[pasta]

"the total mass of local flying insects had fallen by 80 percent in three decades"

Ok, but what if it is now back at the 'norm' and there were just too many insects all those times?

Do we know what the norm is?

I must agree that the quick loss of so many insects does not sound normal. But we also know that insects can swarm very quickly and become a pest in good conditions.

With climate change we have a lot of data from even thousands of years ago, so we have some feeling about the 'norm'.

Does a norm for the total mass of flying insects exist?

[empath75]

Over what time scale? Over the history of the planet, the norm is probably close to zero as they only evolved 400 million years ago.

I don't think we particularly care about that, though. What we care about is what the death of insects means in terms of the ability of plants to continue to propagate since we like need to eat them to survive.

[c0nfused]

I agree, what we should do is apply even greater amounts of pesticides to certain countries while letting others try to fight ecological collapse. then in a hundred years we can see who is right and who is dead.

[pasta]

I don't like your comment.

I'm not saying we should not act. I'm asking if we know what we are up against.

[c0nfused]

You were not intended to like it.

The idea that we need more data is lazy, shortsighted, and used as a primary argument to justify doing nothing.

The neighbor's house is on fire, Sparks are falling on your roof because of a breeze and you are holding of fighting the fire because the wind might change and we might be able to do nothing except high five each other about how smart we were.

In life, you never know enough to make the perfect decision. You have act on the existing data, not wait until the choice you should have made becomes clear.