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EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees
hether writes "The mystery of the disappearing bees has been baffling scientists for years and now we get another big piece in the puzzle. From Fast Company: 'A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined — electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.' Now environmentalists and bee keepers are calling for an immediate ban of the pesticide clothianidin, sold by Bayer Crop Science under the brand name Poncho."
Hmmm and i thought the "P" stood for Protection, but clearly its something to do with Profits and or Pressure.... what a freakin sellout i bet they were pressured to allow more profits by the big agribusiness lobbyists... i guess agribusiness will be the first to cry foul when their crops no longer get fertilised....
Most of your questions are answered in TFA, and those that aren't, are thoroughly covered in the linked PDF (except for the political ones.) The short version is that the stuff propagates very easily through the environment and is toxic to bees even in very low doses.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Well, see, you can live in your little Randroid free-market fantasyland all you want. But when you start poisoning the land, air, and water we all have to share, the rest of us will organize to stop you. We will call this organization "the government." We will give this organization the power to fine you, imprison you, or even kill you if you refuse to mend your ways, and you can't stop us. There are more of us than there are of you, we're smarter, and we're better than you in every conceivable way.
Don't like it? Move to Somalia. There are a bunch of people there who have taken your ideology to its logical extreme. Let's see how long you last.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I don't know about this "science" stuff, but I thought I would get straight to the root of the issue. To this end, I found a nearby hibernating honey bee and I asked the little fellow what his thoughts were on the matter. At first I couldn't quite make out what he was saying (bee sized and all) so I held him close to my face. Do you know what the little guy told me? Kill everyone, make the rivers flow with their blood and fill the skies with their screams.
Surprisingly, this is exactly what the article said too.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I work in seed enhancement, fortunately, I don't order clothianidin (Poncho) from Bayer Crop Science. However I do order Thiram, Captan and Allegiance (aka Apron FL) from Bayer. Most of these chemicals are used to control pythium, however I've always wondered if these were responsible for the bee hive die offs.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
> I'm not a fan of pesticides but I won't deny that they increase food and crop yield.
Prove it. I don't believe this whatsoever.
There has been a growing of evidence showing that the overuse of pesticides has led to a *decline* in crop yields, not an increase.
See:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5995.cfm
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/June/04060701.asp
Unless you are familiar with changes in farming techniques over time it's very very hard to have a substantive position on this. Since about 1960-1970 there has been a *huuuge* increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers that essentially parallels the use of pesticides. Sadly there was a limit to how much nitrogen fixation can actually take place in the presence of pesticides. Keep in mind that nitrogen is required for plants to grow, nitrogen fixation is required for plants to use nitrogen and... research has now shown that pesticides interferes with nitrogen fixation.
I'm not making a broad claim one way or another, but the government clearly isn't researching the things they should be.
Curses.... foiled again by people who read.
It's just like the BP Gulf oil spill and the coal mine explosion in West Virginia. There are systems in place to protect people and the environment, but when the Republicans gain control they stop all oversight. It takes five to fifteen years to see all the failures, and by then everyone forgets who turned over control to the crooks and lairs.
They just wave the flag, blame everything on the government bureaucrats and illegal aliens, scream about the war on terror, and then lie and deny when the shit hits the fan. I guess as long as these morons continue to lie and cheat their way into power we deserve to have poisoned gulf seafood and the end of flowering crops.
Don't worry, you can just consume more high fructose processed food and get diabetes. The corn/agribusiness lobby will continue to do just fine with their massive tax breaks and government subsidies, and they're so rich that they can afford imported fruits and vegetables. If you get sick and loose your health care you can crawl off and die, and that will solve them problem.
Why is Snark Required?
There was a horizon program on the BBC here called "what's killing our bees?", which suggested that the only country not really affected (yet) was Australia, who have a roaring trade selling bees now.
That was 2 years ago. Yes, the UK is affected.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Come again ?
North american bee population has been declining, scientists estimated that in a few decades this would affect everything in agriculture (pollination), and trying to solve it. it was even dubbed end of mankind. it was that serious.
Now it turns out that, your government has allowed bee-killing pesticides. noone heard about it. no journalist made news of it. no ngo was warned of it. NOONE KNEW. if wikileaks didnt leak it, you would not know about it, still.
tell me now, who are the real terrorists ? the ones letting you know that your entire ecosystem and agriculture is being killed by corporations which have been allowed by your government, or, those corporations and the government themselves ?
wise up. support wikileaks. it is giving you the control over your government that was taken away from you.
Read radical news here
So when anything bad happens involving some private enterprise, someone on here usually has some stupid comment like "I thought the free market would make life perfect."
Well, let me be the one to offer a hypothesis: people are no good and there is no perfect system because of people. Or if we want to be sarcastic too "I thought government regulators were going to make life perfect."
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You've insinuated gross incompetence on the part of the researchers. Have you actually gone out and tried to find the answers to these questions? Are you qualified in the field to question the research? Or are you just going off the article, which is a summary of research that was almost undoubtedly much more in-depth than a journalists' summary?
I consider myself a strong skeptic, but one of the duties of a skeptic is to realize their limits. I don't attend a graduate-level lecture and start asking questions - I'd be asked to leave, or at least laughed at. So when I'm confronted with something that doesn't seem right, I seek more information. You're not. You're just throwing out questions. Rather slanted ones.
I see this often, and I suspect it is an actual class of logical fallacy...
1)A slashdotter posts a series of slanted questions and wondering-alouds that are very FUD-ish.
2)The questions aren't (properly) answered, because the audience (jokes about parent's basements aside) doesn't have much knowledge on the subject. Or, the answers that are qualified aren't noticed by moderators.
3)The questions, which are more a challenge to refute a contrary viewpoint to the article than anything else, appear to be valid because there's no response visible. And thus what was probably perfectly legitimate research gets shot down by someone with no background in the subject. Probably not even a mild background in research.
Lastly: the burden of proof no longer rests on the shoulders of the public. After decades of the chemical industry producing toxins and marketing them for uses which were harmful, then doing everything to cover it all up...they are no longer entitled to public trust. If you want to manufacture a chemical and spray it on thousands of square miles of farmland, you better prove first that it doesn't cause problems.
This is especially so, given that research shows that old farming techniques and organic practices are equally or more effective, and cause no permanent damage to people or the environment. Virtually none of the artificial stuff spread on the farmlands of the world are *necessary*, even if one's sole criteria is increased yield.
If anyone wants to see another scary example of this "what, me worry?" attitude, check out methyl iodide, a known toxin, which was just approved for use by California:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2010%2F12%2F01%2Fnational%2Fa143424S98.DTL&tsp=1
"Hey, it's okay to spread this toxic crap all over the ground, because we'll only use what we think is just enough, and people want pretty strawberries."
Please help metamoderate.
This sounds bad, and I admit that this is the first I've heard about this particular pesticide being especially toxic to bees, but let's not get carried away. The longstanding mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder in bees has pretty much been solved. A few months ago, it was published that a double whammy of a fungus and a virus acting at the same time are almost certainly what have decimated bee populations around the world. A bee colony can usually survive either of the two pathogens, and it will recover, but being hit by both at the same time is deadly. The science behind this conclusion looked sound, and most experts have agreed. Sure, this pesticide has clearly not helped bees, and perhaps a ban is in order, but it is not the main factor behind all the recent hubbub about honeybees.
I don't want to hear anything about evil electromagnetic radiation, cell phones, wifi, government conspiracies, aliens, a grassy knoll, or malnutrition induced by an exploding pooh bear population. The answer is simple and makes sense. Bee populations have suffered around the world, including where there is neither ubiquitous wifi nor this pesticide, and the virus/fungus combo has been found everywhere anyone has looked. Now, maybe aliens brought the virus and communists spread the fungus, but...
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Before you go all tinfoil-hat on us, maybe you should get some points straight. Among them is that the Detroit idea is a proposal, is contingent on approvals at multiple levels and securing funding to move people from neighborhoods that would no longer receive full services, and is simply reflective of the reality that Detroit, once a bustling city of 1.85 million people in 1950, is now under half of that, with nearly 35,000 empty homes.
Besides, urbanization has been happening for centuries. It's picked up the pace in recent decades, but I bet most of the people around in even the 1950s would have been hard pressed to provide entirely for themselves had the need arisen.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
My father is an entomologist for a university Extension Service. For those who don't know (non-Americans), the Extension Services are outreach arms of the universities set up to provide advice to the public. His main job is to advise farmers on pest control measures for crops, mostly cotton; the advice is often "if you spray to kill pest A, you'll also kill predator B, which eats pest C which is resistant to insecticide, and C will eat your cotton. So don't do anything and put up with A, they won't eat that much."
Many of the meetings are sponsored by chemical companies. There are responsible uses of insecticides; used wisely, some insecticides can provide a cost-effective way to increase yields with very minimal long-term environmental harm. But the chemical companies are corrupt as hell. They try to bribe the scientists with lavish gifts to publish studies that favor their products, and encourage farmers (and scientists) to use too much insecticide, or use it when it's not really appropriate. It's sham science done for the sake of greed, and it is disgusting.
On the flip side, there are "studies" that show environmental harm where there really isn't any -- either by misguided "everything must be grown organically" types, or by people pushing back against the chemical company propaganda.
It's hard to tell a damn thing from "studies" on this sort of thing, because everyone is so busy grinding axes that who's right and who's wrong gets completely lost. This makes me, as a scientist in another field where there is far less of that, rather angry.
The FDA screens pesticides for how they will be used, how mobile the pesticide is and how long the residue lasts. If this was not done then cry foul.
...
I have not found the application for use as a seed coating but Bayer would have needed to go through a process to get that approved by the EPA.
Did you RTFA?
"...Bayer was granted a 'conditional registration' while the Environmental Protection Agency waited for them to conduct further field studies on the pesticides impact on bee colonies."
Long story short: The original study was crap, the EPA allowed it, and Bayer knew that the pesticide was a bee killer.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You need to relax. It's quite simple if you understand Friedmannite economics. Cutting corporate taxes and deregulation will resolve all of our problems. The Free Market will come up with a cheaper, better solution to bee pollination.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
These leaks MUST be stopped immediately, and those responsible must go to jail for life, and execution may even be warranted. I am sure the EPA will be acting quickly to ensure those responsible for the leaks are rapidly brought to justice.
This is a clear and dire threat to national security, and the leakers are traitors; think of what will happen when the Bees find out the nature of the pesticide, and the informants who formulated it!
This will only serve to cause more incidents of bee attacks against us, costing precious human lives.
Lives are at stake; and the leakers are enemy combatants performing an act of terrorism
<sarcasm>
Also, it's apparently used in the UK. Are only North American bees susceptible to this? The article says:
Of course not. The better question would be has the UK had a problem with colony collapse as well? The answer to that would be yes, it has.
Here we are. When they released the locations of targets, they became terrorists.
rest of the world doesnt give a flying fsck about american cia operatives who participated in kidnapping ,or american soldiers who have participated voluntarily in occupations, are being targeted or not. its their choice, their life. they should ask themselves, what are they doing there, in the first place.
what is appalling is that, there are people who are basically saying that we should be sorry for cia operatives who kidnapped german citizens or other nationals from the middle of europe, took them to bases in client countries in middle east, and tortured them. and, anyone revealing the location of these people, are 'terrorists'.
the real terrorists are people who kidnap others, and torture them. the world doesnt give a flying fuck about the 'lives' endangered by wikileaks' leaks as such. they are the terrorists which should have been hunted for that long time. they have even violated constitutions and sovereignty of ALLIED countries.
To recap. get a fucking clue. you dont know right from wrong.
Read radical news here
While WikiLeaks is a current and exciting topic, the clothianidin/EPA leak has nothing to do with WikiLeaks.
Quoting a prominent secondary story linked from TFA:
Here is the EU data on the pesticide.
Some highlights: It is an insecticide, so it should not really surprise that it kills bees. The toxitity to honey bees is well known (LD50 = 0.004 ug/bee, which the document interpret as "high" risk). And it is approved for use in most EU countries, including Italy and Germany.
The study you are referencing was made by Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, who has economical ties to Bayer (The producer of the pesticide cited). Ref: NYT via http://www.ktradionetwork.com/tag/dr-jerry-bromenshenk/
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
And the market wins again.
When demand outstrips supply the suppliers can up their prices. They'll make a lot more money.
Now, since the food growers can't get enough bees to pollinate their crops, the supply of food will dwindle - more expensive food, meaning more money for the growers.
This means that regular workers have to work more to buy the same amount and kinds of food. That means the supply of workers will outstrip demand and salaries can be cut. That's another win for the market and the companies in particular.
It's Win/Win/Win for the market economy - what's not to like?
What government=good???? What part of "the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists" made you think that government is good? Yes, some industry is bad. Some is good. Same goes for parts of government.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Capitalism is a philosophy of private ownership, pacifism, and protection of property rights.
The only problem is that your argument relies on a sort of "enlightened dictator" in the role of the supreme capitalist. In the history of the world, this has never happened for any significant length of time.
Look at the history of the labor movement. The mega-companies at the turn of the century had de-facto private armies that beat and killed workers who protested horrendous working conditions.
Capitalism in its pure form as as rare as any theory; too many people are avaricious bastards who will screw their own mother for a dime. Capitalism without a strong government will not lead to "respect of property rights"; rather it will lead to theft, murder, and destruction of anyone who is less powerful than you.
Look at the history of the American West; a lot of "pure capitalists" look at that as some sort of proof of superiority of pure american capitalism personified by the immigrants. In fact, those who became wealthy often did so by cheating, killing, and stealing the property of others. It's not a pretty story, and it goes on to this day.
Yeah, except the NY Times article failed to mention that that study was funded by Bayer Crop Sciences, whose product was the principle other suspect behind Colony Collapse Disorder.
See this CNN piece in response to the NY Times article: http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm
And this article posted a few threads up: http://www.ktradionetwork.com/tag/dr-jerry-bromenshenk/
Not clear what the real answer is, but it just goes to show that it's easier to mislead a New York Times journalist than one would think and that any scientific study that answers questions of economic significance are subject to meddling with money. Though we sometimes assume that scientists are truly objective, they are human beings and subject to biases and influence like the rest of us.
These sorts of potential conflicts of interest need to be better disclosed - and it's rather embarrassing that the New York Times never published a clarification or follow-up story about this (at least as far as I know).