Honey bees not in danger -- never were? Capitalism saved the day?

[Rod1]

They are measurable. And if it's linked to some environmental ill then we can solve it.

Global warming is like terrorism. It's some big enemy that can't really be seen, it's a war that can go on forever.

Capitalism will solve the issue anyway. Elon musk is busy working on solar panels that could power the entire U.S. without even taking up any land. They would just sit on buildings. Then he's got his electric cars. That's going to make actual changes to the environment. Direct, measurable, observable, effective. And he doesn't even need to rob the people of the world to do it. Then you have people making tiny homes, eco friendly homes, and with solar panels people can go totally off grid. Of course the government will probably put a stop to people living cleanly once it actually empowers them.

We can measure global warming, we dont know its long-term effects but we know its happening and that its linked to the rise in greenhouse effect gases.

A lot of the other things you mentioned also have clear measurable effects. Beef requires like 10,000 liters of water per kg produced, thats a measurable effect, and we know that fresh water is a finite resource. It also uses land and crops use pesticides.

Virtually everything you mention have measurable detrimental effects that you can measure

As to global warming effects, we dont know what would happen, it could be catastrophic or maybe not, but certainly paints a really bad picture in the case it could lead to really nasty things.

 

[Liquid Smoke]

What about African honey bees that came here to take jobs from American honey bees? The media called them "killer bees", which is blatantly racist.

 

[Bald1]

I think you'll find the people around Gir don't have any significant reverence for Lions, and I understand where you're going with the comparison between altruism and greed, but here's the problem with the idea that greed will work better: There is ALWAYS a better way to make money (in the short term, which is of course all that matters in our world economy or even at a local level) than conservation. Farming Tuna to extinction and hunting down every last one before moving on to a different fish would be the absolute 100% preferred alternative if left to groups motivated solely by profit.

The Carrier pigeon could have been saved as a species, but instead the frenzy became killing every last possible bird for sale, because after the bird population dissappeared (and it was going to, because if your group didn't finish them off for market the group next to you was going to do it an end up with more immediate profit) it's not like the market for meat in any way dissappeared, it just changed, and the ones who had the most money going into the new market were in the best position to harvest the next resource.

The areas on earth with the absolute best recovery of bio-diversity are the ones humans simply walk away from as completely as possible. Whether it's the stretch of no-mans-land between North and South Korea (which South Korea is slowly trying to turn into new developement land) which is the only place where several species of previously iconic Korean birds still exist, or the evacuated area of Chernobyl or former nuclear testing sites.

There's not much here I can disagree with, but none of this refutes my point that in many cases turning wildlife into a commodity has helped the population grow.

As I was reading your post Chernobyl came to mind, and I was going to bring it up, only to be trumped by your last line. Dammit.

 

[Zankou]

What about African honey bees that came here to take jobs from American honey bees? The media called them "killer bees", which is blatantly racist.

Those immigrant bees work for next to nothing. Taking away high paying union bee jobs.

 

[Ayin]

You have confused the passenger pigeon w/ the carrier pigeon, a common mistake.

Apologies, and thanks for the correction, I'll fix it in my original post.

 

[ralphc1]

Successful bee colonies split themselves as queens are born. The queens are larger and the hives are built so the large queens can't get out. When the hives are examined and a new queen is found with a group of workers, it is moved to another hive and some of the workers join her in that hive. The workers are free to move from hive to hive but they only go with their own queen.

The problem the beekeepers have been seeing is the workers go out to forage and don't return to the hive. It's like they get lost. Only the queen and a few workers would be left without enough nectar being collected to produce more workers. It could be a genetic problem due to lack of diversity.