Suicide By Pesticide

Resilient Life Public Resilient Life
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Thank you for the reference Chris.  You will notice that all of the species referenced in the article are molecular gases; 

Examples of applications
A number of relevant atmospheric species can be measured from space using the DOAS method. They include pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), formaldehyde (CHCHO), carbon monoxide(CO), methane (CH4) and several other
trace gases (see Figure 4). For the lower atmosphere (the troposphere), determination of nitrogen dioxide amounts is the most mature application.
I don't think this method would be appropriate to identify absorbances due to particles.  The paper talks about dealing the the scattering due to aerosols, but only in the sense that this is one (major) component of the overall (sun photon) signal attenuation that must be dealt with in deriving useful spectroscopic information.  Intuitively, you can imagine how the molecules of a gas species are uniformly distributed.. and they present themselves in a manner that allows for efficient, chemical bond level molecular absorbance.  In the case of particles, large numbers of the metal salt or metal oxide molecules are agglomerated.. and these particles will tend to act more as scattering centers than they do efficient absorbers.  The well dispersed gaseous contaminant will have much higher probability of interacting with a photon from the sun vs. the condensed, but equally rare (on a molecules/cu ft., or other volumetric) basis metallic compound in particle form.  At least that's how I see it.         
 
I remain convinced that you have to go old school here.. capture the particles by some means and analyze;
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2008/09/05/tracking-down-the-menace-in-mexico-city-smog/

Measuring airborne particles

Many different instruments were used to collect the aerosol samples at several sites: one, a Davis Rotating Drum, captured particles of three different sizes on Teflon tapes; another, a Time Resolved Aerosol Impactor, collected single particles. In situ measurements were made with an Aerosol Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS), which sucked particles into a vacuum chamber, determined their size, and analyzed the mass spectra of their constituent chemicals on the fly, by zapping each with a laser pulse.
This is why I imagined that one could devise a study based on some form of analysis on airplane air filters, especially if there is a separate filter used for the outside make-up air.  One would need to control for virgin filter makeup (background) then, miles flown with a new filter, etc.. but it could be done.   

 

    
 
 
 
 
 
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMtFYt7ko_o
 

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This article above is some of the best evidence of certain pesticides directly involved with the colony collapse disorder. It shows what I had suspected all along as nothing seems more devastating to the insect community as the very thing designed to kill them, or their cousins. By going on a different chemical dump tangent I had no intention of steering the discussion.  I felt it equally important to bring up a subject that becomes a great controversy and stirs emotion, I will admit. In fact I had no interest in the geoengineering phenom until I had my son. As a concerned parent and a person watching this world clearly in self destruct I began to investigate. The amount of evidence I see with my own eyes and have acquired through my own experiences is compelling to me. For instance the Climate Impact of Contrails discussion that Marc C brings is a very good example. I know as I almost became a commercial pilot and have commercial pilot friends that the flight patterns are something very intently planned and followed by the airlines, cargo, military and all aviation for a number a reasons, efficiency and fuel the biggest, barring the military. I have seen patterns that are clearly not flight patterns. That vexes me. The model is also compiled by NOAAH. Who in turn uses Ratheon (a defense contractor) to form the models. More vexing… The lack of funding and physical presence hummm. The pentagon alone was responsible (or irresponsible) for loosing track of at least 8 trillion dollars since 1993. The corruption runs so deep in every corner of our lives that I'm not sure throwing anything off the table is warranted. There is a vast list of conspiracy theories that have been deemed true after passing through the three steps outlined by Arthur Schopenhauer. I have time lapse of the pacific coast going from contrails to grey haze in a clear fashion. That, if it's truly just exhaust and contrails, has to be very bad. It's just to obvious to me. I hope more wake up to looking at things with an open mind. Looking at data from NOAAH and NASA, was the old trusting way of doing things. From my view it seems to be a bit short of the truth. Thank you guys for the intelligent discussion.  When I found this site it truly resonated with my changing thought process and above everything else I admire the intelligence and diversity it provides in all of its discussion.

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http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-05-26/honeybee-collapse-is-the-result-of-their-enslavement-in-industrial-monocultures

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Another place where massive amounts of herbicides are used are on forests. Somebody somewhere has decided you can squeak a few extra lazy dollars out of a clear cut if you spray it down liberally with herbicides so that the replanted trees can get a better, faster start.
Unsurprisingly, this is done on a massive scale with few effective safeguards:

Whistleblower videos reveal helicopter spraying workers with weed killers

May 22, 2015

Exposed atop the barren clearcut in Oregon's coastal mountains, he hid in the only place he could.

A helicopter circled overhead, spraying a fine mist of toxic weed killers. Darryl Ivy took refuge inside his pickup: Windows up, doors shut.

The scene was captured on camera, one of more than 200 videos Ivy recorded on his smartphone.

Again and again, herbicides rained down. The milky chemical mix stained Ivy's windshield white and turned his phlegm red.

Ivy, a truck driver, spent 17 days this spring on a spray crew in Douglas County, the heart of Oregon's timber country.

He got sprayed so often it became routine.

Don't worry about it, Ivy said the pilot told him.It won't hurt you.

In one video, a pilot sprays in conditions that are "way too windy," the other driver tells Ivy.

Ivy asks in another video about neighbors who complained. "Pansies," a driver says. Deer in the way? "They all get sprayed," a forester says.

Ivy is a tough guy, a 45-year-old gym rat with a barrel chest. He assumed he would get used to it.

"I knew I was getting sprayed every day," Ivy said. "But I thought I was resilient."

But after just a few days on the crew, he started coughing blood. It came in hacking fits, up from his chest and then down from his sinuses. He broke out in red welts that still dotted his arms and neck two weeks later.

Each year, helicopters spray weed killers on more than 165 square miles of Oregon timberland, an area larger than the city of Portland. They do it under the West Coast's weakest regulations.

The practices are governed by the Agriculture and Forestry departments. They oversee laws that give companies far more discretion to decide how and where to spray than in neighboring states.

Seriously, we are a very sick culture...

 

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Chris wrote:

Seriously, we are a very sick culture…

We are worse... everywhere we see depletion and destruction. A few examples: - Shark fins for soup (The rest of the shark is thrown). - Coral for jewelry - Whaling - Elephants for their ivory - Gazelle as decoration trophy - Ground rhino horns as an aphrodisiac - Boreal deforestation for making toilet paper. - and on, and on...

This happens everywhere. All cultures have similar behavior since very long time. The difference is that now the earth is overpopulated. We overshoot almost all the "little excesses" of the past. Adding that money is now king (It is no more a mean. it is the goal) the result is horrible.

Depressing…

 

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Paul Stammets thinks that we can do a lot better with Mycelia. 
http://reset.me/story/all-natural-mushroom-based-pesticide-could-revolutionize-agriculture/

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Arthur

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A couple of more anecdotal observations from the pucker brush.
Despite a historically wet spring here in the middle of North America, the mosquito numbers seem to be way down.  Any correlation to the bee numbers?

Also, I have noticed a very small ( about the size of a house fly ),  dark brown bee with very faint stripes, among the clover blossoms that I don't think I've ever seen before.  With active hives, the clover should be literally crawling with honey bees.  With my hives dead, I see no honey bees at all.  The appearance of this little brown wild bee (albeit, in very low numbers) that I've never seen before has me wondering if this is nature abhorring a vacuum, or has this little brown bee been there all the whole time, just lost in the noise.

I dearly wish it were possible to check in with the biosphere every hundred years or so for the next ten thousand years or so to see how this all shakes out, fascinating.

John G.

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Wild/feral honey bees have moved into one of my empty hives.  I give thanks and praise to the Mother Goddess for her gifts and for letting me be a part of her divine plan.
John G.

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That is happy news!
P.S., in response to your post before that: I had also noticed a different type of small bee that I'd never noticed before in the flowers this spring.  They were very small, not much bigger than big ants.  I thought at first maybe they were flying ants or carpenter ants, but when I looked closer, they had the stripes on their abdomen (which I think is unique to bees?), and looked like miniature bees.  But I also wondered if they were filling up a gap made by the reduction in honeybees (or if I'd just never noticed them before because of the honeybees).

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So I was checking out one of the local franchise home-lumber-garden stores this last weekend, trying to find some fruit trees or plants on sale for the end-of-the-planting-season.  And I was excited to find some nice looking blueberry bushes, hardy to Zone 4, for sale for less than $10 each.  So I took my time and picked out a couple of the nicest ones, feeling happy to have found them. 
Then I noticed a white plastic tab sticking out of the dirt saying something about how these blueberries were resistant to aphids and some other nasty bugs.  Cool!  I thought I'd gotten some kind of resistant breed of blueberries to boot!  But as I focused in and read more closely, I see that it says "protected from aphids [etc.] by neonicotinoids".  Oh.  Not so cool.  And up went the blueberry bushes back on their display shelf.

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I found an article related to my post (#91) above entitled "Lowe's To Stop Selling Neonicotinoid Pesticides That May Be Harmful To Bees", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/09/lowes-pesticides-bees_n_7035208.html .
Of interest:

Lowe's said it will phase out neonics in shelf products and plants by the spring of 2019, as suitable alternatives become available.

A study released by environment group Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute in 2014 showed that 51 percent of garden plants purchased at Lowe's, Home Depot and Walmart in 18 cities in the United States and Canada contained neonicotinoid pesticides at levels that could harm or even kill bees. [bold mine]

And:
Last year, BJ's Wholesale Club, a warehouse retailer said it was asking all of its vendors to provide plants free of neonics by the end of 2014 or to label such products. Home Depot, the largest U.S. home improvement chain, also asked its suppliers to start labeling any plants treated with neonics and that it was running tests in several states to see if suppliers can eliminate neonics in their plant production without hurting plant health. [bold mine]
Oh!  There's that little white tag I was talking about in #91!  Its in a 2nd article, "I want Home Depot to stop selling plants that have been treated with Neonicotinoids pesticide", @ https://www.change.org/p/home-depot-i-want-home-depot-to-stop-selling-plants-that-have-been-treated-with-neonicotinoids-pesticide
Petitioning Home Depot

I want Home Depot to stop selling plants that have been treated with Neonicotinoids pesticide.

Neonicotinoids pesticide have been linked to the collapse of honey bee populations, that pollinate foods we need to eat. As such Home Depot's selling plants treated with the pesticide amounts to seeking profits above the public good.

Neonicotiniods were used to treat flowers, which will kill bees that visit them, but equally disturbing food bedding plants also have been treated with the Neonicotinoids: squash, tomatoes, eggplants, summer savoury, and even cabbage and leaf lettuce that were treated. Studies have indicated that the Neonicotinoids also effect human health.

Please sign my petition, to tell Home Depot to get plants treated with Neonicotinoidslants out of their garden centers…

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We had better get used to relating to people who are neither male nor female. Environmental Issues are increasing their number.Get used to it.
This may be the "solution" to the population problem. Not with a Bang but a whimper. 

https://youtu.be/3TuTj75lD0M

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Things have changed since my last post in May, when there were lots of blossoms but no pollinators.  At that time I decided to leave alone all the weeds on my property that bees feed on.  The "lawn" is full of milkweed, fireweed and dandelion and all the cultivated blossoms are now constantly buzzing with various pollinators.  Bumblebees, wild bees, wasps, hummingbirds and even monarch butterflies are all there when I step outside.  I've learned to be amongst them calmly even after I accidentally disturbed an underground nest of little brown wild bees in a new bed and got stung a few times.  The wasp nest over my door did get rebuilt so they are also swooping about.  I will kill them if they start going after me but I enjoy the challenge of coexisting with all the busy little creatures. There is a new understanding of their importance, and heartfelt interest in their wellbeing.  Mason bees and wildflowers next year…
Cheers,

Susan

PS The peach tree did get pollinated and is overloaded with fuzzy green babies.