[ExI] Bees and chemicals

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 28 Dec 2012, spike wrote:

> Thanks Tomasz, I have been looking at it, as it is quite the buzz over in
> the bee groups.  I have personally observed more dying bees this year than
> any previous year, although I am not sure if it is necessarily from there
> being more bees.  It might be that I was outdoors more and I am getting
> better at spotting them.  What I fear is that the neonicotinoids are somehow
> accumulating in the environment, since they don't break down like nicotine
> does.

Somewhere in the pages I posted later to this thread there were comments 
buried about the C-thing staying in soil for up to three years, available 
to be ingested by plants' roots even if one stops using this stuff.

It is interesting that in countries which prohibited it, research points 
to C* as a sole cause of bee problem, while in countries still using it, 
research says there are many possible causes. Also, an APENET project by 
Italian Ministry of Agriculture found out that even small doses are toxic 
for insects, which makes improvements to mechanical spreading devices kind 
of pointless (seems like it's impossible to improve them so they don't 
waste the substance above toxic levels).

So... C* stays in soil, maybe accumulates there over time. As the rain 
washes it eventually, it goes to rivers and the sea. Wiki says 
invertebrates are touched hard by it. As they go to the historic books, so 
will fish and birds. Not good.

Of course I may be very wrong - after all I am just a somewhat read 
dilettante. And it will require years, decades, maybe more than a century, 
before such effect shows up. But once it shows up, I'm afraid we are 
cooked. BTW, there are few other nasty things dumped to the seas during 
last 50-70 years, that might just now start to break out of their 
containers. For example, between 1945 and 1948 about 40-70 thousand tons 
of chemical ammo was dumped to Baltic Sea. This is one example but I am 
sure I could find much more if I wanted to waste my time in such manner. 
It does not require a genius to imagine that it will all corrode or react 
or break sooner or later. So who were the decision makers?

True, oceans are huge, but still finite. I am much more afraid of things 
my species does to the oceans than few other things. Basically, it seems 
to me we are slowly changing oceans into huge chemical reactor. Very very 
slowly, indeed, but who studies the longterm effects of this?

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **