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Insects As Weapons
An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Paine, an entomologist at the University of California-Riverside, recently 'committed to the scientific record the idea that California's eucalyptus trees may have been biologically sabotaged, publishing an article [in the Journal of Economic Entomology] raising the possibility of bioterrorism.' Specifically, Paine argues that foreign insect pests have been deliberately introduced in the Golden State, in hopes of decimating the state's population of eucalyptus (especially the two species regarded as invasive, which 'are particularly susceptible to the pests.') In California's Bioterror Mystery, Paine (and scientists who are skeptical) make their arguments. What isn't in dispute is that the insect pests have already inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, making the story a cautionary tale about what might happen if a food or crop were intentionally targeted."
considering it targets invasive non local species
although introducing another non native species to counter another one could and often does backfire
-I'm just saying
I won't miss eucalyptus trees. The condo complex over my back fence had one. It was constantly dropping branches in my back yard, some of them quite large. They're also a nightmare if they catch on fire. They also tend to kill vegetation that grows under them due to the oil which drips from the leaves. They're considered an invasive species in California.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
If the eucalyptus trees go, then California's koala bear population will also be decimated. This is dreadful news.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
does this mean cough drops will get more expensive?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Killer bees. Screw 'em.
While controlling non-native species by introducing their homeland pests is a common practice, care must be taken that the other species don't cause harm to the native ecology. This is an operation that may not worth the risks, it wouldn't be the first time when the "control" species became even more invasive than the original one.
..what might happen if a food or crop were intentionally targeted.
The Israelites go free?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I'll just leave this here...
It seems like every time I go to Australia to bring back a control insect, there's another insect that's not affected by the control that appears on the loose. Almost like there's a fly on the wall in my strategy meetings. Or a bug in my luggage.
From the article, it doesn't sound like they looked at other possibilities; suppliers which typically travel from Australia to LA, and maybe declining quality standards there. Maybe these other pests were dying off because of competition from the first set of pests and once the controls are introduced, the old set of pests (continuously arriving through incompetent shippers) are able to reestablish.
But I think it's an issue well worth talking about.
TFA appears to be trolling for search engine hits with the use of "terror" or "terrorism" in the article and the title itself (California's Bioterror Mystery). Really, terrorism should be something that at the very least causes you to have qualms, if not outright fear, about your safety.
For example, you might have second thoughts about riding an airplane because of some extremist hijacking it and blowing it up. Ditto for visiting the mall or drinking tap water because somebody might have laced the water supply. But this one? The only terror I see is of the trees falling over and crushing the poor pedestrian standing right next to it. I'm not a koala, so I'm not going to be losing sleep over the loss of my favorite supply of mint.
To be sure, the title of the scientific paper on which the article is based sounds less sensationalistic (unfortunately, a subscription is necessary to read the paper itself):
Brazil's production of cocoa was greatly reduced after an epidemic of witch's broom in the early 1990s. Rumors spoke of sabotage by foreign producers, until a left-wing militant confessed bringing fungus-infected branches from Rondônia to Bahia to destroy the political power of the "cocoa barons".
Circumcision is child abuse.
We stop tourists returning from other countries from bringing in produce to prevent pests like non-native fruit flies from taking hold domestically. Yet is has happened. I think the most likely reason is the most obvious - tourists hide and don't declare so they can have their "harmless" contraband. But it does occur to me, that would be a frightening means of economic sabotage if even just a few "tourists" a year were to bring in a matchbox full of an invasive and destructive insect in their pocket and let them go in Imperial Valley or Bordeaux or the Chilean agricultural regions.
Need I say more?
Best thing for the invasive Eucalypts is to cut them down and use them for firewood. In my experience they make the best firewood in the world, especially for outdoors dutch oven cooking and BBQs. The wood doesn't turn instantly into ash when burnt, instead they tend to form solid hot coals for a while and give an even heat. After moving to the Solomon Islands from Australia, one thing I miss is Eucalypt firewood.
Oh wait, here's another one, we're going to introduce malaria mosquitoes to your country. Still want to go with the crop thing? Mmm... all right... How much do you get paid to come up with these ideas again?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Timothy Paine, an entomologist at the University of California-Riverside, recently 'committed to the scientific record the idea that California's eucalyptus trees may have been biologically sabotaged, publishing an article [in the Journal of Economic Entomology] raising the possibility of bioterrorism.'
Must every act of aggression be labeled as some form of terrorism? The term certainly has lost it's potency since 9/11.
^^vv<><>BA
sounds like something out of a B movie or on of the syfy channel movies.
So when the U.S. government introduces an invasive species to control another invasive species, it's called progress, but if it happens accidentally, it's called bioterrorism?? Invasive insects are introduced to the U.S. through shipping on a daily basis, thanks to NAFTA and other free-trade treaties gutting the import inspection requirements. But no one complains about that for some reason. Probably because too many people are making obscene amounts of money thanks to the relaxed regulations, and conveniently you can blame 'ecoterrorists' for the introduced bugs, so why worry?
.....that someone had fashioned some sort of bee gun?
The Nazi's were working on insects as weapons for years under the watchful eye of Eric Trabe. We recruited him after the war where he ran New York's Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
Right across the channel is the town of Lyme where the first people developed a strange disorder later called "Lyme Disease." Incidentally, ticks were Trabe's favorite pet project.
Am I the only one remembering the killer butterflies in "Neuromancer"?
Bob
The idea is not new. Many years ago there was a story that New Zealand introduced insects into Australia that would destroy the market for apple growers. At the time there was some apple trade rivalry. There may have been either some truth to the newspaper reports or just logic out of control.
People think you can do any goddamn thing you want to nature ... people dealing with unprecedented wildfires in Colorado
Look, the people of Colorado are as careful as anyone with how nature is handled.
The fires have nothing to do with that. Mix a drought (which is not uncommon in a semi-arid high desert, which is what the front range IS) and a lot of vegetation designed to be burnt (pine trees) and you have huge fires.
Yes it sucks but it's not the fault of people the forests are on fire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sounds a lot like a modern day version of the old "poisoned wells" tale to me. Still good for spreading paranoia, xenophobia and hatred against "disbelievers"...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Of a shotgun that fires spiders, less lethal shells use wolf spiders and the lethal shells use black widows.
*shudder!*
they had instead introduced marauding bands of genetically engineered koalas to devastate the eucalyptus trees?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Every aspect of life is now theoretically weaponizable. The fact is that the number of people it takes to do very big damage to large numbers of people is trending down, has been trending down for centuries and will continue to trend down ever more rapidly.
Basically your freedom and privacy are inversely proportional to the number of people it takes to hurt large number of people in very bad ways. At one end of that scale is the lone nut with a doomsday weapon. In that world, your freedom and privacy go to zero because society will not permit that lone nut to act unobserved.
Getting more realistic doesn't really bring much comfort. A few people working to weaponize some bacterium in some way is not much better. Now we need to watch everyone who orders X from company Y (or worse , didn't) or who went to grad school for major Z (or worse, didn't) .
If you look at Ted Kaszinsky , he already understood that to hide his tracks, he had to make his own shit from everyday things found just everywhere. It's not like this type is so crazy they can't think straight and plan.
Here's an equation that describes the relationship between technology, terrorism and your privacy and freedom as you now know it.
loss of freedom . = the number of people they can do those bad things to ^ (the level of badness they can achieve ) / number of people needed to achieve bad things
So for instance,
virus writer:
number of bad people =1
number of people hurt =10,000,000
level of badness = inconvenience and some money
result- lose just a little freedom
Kazsinski:
number of bad people =1
number of people hurt =10
level of badness = death, dismemberment
result: lose no freedom
9-11 hijackers
number of bad people =19
number of people hurt =3000
level of badness = death
result - lose a lot of freedom
WWII
number of bad people = 18 million
number of people hurt = 60 million
level of badness = death
result - no permanent loss of freedom
So what we see is the three numbers interact strongly and it really takes all three approaching their bad poles for things to really change.
But that's where we're headed now.
Nothing that we've constructed either in law or human conduct or organizing principles for society has prepared us for this.
We have to expect that everything will be and somewhere right now, on paper at least, is being tried.
You don't like it when the phone companies turn over your records to the FBI , but that's the LEAST of what you have to get used to in the face of what progress in technology is going to deliver to your door. All private companies help the intelligence agencies any way they can because the key players understand what's happening. They understand the above even if not explicitly. It's not about enslaving hapless masses; it's about survival and how we're going to be able to achieve that as those three number race towards their respective poles.
No one wanted this, it's no one's fault and no one really knows what to do. Keep that in mind when you're reading tomorrow's headlines. We never evolve to wield the capabilities we are acquiring. It's no one's fault.
Really I only see one way out of this, and you're not going to like it any better than you like any other part of this. We need to genetically engineer people so they don't want to do bad things. We need to genetically engineer people so they are much less greedy, much less anti-social, much less religious, much less concerned with acquiring positions in dominance hierarchies for the purpose of monopolizing resources and access to female reproductive rights. That's what drives most of the world's badness now and throughout history. It's really just that simple.
Our genes evolved to compete fiercely for those limited resources - food, shelter, power and s
This event needs better language.
Bioterrorism does not fit because the introduction of eucalyptus pests is not the generation of fear in human beings for the purpose of starting a war or causing political instability.
Eucalyptus has become an established plant in California. The word "established" catches the idea that grown eucalyptus trees in some settings provide shade and screening benefits. They have attained the status of having a social value.
The word "antiestablishmentism" catches the idea that the introduced pests are launching another kind of destruction.
About 140 feet away from my house grow several 240 foot tall Eucalyptus trees. They are shallow rooted plants on a steam bank. Whenever we have a storm, I always worry about which way the wind is blowing. The trees also block my satellite dish, block direct sun and plug up my roof gutters.
Yeah, biological antiestablishmentism at work. Don't infect these please. Can't afford the consequences.
Paine argues that foreign insect pests have been deliberately introduced in the Golden State, in hopes of decimating the state's population of eucalyptus
Timothy Paine seems awfully knowledgeable of these terrorists' specific goal of removing 1/10 of the population of Eucalyptus trees.
Like Shino Aburame (from naruto):
http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Shino_Aburame
The frog and spider population would plummet.
Would they? Or would other insects just fill the space that mosquitoes were in? Nature abhors a vacuum. I think that you would just end up with frogs and spiders eating something else that had filled the ecological space.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This reminds me of the X-files, the one with the bees carrying small pox. LOL
Please don't anthropomorphise "Nature". "Nature" doesn't replace anything. (And note my sig: Tennyson in 1844 knew more about evolution than a lot of educated people do today. And yes, evolution as an idea was well established before Origin was published; Charles Darwin got some of his ideas from his grandfather Erasmus.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And the beautiful part is, once winter rolls around the gorillas simply freeze to death!
Why the fuck is this story tagged "Republicans?" A presumption that Republicans must have a hand in anything environmentally destructive?
Ah bioshock, good times, good times.
Why are terrorists suspected rather than someone who is trying to improve the area by getting rid of the weeds? Or a eucalyptus lover who brought over some infected trees?
Just asking, is all crime called terrorism now?
Oh, should I have sugar-coated that?
Does it matter? Go back to 1960, get some DDT, and you won't have this problem anymore. Sure, a few people might get cancer, but damn did it ever kill those bugs.
90% of scientists from the relevant field as well as 90% of all scientists agree with anthropogenic climate change. In the world of science, this is what we call a "scientific consensus" and it's a pretty overwhelming one at that. If man is indeed affecting the climate, then at the very least we can reduce the things we are doing that affect it.
I can never get over just how fervent the climate change denialist religion is. On one side of the argument, we have 90% of all scientists, representing every conceivable nationality, set of political views, economic status, and funding source. On the other side of the argument, we have a small group of "scientists" from a single political ideology from a narrow range of customers all of whom draw their paychecks from oil companies, coal companies, and/or right wing think tanks. The most prominent, most published, most cited member of this group is someone either so incompetent he literally doesn't know degrees from radians, or is a staggeringly deceitful fraudster.
http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/25/mckitrick-mucks-it-up/
Based on work of this quality, millions of conservolibertarians have concluded that 90% of the scientists in the world are participating in a vast and incredibly complex conspiracy to... what? Make American rightists feel bad? Conservolibertarians never seem to be very clear on the goals of this massive and complex international supposed-conspiracy.
Ah well. Once someone adopts a religious view, they will cling to it no matter what evidence is presented to them.
I'm pretty sure a black widow is unlikely to keep flying insects in line, given that they live under rocks and in crevices that are too tight for anything to fly through.
That's absurd if you think about it. If spiders didn't have webs in places that would catch something, they'd die. Some do have hiding places off to the edge where they're safer from other predators. If does seem that spiders with big butts, the most visible ones, are the types that hide more. It makes sense they'd need to, yes? Being black, they may also be especially likely to avoid the heating effects of direct sun.
When clearing spiderwebs it is usually easy to tel the difference between those of the black widow and others. Black widows webs stand out as being much more sticky than those of the daddy long legs for instance.
A new spider man movie is in the works. Maybe someone into low budget movie-making can do some good low budget sci-fi based on the abandoned animals (and resident spiders) left behind in the evacuated zone. Some areas that tested moderately low for contamination (for growing rice etc) last year are showing high radiation from leaves and runoff that's since come down from the forests. Sounds like a plot line for a few mutant birds. After some fishermen returned to Japan with severe radiation exposure that occurred during 60's atomic tests in the south pacific, the classic Japanese monster movies were born. It would be fitting to have a new generation of monsters to watch!
In an election year, politicians ought to be interviewed about Zombies rights issues. Death taxes are a hot issue for them, as is health care when body parts fall off. Demand basic inhuman rights today!
There's been inadequate investment in new hardware for _decades_. Budget cuts were just the icing on the cake.
The Evergreen firefighting 747 is a great bird though - and it can easily replace 4-5 smaller firefighters, as can the russian flying boats. The problem is that the world needs at least 20-30 of these aircraft and noone's willing to commit that kind of money to converting more widebodies.
Evergreen made the existing one to test the market and while it does good business in the lease market there's clearly not enough demand for them to convert any more.
The number one killer wildlife in Australia isn't the snakes, spiders, crocodiles, or jellyfish. Or even the drop bear.
It's the honey bee. Kills more than all the native wildlife put together.