Monarch Butterflies reign coming to an end.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
By poisoning our environment. Mercury, radiation, gmo's reliance on technology.

We are still 7 billion and live very long lives, so how is all this affecting us? Where is that radiation and Mercury coming from? As for GMO, I don't see it vastly reducing the population and the vast majority of it is an improvement over the original. Take Golden rice, it is GMO rice that also produces Beta-carotene just like carrots. A great way to bring vitamin A to parts of the world where it is lacking.

One emp from the sun and half of that 7 billion will starve in a few months.

Is an EMP man made? BTW, I guess you do not travel much but there are billions of people on this planet whose life would hardly notice a civilization shattering EMP.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
a reply to: CB328

Nope.
We are killing our selves off.
And the planet will go along millions of years after we are gone just like the dinosaurs, and nobody will miss us.

We are at 7 billion and live into the 80s so just how are we killing ourselves off?

By poisoning our environment. Mercury, radiation, gmo's reliance on technology. One emp from the sun and half of that 7 billion will starve in a few months.

Not to mention we're consuming everything in site. For instance, 50% of the worlds forests have been taken down. 40% in the last 50 years alone. People who have not bothered to learn about it believe that we can live without habitat. Good luck with that.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Did you not read reliance on technology? When the toys we depend on dont work people die.
When you climb a mountain and don't take the proper equipment to survive, it's your fault that you died. Not the cold climate that is not man made. We are not prepared for what the future may offer mainly because of reliance on technology.
And I did say half of the 7 billion, not all.

You can find all kinds of opinions about gmo's and their dangers, you can decide if they are valid.
Mercury is in our fish and we are supposed to limit its consumption. Why? Because it's dangerous.

Just because we are not dying off in mass yet does not mean we are not slowly creeping toward the cliff.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71

Did you not read reliance on technology? When the toys we depend on dont work people die.
When you climb a mountain and don't take the proper equipment to survive, it's your fault that you died. Not the cold climate that is not man made. We are not prepared for what the future may offer mainly because of reliance on technology.
And I did say half of the 7 billion, not all.

No I did read, and I'm saying is a very large part of our population would continue on. So what if we lost 3.5 billion, we would still be the most populated large animal on earth. The interesting part is the world would most likely resemble what we were 300 years ago within a very short time period, but we would advance much quicker back to what we have today.

You can find all kinds of opinions about gmo's and their dangers, you can decide if they are valid.
Mercury is in our fish and we are supposed to limit its consumption. Why? Because it's dangerous.

I agree long aged fish can build up mercury. Do you eat Sword Fish, Grouper, Shark more than a few times a week? GMO is an interesting topic, but there really isn't anything out there that supports claims like it damages us at the subatomic levels and other such claims.

Just because we are not dying off in mass yet does not mean we are not slowly creeping towards the cliff.

But that cliff keeps moving away. Back before the invention of the car the horse was pushing us towards that cliff, and now it is the car etc. Give it another decade and the combustion car just might become obsolete as the electric car takes its place. Think of where we will be in 200 years with technology/energy?

Or Yellowstone may blow tomorrow or in the next 70,000 year, or a large stone hits the earth tomorrow or the next 70,000 years or a EMP hits the earth tomorrow or in the next 70,000 years.

I do agree we are in a delicate stage that if a global event hit we might take 100s of years to recover, where in 100 years the same event might go by with us unfazed.

a reply to: Xtrozero


You may be right, we might be heading for a golden age in the history of mankind. Mankind also has came pretty close to nuking itself into extinction in the last fifty years. Things such as these butterflies dying off should be a wake up call that our actions have consequences. We should be paying attention to how the lower more easily affected life forms are impacted.

We are still 7 billion and live very long lives, so how is all this affecting us?

Millions of people stave and die of diseases every year around the world, our own country is starting to come apart because of the strain of too many people competing for the same resources causing poverty and strife. Have you noticed how much food, health care and home prices have increase in the last few years? It's only a matter of time until most people are dirt poor.

Back to Monarch butterflies and milkweeds.

We have a lot of common milkweed along with a few other types I've identified in the area, but the common one seems to be their plant of choice. There is a little that I see occasionally in fields, but for the most part they seem to like growing along the roadsides. This is part of the problem in my area, because they get wiped out all the time by passing cars. Just look at the radiator grills on cars during the summer. I always see a few stuck to people's cars or lying dead in the streets. There is a scoop you can put on the hood that prevents this, but I doubt anyone cares enough to buy one and put it on, at least I never saw one yet.

Grew up with Monarchs, too. Nurtured Milkweeds in the back yard for them... losing them so certain people can keep making more money, or not spend money on cleaner/smarter ways of life/industry makes me angry... and really sad.

The sad fact is we are not in agreement to spend the bucks so that nature can be accommodated along with our admittedly convenient lifestyle. It does NOT have to be either/or... we can have both with some planning and agreement.

We'll all be arguing about whether an environmental crisis is even occurring when the first people start dying from a now toxic environment.

It may well be that if we cannot come to some agreed upon course of action... then we will self destruct and take most higher order life with us. At best, we'll lose all the critters that make this planet so nifty.

Here is some happy news for the Monarch lovers including myself and the wife.
www.lfpress.com...

Milkweed “is very, very important to monarchs. Their caterpillars eat only milkweed,” says Ann White of London, who is the butterfly count co-ordinator for Nature London. But the plant has been vanishing from farm fields, field fringes and pastures, assisted by a provincial weed law that encourages herbicide treatment to prevent its spread. White and other vocal lepidopterists have been lobbying the Ontario Agriculture Ministry for the changes. Ministry spokesperson Mark Cripps said the proposed move is also an effort to improve the Ontario's biodiversity. Farmers so far haven't objected, although the province is still receiving public comments to its environmental registry until April 14.

It's just Ontario but heck it's a start......
S&F for a much needed thread on the Monarch issue.

Regards, Iwinder

a reply to: phoenix9884

A big part of the issue (besides milkweed) is eucalytpus. The roost in it during the winter months down south, and GMO eucalyptus has been growing around the world since the 90s.

Field trials with GM eucalyptus
EU
Total number of proposals 4
Countries England 2, Spain 1, Portugal 1
Period 1993-1998
Trait Marker gene
World wide
USA 73 FIELDS
Period 2002-2010
Additional countries Japan, South Africa

source: www.gmo-compass.org...

GMO is great, huh? Well, except for it's impact on human and animal reproduction, and destruction of nectar gathering insects.

Neonicotinoid pesticides are also a huge problem. In France they had a massive bee and pollinator die off... until they banned Neonicotinoid pesticides... after which, populations came back.

The USDA and FDA know these chemicals are killing pollinators... but, standing up to Big Agriculture is career suicide, so mums the word!



a reply to: Xtrozero

Yup it's sad

Graph

They have been low before and recovered, but are variables in play now that make it so that can't ?

This is just like the Bumble Bee, I used to see them them every year, I haven't seen even one for 5 years now.
Just wasps and hornets everywhere. And the odd plain honey bee.

a reply to: Hoosierdaddy71

Exactly, in fact if I remember correctly something like 97% of species that ever lived are now extinct.

And life has a couple times on Earth been reduced to only minimal proportions - by meteor impacts.

Don't get me wrong, I want to save the Polar bears, the Whales and the butterflies as much as the next man - but we don't really understand how life in the universe works, what's the norm.

The best guess I think is all life is in constant struggle for survival, so lets just count ourselves lucky we made it this far eh?

7 billion people is manageable considering the size of habitable sites on the earth. 7 billion people condensed to huge cities while living out of balance with their local ecosystem is the real problem. It's not how many people are living, it's how those 7 billion people live.

Why is the prospect of population control (especially considering all the insidious/invasive ways of doing it) a more frequently arrived at conclusion/opinion than taking a hard look at how we interact with our environment? ie how unsustainable and irresponsible (yet optimistically malleable) our culture is. Is it because the people who will cry for population control legislation will get to go on living, for the moment, the way we do while those who will be affected by these laws are downstream somewhere?

It's not like we have to go back to hunter/gatherers or labor to exhaustion to be less of a blight on this earth. It's not like there aren't already examples and movements of people living sustainably, mostly self-sufficient, and most importantly for us overstimulated westerners, comfortably. Why don't we place our focus on the designs and sciences that allow us to eliminate the word "waste" from our vocabulary instead of crying for some draconian population control?

a reply to: phoenix9884

....First the bees, now the butterflies. It's a shame what we're doing to this planet.

You forgot the human male. MEN: You are being chemically castrated.

F&S&

a reply to: Soapusmaximus
I think the norn is for those things to happen naturaly..what is going on now is not natural. We unfortunatly are the problem, if we lived as hunter gatherers im sure things could be in balance..but no we rape and pillage/destroy anything of value to nature. We may count ourselves lucky at the cost of the rest of the living things on this planet..not sure if luck is the right word.
Very sad state of affairs..foreboding as well.

Maybe it's God's way of letting mind control monarchs know that their time's at an end? Kind of like when that earthquake cracked the tip of the washington monument. A symbolic msg to evil powers that be.

originally posted by: CraftBuilder
a reply to: phoenix9884
Be cautious when using common names for plants. Make sure that the species of milkweed you are intending to plant is actually used by monarchs. There is a comprehensive list of plants used by both the larvae and the adult on Wikipedia here.

Also, to avoid anthropogenicly contributing to the Holocene extinction further, make sure that the species you are intending on planting are not invasive in your area or responsible for poisoning native fauna. I know, industry has been lying to you and nature is actually very complex. It sucks.

That was just about the best comment I've read on ATS in along while. Literal LOL, and some damn good sense too.

Go Monarchs!

I haven't finished reading all the comments yet, but there's some great stuff being said.

When I saw the title of the thread, bizarrely, my first thought was that the timing of this information release is significant for other reasons. Yes, here in the UK I have noticed a massive decline in species I used to see commonly as a child twenty years ago. However, with my knowledge of the world as it is now, I instantly defaulted to a tinfoil hat moment of illusory actions on the part of the negatively oriented PTB (I've started to realise they're not all bad).

Monarch = mind programmed slave (allegedly many of our politicians are to some degree 'infected' with covert manipulation)

Monarch = sarcastic derogatory term for programmed slave. To have them 'ended' means we could be very well poised on that cliff edge that many have referred to.

Has anyone ever seen that documentary about how the Chinese actually need to use humans - not bees - to take little packets of (expensive) pollen, and literally use a cotton bud to pollinate the fruit trees, bit by excruciatingly labour-intensive & slow bit, because bees simply cannot survive in the heavily contaminated (pesticide, heavy metals etc) environment where the trees are needed. Back to the tinfoil hat moment, it could be that the folks behind the home of terminator seeds (Monsanto) are letting their folks know that it's time to move on a stage. A stage. Hmm.

Lots to think about. I do believe that technology, wisely used, will help us transition to becoming a Type-1 civilisation. However, I am concerned that we won't get that far - at least not in our current numbers - because some people, the ones behind much of the covert control network, are quite keen to foist the apocalypse upon us, as cover for genocide.

Sometimes I wonder whether they understand that God does have an understanding of irony, and any attempt to initiate a chain of events that takes a hideous toll on Mankind will be repaid in kind? I feel that the Book of Revelation is a holographic text, and in some ways a test - will the bad guys try to pull off a stunt, hiding it as "God's will"..? To depopulate and centralise/consolidate their power base?

Then of course, we have the anecdotally well-understood concept of "The butterfly effect".. Again, the use of symbology might lead us to consider that they are playing with words, in a lukewarm battle of nerves; attempting to warn off the opposition, implying they have no chance of stopping the train of events when it is unleashed.

Anyone remember that show "The Event"..? The director of intelligence had a gold-framed, original US flag in his office, with the circle of stars. The traitorous vice-president who seeks to usurp control of the government in order to bend over for the enemy, is never seen without his modern-day US flag pin badge on his lapels.

Interesting times. Better take off this tinfoil hat, it's getting a bit itchy.

a reply to: phoenix9884

I used to see monarch larvae all the time; they are very pretty. Now I don't see the larvae or the flutter byes anymore.

I don't know what made them disappear, all I know is that the rhino beetles have moved in and they are a surly bunch of critters; I see males stuck on their back all the time so I flip them upright and all I get in return is an angry hiss-ungrateful SOB's.