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Bumblebees Being Crushed By Climate Change
sciencehabit writes: As the climate changes, plants and animals are on the move. So far, many are redistributing in a similar pattern: As habitat that was once too cold warms up, species are expanding their ranges toward the poles, whereas boundaries closer to the equator have remained more static. Bumblebees, however, appear to be a disturbing exception, according to a new study (abstract) . A comprehensive look at dozens of species finds that many North American and European bumblebees are failing to "track" warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. Simultaneously, they are disappearing from the southern portions of their range.
That's gonna really suck for agriculture. I guess they'll have to have Mexicans running around pollinating.
It's perfectly normal for things like this to happen. There is absolutely NO proof that human activity is altering the climate!
Let's genetically modify our honey bees to make them better able to cope with the climate change so they can pollinate our genetically modified crops.
What could go wrong?
likely to be quietly retracted next week.
There's no proof we altering forests either.
I thought bumblebees are everywhere except maybe the desert?
Repeat after me: it has nothing to do with all the RF from all the fucking cellphone towers everywhere. Still don't believe that? Repeat it again, as many times as necessary...
...many North American and European bumblebees are failing to "track" warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. ...
Maybe bumblebees select habitats to colonize based more upon the daylight patterns than temperatures, and that is why they are not following the warmth as it moves towards the poles?
Bumblebees are clearly Communist Ecoterrorists out to destroy our fine, God-fearing Capitalist agricultural industry. We should immediately start executing those evil climatologists. God and the Invisible Hand would never permit massive CO2 emissions to effect humans, and anyone that says so should be taken out and beaten to death.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
More mysterious is their failure to push north. “What we can infer is that temperature in the northern latitudes is not what's limiting their spread,” says Ignasi Bartomeus, a researcher at Spain's Estación Biológica de Doñana in Seville
Wish I could read the actual paper, but it's pay-walled.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As a close friend of bumblebees its hard seeing a familiar face disappear year after year. As for us in the hornet community, we're enjoying a resurgence the likes of which few have ever known. That picnic last month where we stung the living crap out of your dog? yes, good times..and that time you stepped on one of us while mowing the lawn in sandles? goodness we sure shared a chuckle while delivering inexorable sting after sting chasing you into the sliding glass door. Lets also not forget that time you reached into the mailbox! ho ho! surprised you didnt we? So in summation I guess what id like to say is that although the bumble bee and its kind gentle ways are slowly fading from existence, we still loathe, detest, and abhor each and every one of you giant two legged monsters.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Yay! Go global warming! I think if you've ever been stung by one, you'll agree.
Seems more like evidence that the climate isn't warming, and instead the southern regions of their habitats are more likely to have farms that use pesticides that kill them, or that there are parasites or diseases cropping up in those areas that can't survive further north.
But I guess every single negative thing that happens is caused by climate change, even when it is completely illogical (like them failing to expand northwards).
"To see how global climate change is affecting the bees, the researchers amassed a data set consisting of some 423,000 observations, dating back to 1901, of 67 bumblebee species in North America and Europe."
You only need to read this line to know that the data is inaccurate. What "observations" were being made in the 1900s and how accurate were they? Did the physically count the bees and GPS note their locations? Impossible.
"some bumblebees have retreated as many as 300 kilometers from the southern edge of their historic ranges since 1974"
Really "some"? And how accurate is that? No GPS existed in 1974.
Bumblebee tuna was my favorite ðY
Modern agricultures uses apps to pollinate.
If bumblebees have made it this far, then it can't be a bit of temperature change; it has to be something new. I say that the cause is increased pollution and use of highly dangerous pesticides. Spraying toxic chemicals in the air and over fields, and thinking it's only going to keep bad bugs away and affect nothing else, is the height of ignorance.
Bring in the undomesticated bee strains as pollinators.
The European /North American bees have been bread for docility for centuries to the point where we transport hives on trucks to pollinate where needed, is it any wonder that they are not migrating "naturally" they are for all intents and purposes domesticated, it's like expecting cows to migrate on their own.
I would expect that so called "killer" bees would be adapting better to climate change.
Hmmmm. Well, we can see that at least the red herring are thriving.
Neonicotinoids are pesticides which are derived from nicotine. The bees love this stuff. It's being sprayed on crops in mass quantities. Being a pesticide, it kills the bees.
Maybe the reason they're "moving North" is because there's less crops, therefore less pesticides.
If carpenter bees are considered a type of bumble bee I hope they do extinct ASAP. Not only do they drill holes in any wooden structure they can find, but after they've built a nest the woodpeckers tear it apart and make an even bigger hole.
I know, no one likes to RTFA. But if you did: "One clue to the importance of climate: Bumblebee ranges began shrinking “even before the neonicotinoid pesticides came into play in the 1980s,” says ecologist and coauthor Alana Pindar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph in Canada."
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Yes, because there is no such thing as disease.
Indeed, this is the case of the cult science of Climate Change vs. the cult science of Evolution. Considering how many warming periods and ice ages bumblebees have survived, it's ludicrous to suggest that they can't adapt to a changing climate through basic "These bees survived because they moved further North. The further North, the more likely the hive is to split and thrive. Therefore, we can predict that the Bumblebees will, as a species, propagate North" which is the least-disagreeable pillar of evolutionary science .
Red herrings? Really, aren't climatologists part of a scheme to destroy our economy? Sure, the bumblebees may be mindless servants, but still, they're flagrant dying out is clearly intended to make carbon-emitting industries, who, as we all know, cannot possibly have any effect of climate at all, makes them collaborators. We should immediately defund climate research, because all it does is come up with evil Commie lies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Who could possibly imagine that altering such a fundamental characteristic of the planet like the amount of energy it retains would have an enormous range of impacts! Science sure is ridiculous!
The question is, if humans never existed, would the bees have died out anyways as the climate would eventually change by the same amount as we are coming out of an ice age.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Nice non sequitur. I was referring to your completely off-the-mark claim that pesticides were killing bees. Once I read that claim, it's hard to believe that there's any sort of logic or science behind your other claim.
To be blunt: it appears you might be just pulling stuff out of your ass.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
It's normal when people are trying to poison the bees with flupyradifurone/neonics and simultaneously taking their habitat away. Of course they're dying out.
Climate change is another issue but you can't debate the dangers of bee toxins being sprayed on agricultural crops, and habitat loss is easy to demonstrate.
Too bad this audience is all basement dwellers, you guys should really take up bee friendly gardening.
$
If I'm reading your multitude of comments on this subject correctly, you're saying, "fuck the wild honeybees, private industry will just make more of them and truck them around more and everything will be okay. yay capitalism!"
Quiet please.
We are having a moment of silence for the wild cows.
Perhaps. Also, the universe wouldn't be permeated with toxic, liberal guilt.
Well, when it is over, I bet there will be absolutely no proof that the human race self-exterminated due to sheer stupidity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yep. The obvious point that you miss is, if we kill off the bees quicker, do we also kill off ourselves quicker?
Or are you just too shortsighted to see that?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Temperatures have not changed in 18 years? Where I am (Northern Hemisphere) it sure feels warmer this month than it felt 6 months ago.
And no such thing as climate change.
Sheesh. You're just going "Don't attribute it unless I like what you attribute it to!!!!!".
Sensitive much? I don't believe I said anything in that sentence that should indicate that I doubt that the climate is changing, or that humans likely are the cause. I also didn't type anything to indicate that I think we shouldn't study the changing climate to see what effects it will have on our society. I was just wondering if this same thing would happen without the man made climate impacts (slower change). Likely the answer is no, they bees would have had time to adapt and migrate with a slower changing climate.
As far as Ag goes, they should be fine as honeybee =/= bumblebee and moving colonies of honeybees around to farms is actually not a terribly big deal.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Then, we can privatize bumblebees the way white rhinos were privatized and the free market will work everything out by magic. Enviropreneurship, FTW!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Slashdot climate change discussions, man. It's Friday, Friday.
What time does the men's rights activist clickbait get posted? Then the real fun starts.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And there's no such thing as climate change, amirite?
You are welcome on my lawn.
There could be plenty ... just no one to examine it.
Absolutely. I'm advocating that quadruple CO2 emissions every year. From all those experts working for the Wall STreet Journal and the Koch Brothers, we know it is absolute truth that not only are CO2 emissions completely harmless, but in fact, CO2 is so astonishingly healthy that we should be able to quadruple crop yields. We should be doing everything we can to pump more "green house" gasses into the atmosphere, because, you know, green houses are really good things.
Oh, and we should really look at, if not executing every single climatologist out there, then forcing them to work in the bountiful fields we produce through the emission of that healthy wondrous gas, carbon dioxide, truly one of the Invisible Hand's greatest gifts to humanity.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The future of drones is not in delivering packages. It is in replacing all the small but critical pollinators.
Bees do just fine taking up residence in people's exterior walls.
If this is a trend that predates you then there's a strong chance it's not the current trendy thing people are fixating on NOW.
Or have you run out of things to blame on climate change in the here and now and have to start with historical events.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This summer has felt pretty cool to me.
Chemtrials are killing the bees , they want to decrease the population by starvation.
See Hunger Games for your overlords plans.
This time, at least TRY to engage the forebrain. What you wrote makes no sense. It's incoherent and not even god itself would have a snowball in hell's chance of working out what the fuck you mean.
Climate change is causing bee populations to decline
Response? "Yeah, so no such thing as disease!"
Which is EQUALLY VALIDLY responded with "Yeah, so no such thing as climate change!"
Either valid in both, in which case ANSWER THE FUCKING CASE. Or not. In which case what the fuck are you doing responding to this one?
Oh, right. Climate change means you feel you're being "blamed" and that's NOT ALLOWED.
Fucking childish assholes the lot of you.
It's the earthworm that profoundly changed forests.
Uhh, but I also cited disease in the first post. What you are doing is called "strawmanning". Stop it.
Those fossil fuel companies provide me with products that I find extremely useful. Those companies underpin our modern, comfortable, and productive lifestyle.
What has a climatologist ever done for me? Besides enrage me with their sophomoric statistics errors?
Yeah, those filthy climatologists! Their first consideration should be your comfort. Science should only ever report results that make you feel better. Fucking scientists. We should kill them all!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The real question is, if human beings never existed, would bumble bees have developed intelligence and civilization, as no other species filled that niche.
This really gets to the heart of the debate.
Play Command HQ online
The sun, ocean currents, volcanoes, forest fires, water vapour (clouds), and other elements of nature are conspiring to warm the planet like at the end of the last ice age.
No. Because bumble bee fingers would never have been able to depress the clicky-keys on a Model M IBM keyboard. So pretty much all technological advancements of beeworld would have stopped there.
Bumblebees are clearly Communist Ecoterrorists out to destroy our fine, God-fearing Capitalist agricultural industry. We should immediately start executing those evil climatologists. God and the Invisible Hand would never permit massive CO2 emissions to effect humans, and anyone that says so should be taken out and beaten to death.
Well, get ready to start beating, because apparently the (interim) solution is asexual reproduction:
https://xkcd.com/1259/
I read one theory is that its not the pesticides that are killing them but modern farming in general. As more and more land is put under cultivation and farms industrialize and specialize you get more farm fields and less forest/wet lands/other. Additionally industrialization of agriculture is trading small farms that may have multiple crops on tens of acres each for farms that have a single crop on 100s of acres.
The impact is that rather than having a variety of plants blooming at all different times a large area might have only one or only a few kind of plants the bloom at a specific time. The effect is the bees are left with nothing to eat the rest of the time.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Bees, like any animal, would follow their main food sources This suggests their main plants are disappearing south faster than they are expanding north.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Same argument for polar bears, which have survived many ice age/warmer-than-now cycles. Like they are idiots that can't hang out on land in northern Canada.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
All evidence points to Julian Simon being right over Malthusian ideas.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth. No, this isn't a troll. I am serious.
We can less recognize the state of technology in 100 years than 1915 could of now. And 1815 vs. 200 years from now. And 1715 vs. 300 years from now.
So, people of 1815, stop panicking over what the world will be like in 2015 because your concerns will be irrelevant and on the ash heap of history. I know you are worried horse dung dust should be 300 feet deep around cities by 2015, and God knows how 2015 will feed 3 billion people when it takes ships 6 months to cross the ocean, even if you could spare that many farmhands to sail the ships.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Fucking Slash-Dot with it's liberal BULLSHIT! Just shut up with the liberal crap and stay focused on tech...
This news is particularly sad to me on a personal level, as bumblebees are one of the few insects that both tolerate you petting them lightly, and are fuzzy enough to make it rewarding (moths are the other, but they're quite fragile). Unlike honeybees and wasps, they rarely sting, and their slowness cuts the danger even further to making it essentially nil. I've never been stung by a bumblebee. The slow flight also makes it pretty easy to pet them while they're busy feeding on nectar and pollinating, and if you're gentle, they barely react to your touch (just don't touch the wings, obviously).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
...the only exercise Liberals aspire to? The fact that bumblebees are not colonizing new areas "opened up by global warming" - especially in the face of the fact that no warming has been seen for twenty years except by people who expect to make money from it - is clear evidence that their decline has some other cause. It's not like the damned bees are refusing to use the new territory. What? Are they offended about warming and doing a racial suicide to make us feel guilty?
Come on, if you want to keep up the charade at least put a little thought into the story. Is that just too much to ask?
Unfortunately, you are way off. People worried about climate and food as soon as they were able to and most still do so today. Sure, not with a strategic view, but the problem has been mostly unchanged for a long, long time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Considering Polar Bears only evolved their current teeth about 10,000-20,000 years ago, strictly speaking the current species has not survived many cycles.
Polar Bears are marine animals and dependent on hunting seal, so hanging around on land leads to starvation.
Of course they can evolve into Pizzly bears which can live on land but strictly speaking, they're not Polar bears anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
And all along I thought it was Monsanto.
Silly me. It was me all along! I guess I'll have to stop putting teh fossil fuels in my burner.
You must be thinking about WASPs, honey.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The rate of change is what makes AGW particularly dangerous to most species. Unlike the onset/retreat of most ice ages, this time its not just climate change but climate shock.
Yup. All us evil humans are causing all that bad climate stuff. Absolutely that is what's killing off the European Honey Bee. The fact that Africanized Honey Bees introduced by an idiot in the 50's coming into the warm climates in the southern US making the bees less productive and pushing out the traditional Honey Bees has absolutely nothing to do with it. Damn, them Africanized Bees, they just hate the cold weather. Wow. Another study written for more grant money. This is such a non isue with respect to the climate that changes all by itself. When the experts can pick a single spot on the globe and "predict" the weather with 100% acurracy for more than a week i will pay them more attention. We used to call it GIGO.. Remember when we used to innovate?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth. No, this isn't a troll. I am serious.
Before we do that we need to terraform Mars and probably Venus so we can grow enough food to feed a Trantorized Earth. Note that Asimov had 20 nearby agricultural worlds to supply Trantor's food.
Pesticides and AGW are not mutually exclusive, neither issue is "speculative" in the sense they both have hard evidence for their claims. The interesting claim in TFA is that unlike most other lifeforms, bumblebees have stubbornly refused to move poleward with the climate. It's an odd observation, which is a good thing since most scientific discoveries are preceded by the words "that's odd".
Also society can, and does, tackle more than one issue simultaneously, fixing the pesticide issue would certainly boost populations but it will do nothing to encourage them to move with their food source.
Oblig car analogy, We have a flat tyre and broken fan belt, we won't get very far until we fix both problems.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"There seems to be an enormous cottage industry of scientists in ancillary subfields writing a lot of papers about climate change impacts, that dominate the climate change literature (and probably the funding, if it was tracked). Will any of these papers stand the test of time like the Manabe and Wetherald paper has? I suspect that nearly all these papers from the ancillary subfields implicitly assume (97% and all that) that recent climate change is attributed to humans (without having any first order understanding of climate dynamics and climate change attribution). Especially if humans turn out not to be the dominant cause of recent climate change and particularly extreme events, these publications will not stand the test of time and and the cottage industry of climate impacts will shrivel. We shall see."
Dr. Judith Curry
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Quite.
Yea, global warming. It has not thing to do with the neoniconoids http://www.nature.com/nature/j... . So now we're willing to kill our bees on the global warming alter? What a load of crap. As if bees can't take change. They live from the equator all the way up to the arctic circle.
Don't believe it. More man made global warming BS. Yes, we are warming up. Check out Venice in the 1300s, the Adriatic was coming in way back then. No man made GW back then - obviously. None now. Just a way to take money from all of us and give it to guys like Al Gore and Maurice Strong.
If this is a trend that predates you then there's a strong chance it's not the current trendy thing people are fixating on NOW.
Or have you run out of things to blame on climate change in the here and now and have to start with historical events.
The bees are consuming too much gluten.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Indeed, this is the case of the cult science of Climate Change vs. the cult science of Evolution. Considering how many warming periods and ice ages bumblebees have survived, it's ludicrous to suggest that they can't adapt to a changing climate through basic "These bees survived because they moved further North. The further North, the more likely the hive is to split and thrive. Therefore, we can predict that the Bumblebees will, as a species, propagate North" which is the least-disagreeable pillar of evolutionary science .
It is easy to demonstrate that evolution is false. Dodos were made extinct by hunters. If there was any truth to evolution, a bulletproof dodo would have evolved.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Science Friday podcast last week interviewed a bumblebee expert. He said there was no evidence that bumblebees do worse in regions that use heavy pesticide vs areas out in the wild where little to no pesticide is detected. According to the guest, climate change really is the largest factor in their decline.
I think you may be referring to honeybees that are more closely related to agriculture and pesticide use.
You didn't "cite" anything. You pulled two theories out of your ass, one of which was wildly off-base, and going by that, why would I think your second theory had any merit, seeing as how you're an idiot?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.