memes

I keep being told that the canals used to freeze over and people would skate on them.

This is a myth and has been debunked.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-splatometer-tests-reveal-huge-decline-number-insects

The survey of insects hitting car windscreens in rural Denmark used data collected every summer from 1997 to 2017 and found an 80% decline in abundance. It also found a parallel decline in the number of swallows and martins, birds that live on insects.

The second survey, in the UK county of Kent in 2019, examined splats in a grid placed over car registration plates, known as a “splatometer”. This revealed 50% fewer impacts than in 2004. The research included vintage cars up to 70 years old to see if their less aerodynamic shape meant they killed more bugs, but it found that modern cars actually hit slightly more insects.

It realy is.

I see this kind of realy devastating change in many areas in nature. There used to be frogs in our garden when I grew up, I would listen to them every evening right outside my bedroom window. Now they are gone.

I see it in the Forests, where huge swats of trees have died over the last couple of years. There are areas in our forests now, that look like war zones, because drouth followed by to much rain in combination with invasive bugs have killed or weakens them so much.

Going back another generation, my brother, who is 16 years older, told be about field hamsters who where so plentyfull in the fields, that the local kids would earn money by hunting them and turning their corpses in for money in the village center. In the 16 years between my bother and me the European field hamster has, consequently, gone almost extinct. I never have seen one in my life.

And while all this is by its nature very anecdotal, these are areas where climate change and the way we treat nature as something alien realy feels close to me. And to be honest: It fucking scares me.