I wouldn't jump into blaming the climate. We've shifted many parts of a very complex system in the last 50+ years.

I'd put monoculture and pesticides higher on my list of suspects.

As an anecdotal data point, I'm trying to establish a robust, poly-culture, mostly chemical-free agricultural system on my hobby farm. We do seem to get more flying insects on my place than our neighbors, all of whom have grass lawns. Critters of all kinds, in fact - lots of frogs and toads as well, and box turtles. Obviously I haven't done a scientific study, but we see butterflies, lighting bugs, and so on; not as many as I saw growing up but they are there in some numbers.

If you look around suburbia, there really isn't much ecological space for anything to grow unless it can survive on grass. Even in a lot of rural areas, with the advent of heavy-chemical farming and bigger and bigger monocultures, we're taking a lot of living space away from mother nature.

I think it's up to city planners to include more green belts. Better for the environment, better for water drainage, better for humans, it's really win win win.

City planners would if they could, but they're not autocrats. They know that green space (and mixed zoning and high density and...) is a good thing, but they are captive to the whims of politicians and poorly-informed citizens. And property developers have more than enough money to buy policy and sway public opinion.

A close relative is a city planner, a job he went into as an idealist. He saw the economic, social, and ecological suffering created by terrible urban design, and he wanted to make a better world. After 30+ years, though, he's jaded and cynical.

He's seen historically active flood and landslide and earthquake areas quietly and repeatedly re-zoned for residential development. He's seethed at 40 years of opposition to even modest expansions of mass transit. Suburban sprawl, ghettoization of the poor, retail-only developments... At this point, although he still does his best to advance healthy policy, he's resigned to the fact that the developers always win in the end.

So please don't direct your ire at city planners. In many places, they're the only resistance to the boundless greed of property developers. As in all things, it's important to follow the money. The only people getting rich off the status quo are banks and developers.

I'm honestly sorry about the situation you talk about.

It must be frustrating..

People work hard but it's difficult to make things genuinely better.

Thanks for enlightening me.

One of our problems is the idea that a single cause is responsible for these things. It is not just pesticides or CO2 or some other single change. It is the combination of those changes (even the small ones) that is driving this huge environmental problem. The only way to get out of this is starting to think of the environment is a complex system that needs to be preserved, not trying to find a single culprit that we can manipulate.

Less finger-pointing, more parameter-tweaking!

Fireflies are interesting - as a New England kid in the 80s, I used to read about them in all sorts of childrens' books, but I was really bummed because I never saw one. I think I saw one firefly in my whole childhood. I just went back to Long Island this summer, and they were all over. It'd get to be twilight and hundreds of them would just be dancing through the air. I got to show my wife the childhood scene that I'd only imagined.

Maybe all the fireflies moved from Michigan to New York. I think I'd read somewhere that firefly populations tend to be very cyclical anyway though.

Attributing this to climate change in it's political context is as ignorant of actual science as what you claim to be detesting.

Some of the people you go out of your way to slander as both trump supporters and climate change deniers exist as they do because of people like you, who immediately take any adverse global trend, blame it on climate change with what amounts to shakey, correlative evidence, and then shame anyone who dares glance over with a skeptical eye.

We are dumping all kinds of chemicals into the environment - pesticides, plasticizers, and a host of bio-active compounds which we already know may be directly responsible for the decline of certain individual species[1].

Climate change is a serious threat. But your post is an example of how climate change has become a highly politicized meme.

Next thing you know, it becomes a cultural taboo to be skeptical about climate change, and suddenly we're only asking the questions we are allowed to ask, looking for the data we are allowed to look for, sweeping inconsistencies under the rug, and just generally practicing sloppy science.

The scientific method necessitates skepticism. I welcome sources to the contrary, but modern western climate science is void of any published criticism, or at least it was when I had access to journals some 5 years ago. Hell, I couldnt find ONE paper discussing ANY benefit on any place on earth from a warmer climate-which is absurd, because northern permafrost could thaw and create arable land, for example.

Climate science has been sickened by politics and political correctness. You should be very wary.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

> I couldnt find ONE paper discussing ANY benefit on any place on earth from a warmer climate-which is absurd, because northern permafrost could thaw and create arable land, for example.

Bullshit.

Here's what I found within two minutes, from the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, i. e. the currently valid "bible" of climate change:

Studies since the AR4 have confirmed that high-latitude locations will, in general, become more suitable for crops (Iqbal et al., 2009). Trnka et al. (2011), for example, examined projections of eleven agro-climatic indices across Europe, and found that declines in frost occurrence will lead to longer growing seasons[..]

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/WGIIAR5-Ch...

Start of Section 7.3.4. on page 504.

Saying that science is biased because it fails to see the benefit of global warming is like saying it's biased because it doesn't discuss the benefit of a worldwide plague.

Sure, there'd be benefits: fewer lines at amusement parks, all the food you can eat, etc. But that's so far from a net "good" that only a psychopath or moron would publish a paper with that argument.

How would you even know of there has been so little research on the subject? How can you claim to have an unbiased answer when you only research one side of a topic?

I legitimately want to ask you how you can be so sure that our doomsday scenarios are accurate, when we still have a fledgling understanding of a massive chaotic system like climate, and when almost all research has been purposefully negative?

If you look hard enough, you'll find anything. That's why skepticism is necessary. You'll at least agree that anything remotely pro climate change is taboo, I hope, and there is no room for taboo in science, in my opinion.

Edit: hell, how long have we known about deep ocean currents? Stratification of the subsea into various isoclines and thermoclines? Calthrates? People seem to underestimate how complex climate is, and how much we've yet to discover.

> How would you even know of there has been so little research on the subject? How can you claim to have an unbiased answer when you only research one side of a topic?

Like a plague, the millions or billions of human deaths is all the research we need. No benefit is going to counterbalance that.

Just to take one example (of many) of deadly things that are already happening that you yourself mentioned: permafrost melting.

"More arable land" also means "the release of incredibly dangerous, dormant pathogens like anthrax". Kinda makes the "arable land" moot.

https://www.vox.com/2017/9/6/16062174/permafrost-melting

So you would say we are at perfect temperature now, or should we pursue strategies to cool the globe toward a cooler temperature?

You seem to be under the misapprehension that climate change is simply fiddling with the thermostat. The decidedly ill-chosen name of "Global Warming" might certainly lead in that direction.

But here's the thing - the weather systems on the planet are rather complex systems that are in a somewhat stable equilibrium. Changing temperature will affect that equilibrium, which will mean rather impressive upheaval. Both a warming and a cooling will have catastrophic effects for humanity. What we should pursue are strategies that prevent shifting too far from that fragile balance. No matter which direction.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that we are at a stable equilibrium. The temperature and weather systems of the planet have continually been changing since forever. Do you consider the last ice age part of the somewhat stable equilibrium you refer to? It is impossible to hold the current state, it will inevitably change, it is just a matter of how fast, how well we can deal with it.

Nice attempt to move the goal posts.

Read the text. Somewhat stable. I'm well aware it moves, but it's moving much more rapidly than anything we've experienced, and at least a large part of that is without any doubt anthropogenic.

So how about you stop trying to parse words, and engage with the issue?

It'd be good for other species, however ;) Except for those that we farm, anyway.

So you're angry that perhaps some of the people that are trying to affect change for a cleaner planet are doing so under misinformation? You seem to be the one politicizing things. I think most of us just want to support ideas, technology, and people that make sense. Cleaner more sustainable energy just makes sense regardless of what you think about bugs and weather.

I hate to admit it but whatever the solution to this problem will be, Trump supporters will almost certainly fight against it.

Yes, it has nothing to do with anything based in reason or fact it's just heaps and heaps of angry stupid spewed in an attempt to defend their holy tangerine.

edit: words.