Giant metasurvey reveals 'catastrophic' butterfly losses in US

An alarmingly steep decline in populations across butterfly species has occurred over the past few decades in the United States and shows no sign of reversing, with some species losing more than 40% of their numbers, according to research conducted at Michigan State University recently published in Science. 

Some eyebrow-raising findings include 107 species that lost half or more of their populations, and while not every species saw declines, 13 times the number of species did. Monarchs, once thought to be relatively protected due in part to a high level of public interest, have been hit hard as well; some other species in the MSU study lost more than 90% of their populations! 

The culripts are hardly surprising: climate change, habitat loss, overuse of insecticides and inappropriate agricultural land use patterns. What is surprising is that no one had performed such a large scale study of butterfly populations in the US before now, and that as a consequence little was known about the severity of their plight beyond (now vindicated) informal observations of their decline over the past 20-odd years. 

We need public officials to develop a strategy for mitigating these losses and for everyone to become aware of the enormous scope of life that is at serious risk of irreversible deterioration if business as usual includes continued ignorance or lack of concern with such effects. As one scientist interviewed put it, "The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates." The price cannot be calculated.

While we're at it, I think we all owe a big thank you to Seth Borenstein at the AP for his outstanding coverage of climate and Earth science news over the past couple of years, including bringing news of this kind to a wider audience.   

What's in a word?

Quite a lot more than many people may realize, as it turns out. Alex Nguyen says the quiet part out loud in his new piece for Mother Jones. 

History: suddenly it's not just for history buffs anymore. 

And who can not chuckle at the global elite decrying its own runaway success... as a reason for supporting them? 

Wait, I'm a bit confused... I also suspect that that might be the point.

"...The advancement of Agriculture, Commerce and Manufactures by all proper means, will not I trust need recommendation. But I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home; and of facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our Country by a due attention to the Post-Office and Post-Roads.

Nor am I less persuaded, that you will agree with me in opinion, that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of Government receive their impression so immediately from the sense of the Community as in ours it is proportionably essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: By convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration, that every valuable end of Government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people: and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the Laws..." 

  - President George Washington, the first State of the Union address, January 8, 1790

 

On the contrary, it would seem today that anything other than the dubious benefits of congenital myopia would require a very stern recommendation indeed.

Our country may at least have been great in one crucial respect: for a time, until quite recently, our leaders aspired, at least publicly, to do more than simply defraud, enslave, or murder the population; a pretty good run, some would say, by historical standards. 

It is precisely the loss of distinction between the "necessary exercise of lawful authority" and genuine oppression that has led to the present crisis of leadership. At the same time many people in our country and around the world seem to have endured a similar loss of fine-grain distinction between genuine liberty and the inevitable "licentiousness" that results when duty to society and the bonds of human affection become severely distorted by the relentless demands of the profit-seeking motive.        

Sic semper tyrannis / king for a day

Better start sharpening your guillotines, kids! 

Some grisly, yet fascinating trivia about the history of the guillotine from the Swiss National Museum can be found here.

Nowadays most Americans are opposed to capital punishment. So why are we executing more people  after the practice had been on a steady decline?

"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot