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I enjoy reading the environmental magazines, especially for nuggets of sciency-goodness like this:

Bees can’t find flowers because of your car

As a species, we are not doing right by bees. They work so, so hard to pollinate the plants that form the basis for human existence, and, at every junction, we try to thwart them. A new study, for instance, has found that diesel fumes from cars essentially eliminate bees’ ability to smell flowers.

The researchers found, specifically, that the nitrogen oxides in diesel fumes mingle and react with flowers’ smell chemicals, changing them into other chemicals that are meaningless to bees.

Let’s not even talk about the fact that the scientists had to create some sort of weird bee interrogation chamber to figure this out. Point is, if a bee ever stings you, just remember: you probably deserve it.

Never mind the mindset of thugs like this as highlighted in bold – in this case her sort of “we’re destroying GAIA so any environmental catastrophe that befalls you is payback for bespoiling her” is mild compared to the stuff the “big boys” regulalrly flout. You’d think that the author, being the producers of such sciency-good sustainability news, would tell us whether or not this actually is a problem, or better yet might possibly refer her readers to something like this:

Nitro Pollution

 

You can see the EPA’s Air Quality Data here.  You’d be “stung” by the facts you observe there. Note these are not declines like we see in government spending. In other words, these improvements in air quality are not reductions in the rates of growth of concentrations. No, these are reductions in pollution concentrations even as miles driven increase, electricity generation increases, GDP increases and population has increased considerably over this time period. So, perhaps we deserve to be stung by bees, but maybe just little love stings.

Sciency goodness.

3 Responses to “Bees Can’t Find Flowers Because of Your Car”

  1. Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

  2. Harry says:

    Great graph.

    Do you city boys know where NO2 is the biggest problem, at this time of year? Bet this stumps the Sierra Club lawyers, when they fly back to DC to end coal.

    NO2 builds up inside silos, when the stupid farmers are filling silo this time of year, to make corn silage, which will ferment and which will make a delicious meal for your cows. Get up in the middle of the silo while this process is continuing, without having blown three big loads into the silo, and you will be a dead farmer.

    Would that the solons who wish to rule us had, in their so-called liberal education, had bothered to take and pass both physics and chemistry.

  3. Harry says:

    In my haste I complimented WC for that graph, which was not of his creation, but he did comment on it. My apologies.

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