beekeepers . . . (-: They get to keep *just* enough honey to survive, and even then many don't live to reap the fruit of their labor.
There is an interesting phenomenon in Australia; that has suffered horrible droughts going on two decades. The average Australian doesn't believe in man-made global warming, now more than ever. It's speculated that Australians are very independent minded people that can't accept man-made global warming because, they think, "they can't fix it." Apparently, it's a typical reaction for people that are used to fixing things to deny a problem exists if they can't fix it.
Yes, there were plenty of incidents like that which really complicated finding the source of the problem. Doctors always seem surprised, too, when they find out that people trade or acquire pills contrary to Federal law, doctors order's and the Rule Of Law. (-:
There is a Canadian film my wife and I watched a while back about the thalidomide kids growing up that would make even a grizzled Navy Seal cry. Kids reaching for and trying to play with toys that a normal child could reach for a grab easily. Even the youngest of them knew that something was terrible wrong. It's one of the saddest films I've ever seen and the wife went through a substantial number of tissues she wept so much (and she's a retired Army colonel who grew up in New England and who prides herself on her ability to remain stoic and unemotional when required).
I think the film really bothers women because they are so worried about delivering healthy babies. My mom (and others) have said that as soon as the nurse handed me to her she counted all my fingers and toes and checked my ding-a-ling to make sure nothing was missing.
Whenever someone rails against our "horrible" regulatory system I think of the thousands of kids that got to lead normal lives because our FDA refused to be pushed into approving Benedictin (IIRC that was the trade name) before all the tests were in. What really sticks with me was how strongly doctors who had successfully prescribed thalidomide without incident believed that the drug was harmless.
Does she have a wasp waist, wings, a black and yellow behind and a taste for honey? (0:
There is some truth to our electronics interfering with the direction finding abilities of animals. It is well-known that high-powered sonar arrays really disrupt marine mammal communication and navigation abilities. I'll bet there's more than one whale who could lead us right to the Malaysian Flight 370 wreckage but they won't because they're pissed off about sonar noise pollution.
(FWIW, I read that it's not so much the sonar that's disrupted but the high explosives they use in those sea trials to make sure that sonar works under true battle conditions.)
There are a lot of painful things I won't watch anymore. I've learned more than enough about the suffering in the world and I won't forget. But I don't have to watch more, either.
This probably goes back thousands of years.
OTOH, this one, these days, for last 60 or more, is not such a serious problem. The most common problem is undescended testicles, and I thought
formatting link
would say they can almost always be fixed, but there were a lot of words and I got confused.
It did say this much. .
" About 3% of full-term and 30% of premature infant boys are born with at least one undescended testis. However, about 80% of cryptorchid testes descend by the first year of life (the majority within three months), making the true incidence of cryptorchidism around 1% overall."
Since this was probably always the case, I guess a lot of parents were scared unnecessarily.
They start out just below the kidneys and end up lower.
Doesn't the current budget cut funds for the FDA? Also the IRS, even though the IRS brings in money.
I wish.
Fortunately, she doesn't have those things either.
As unreasonable as that sounds, it's still better than the US nutjobs who postulate (as always) some massive world-wide conspiracy is to blame for all this warming "hokum." To buy into this lunacy you have to believe that all of the world's climate scientists are out to "cook the books" just to please the people that fund their research. What they fail to realize is that many more institutions than just governments hire and use climate experts to plan their business activities. Are *all* of them on the take? Not bloody likely but I hear people spout such nonsensical conspiracy crap all the time.
Those conspiracy theorists would be closer to the mark to suspect the research done by oil companies that show "no global warming" crisis because such a crisis would be very, VERY bad for business. Fossil fuel companies know that if we need to clean up CO2 that they will recede and solar, nuke and wind will advance. That gives plenty of motive for legacy energy led researchers to "cook the books." Protecting profits.
I am convinced global warming is real because the world's largest insurers are convinced it's real and they're the ones on the hook to pay off any huge weather disaster claims. IOW, they have some pretty big dogs in this hunt:
formatting link
I read the other day that ALEC and the Koch brothers are further trying to protect their fossil fuel interests by funding legislation in each state to make connecting solar to the grid more costly for solar pioneers. So the people who are all for smaller government and less regulation are happy to see any threat to their business model beseiged with new taxes and regulations. It saddens me to see otherwise intelligent individuals fail to realize that corporations have bribed their way out of paying taxes in the
25 years to an astonishing extent. Guess who's left holding the bag, Joe Taxpayer?
Oklahoma and the Republicans, trying to take the world back 100 years in so many areas. The "champion state" of less regulation and lower taxes passing both to please their wealthy masters, who genuinely fear the free market. Yet people believe the press releases and the propaganda. Watch what people do. It oftens says far more about their motives than their words.
If these are such good laws that the people will naturally support, how come they so often seem to ram them through without debate? Could it be because they don't want democracy - they want to dictate policy and discussion might interfere with that goal?
You don't need a mass conspiracy. You just need enough people, including scientists to come to the wrong conclusion, add in a lot of politicians, then it becomes self reinforcing. Are you trying to tell us that as much money is being spent looking at the possibility that global warming is being caused by things other than man-made CO2? If you're a scientist and you take that position, you're going to find it nearly impossible to attract funding and even if you can, your university career is likely over and you may get the boot.
For evidence of a similar phenomenon all you need look at is the 70's, when a similar overwhelming scientific agreement was concerned about the earth cooling, possibly entering a new ice age. Time magazine ran a cover in 1974 about the coming new ice age. You could say, "Oh, but we have better models, better data, etc today." The same things were said in the 70's.
And note the shift now from "global warming", to "global climate change". How convenient. For the last decade, the global temperature has flattened out and is no longer rising, but curiously, if the scientists are so fair and balanced they don't want to talk about that. So, now we have the segue to "global climate change", where instead of focusing on what the whole basis was, instead, anytime there is a hurricane, tornado, or drought somewhere, it's implied it's due to CO2.
Sure, and there aren't similarly a whole boat load of industries and interests that benefit from raising the alarm on global warming? How much money did just Solyndra get and what did it produce? How much money has Al Gore made off of GW? There are huge, powerful and politically connected forces benefitting from global warming.
Fossil fuel companies
And it gives exactly the same motive to "cook the books" to those claiming global warming requires drastic govt action.
He's obviously an idiot. Any climate scientists will tell you that there are cycles in climatic activity longer than 30 years. We had the dust bowl of the 30's for example, and nothing like it until now,
80 years later. Similarly, we had devastating hurricanes in the 30's, and 40's, up the Atlantic coast an then a long period of reduced activity.
Actually the beef they have is quite fair. The prices traditional users pay for energy, be it from coal, nuke, gas or hydro pays not only for the energy, but also for the infrastructure. I get an electric bill of $150, it's about half for distribution, half for the energy. If I put up solar panels, now my bill winds up at zero or close to zero. Yet, I'm still connected to the grid and still using it for energy at night. Why should I get a free ride on the cost of the grid, while the other poor saps get charged for it?
It saddens me to see otherwise intelligent individuals fail to
Sure, try reading an annual report for Intel, Boeing, Exxon, etc and you'll see that the typical company is paying a lot in taxes. And sure, there are a few that avoid paying a good portion of their taxes, but a lot of that is due to some extraordinary event for a year and not continual. One of the companies most frequently pointed to as doing everything it can to avoid paying taxes is GE. Obama made Immelt his job czar, so I guess we know where Obama stands.
The game the libs like to play is to have one of the highest corp tax rates in the world. Then you have all kinds of exemptions, loopholes, etc that reduce the effective rate. Republicans have argued for decades for a lowered corp rate together with getting rid of most of the loopholes, ie making it a simpler, fairer tax system. The Democrats don't want it. Have you heard Obama advocate for that? Hell no, all the libs want to do is keep the 35% rate and close the loopholes. That's why you have $2tril sitting offshore, while black unemmployment is in the double digits and GDP grew by .1% last quarter. Note the decimal point. Great recovery, but heh, Obama has only had 5 years....
BS. It's an attempt at a level playing field. If you use the grid, why should you not pay for it? If you don't want to pay for the grid like I do, then go off it altogether.
Guess they
I already showed you what the real issue is. It's not the cost of net-metering. It's that those with solar or wind power wind up still using the grid to receive power when they need it and aren't paying to support the grid.
And who do you think ultimately pays for the grid anyway? Hint, it's not the Koch brothers, it's consumers of electricity, like me.
Sorry. I just have to point out that the dust-bowl was partly man-made. Remember? Mechanized farming and grass lands? Fortunately, people back then realized they could do something about it.
Insecticide killing honey bees? DDN Correspondent Posted on 10 May, 2014 at 10:34:AM Honey bees are dying en masse due to exposure to a certain class of insecticide, claims a recent study.
The phenomenon of en masse death of honey bees is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and it is responsible for mass decline of the population o the bee in the last five-six years, claimed the study.
The report was published today in the Bulletin of Insectology and it recreated a 2012 study which first linked the bee-killing disease with neonicotinoids. The same team of researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health who was involved in the 2012 study did this study too.
According to lead author Chensheng (Alex) Lu, "We demonstrated again in this study that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering CCD in honey bee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter."
At least 18 bee colonies in three different locations in central Massachusetts were examined by the researchers. For the study, the researchers split each colony into three groups - one treated with a neonicotinoid called imidacloprid, one with a neonicotinoid called clothianidin, and one left in pristine condition to serve as a control group.
The study put to rest the speculation that honey bees were dying due to parasites.
"When CCD first emerged in honeybee colonies in the mid 2000s, N. ceranae was put forward as a possible cause. Subsequent research in Europe, however, has suggested N. ceranae was widespread in many areas before CCD and is not associated with the phenomenon. Although other studies have suggested that pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, cause bees to become more susceptible to mites or other parasites that then kill off the bees, today's study found that bees in the CCD hives had the same levels of parasite infestation as the control colonies," said a researcher.
And of course just like last week, you're still the village idiot. No one has denied that neonicotinoids are on the list of possible causes. What Sherlock has posted is one more study that suggests there may be a link. One more study, that has just been released, does not make a conclusion. If you look at ALL the research, the consensus of most of the researchers as of now is that they still don't know what causes it. There have been other studies that showed no correlation with neonicotinoids. Until that study is thoroughly reviewd, digested, replicated, etc, it doesn't mean a whole lot. We don't even know if the level of exposure to the chemical was realistic and consistent with what bees actually would receive. Among obvious problems are here in urban NJ, there isn't much farming and farming is where that class of pesticides is almost exclusively used. It's not used on lawn/garden/turf products. Bees used to be abundant here, but starting several years ago, I haven't seen a single one. Not a reduction, but it's gone down to not a single one. At the same time, in some areas treated with that pesticide, you don;t have CCD. Also there have been prior episodes of sudden, mysterious bee declines going back hundreds of years.
The bottom line is that as of now no one knows what causes it, that is the conclusion of the overwhelming majority of researchers.
Funny thing happened. After I told you all that I hadn't seen a single honey bee here in NJ for several years now, guess what? They're back. I f irst noticed one buzzing around my door screen. Then outside, a holly tree had probably a dozen buzzing around. AT least that's some good news.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.