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'Hyperalarming' Study Shows Massive Insect Loss (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), the study found, and the forest's insect-eating animals have gone missing, too. The latest report, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that this startling loss of insect abundance extends to the Americas. The study's authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates.
Bradford Lister, a biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, has been studying rain forest insects in Puerto Rico since the 1970s. "We went down in '76, '77 expressly to measure the resources: the insects and the insectivores in the rain forest, the birds, the frogs, the lizards," Lister said. He came back nearly 40 years later, with his colleague Andrés García, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. What the scientists did not see on their return troubled them. "Boy, it was immediately obvious when we went into that forest," Lister said. Fewer birds flitted overhead. The butterflies, once abundant, had all but vanished. García and Lister once again measured the forest's insects and other invertebrates, a group called arthropods that includes spiders and centipedes. The researchers trapped arthropods on the ground in plates covered in a sticky glue, and raised several more plates about three feet into the canopy. The researchers also swept nets over the brush hundreds of times, collecting the critters that crawled through the vegetation. Each technique revealed the biomass (the dry weight of all the captured invertebrates) had significantly decreased from 1976 to the present day. The sweep sample biomass decreased to a fourth or an eighth of what it had been. Between January 1977 and January 2013, the catch rate in the sticky ground traps fell 60-fold. The study also found a 30-percent drop in anole lizards, which eat arthropods. Some anole species have disappeared entirely from the interior forest. Another research team captured insect-eating frogs and birds in 1990 and 2005, and found a 50 percent decrease in the number of captures. The authors attribute this decline to the changing climate.
Bradford Lister, a biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, has been studying rain forest insects in Puerto Rico since the 1970s. "We went down in '76, '77 expressly to measure the resources: the insects and the insectivores in the rain forest, the birds, the frogs, the lizards," Lister said. He came back nearly 40 years later, with his colleague Andrés García, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. What the scientists did not see on their return troubled them. "Boy, it was immediately obvious when we went into that forest," Lister said. Fewer birds flitted overhead. The butterflies, once abundant, had all but vanished. García and Lister once again measured the forest's insects and other invertebrates, a group called arthropods that includes spiders and centipedes. The researchers trapped arthropods on the ground in plates covered in a sticky glue, and raised several more plates about three feet into the canopy. The researchers also swept nets over the brush hundreds of times, collecting the critters that crawled through the vegetation. Each technique revealed the biomass (the dry weight of all the captured invertebrates) had significantly decreased from 1976 to the present day. The sweep sample biomass decreased to a fourth or an eighth of what it had been. Between January 1977 and January 2013, the catch rate in the sticky ground traps fell 60-fold. The study also found a 30-percent drop in anole lizards, which eat arthropods. Some anole species have disappeared entirely from the interior forest. Another research team captured insect-eating frogs and birds in 1990 and 2005, and found a 50 percent decrease in the number of captures. The authors attribute this decline to the changing climate.
windscreen the past four decades, this has been a happening. Already.
The standard complaints about drugs, antibiotics, and surfactants will certainly be suspect, but I wonder whether migration patterns might be affected by roads. It certainly must at least be putting some evolutionary pressure on the beasties what with the slabs of hot, dangerous pavement blocking things off every which way.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Ever since 1976, scientists have been running exhaustive studies to track the loss of insects that involve trapping and killing millions of bugs. Scientists now believe running constant sampling on that scale may have affected the bug populations.
Wouldn't insects thrive even more in warmer climate???
Also, how is one relatively small forest a good sample to base this claim? Need more evidence...
According to this wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... there's around 40% coverage of impervious surface (Roads/buildings/concrete areas, etc). These types of areas typically humans want eradicated of insect life... It stands to be a logical consequence that 30% of the insects which traditionally live in non-impervious areas would disappear.
It seems to me that the study is alarmist and reporting results we should already know if we thought about it, like we start with "10,000 more cars are sold in this area" and then a study says "40,000 more tires were sold in this area!"
is out. What then are we going to eat when we run out of food?
Oh, I know. Soylent Green.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
A directed attack that was claimed would actually destroy the ecosystem up through birds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Which just wound up seeing to it poor people got malaria
Now global warming has killed off insects by making conditions more favorable to them ? Is there no limit to its power.
Didn't Puerto Rico just have a massive hurricane? That'd kill some bugs
You are lying.
From the study:
climate warming is the major driver of reductions in arthropod abundance, indirectly precipitating a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web
I don't respond to AC's.
You're full of beetlejuice.
I bought an insect fogger this year and it's super fun to use.
Try local pollution and continuous habitat loss. When you destroy habitat (especially continuous habitat) you lose. Much more of a threat than climate change.
If insects are gone, then there is more oxygen left over for us, right?
climate warming is the major driver of reductions in arthropod abundance
So they say, but it makes no sense - insects thrive in warmer climates. Go to Houston, then to Bismark, and see which has more insects... and even though they are scientists, they are using the term "hyperalarming". Does that really not throw up any red flags for you?
Sure seems like a guy named "QuadEddie" is more trustworthy to me, and even has a more plausible theory to offer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Try going camping in Wisconsin sometime... There is no loss in the number of insects. I wish there was. I really wish there was.
Unless you want to drive more and more logical, reasonable people to be deniers, then stop blaming every stupid thing on fucking climate change!
To say that a less than 1 degree increase in average temperatures has had more of a detrimental effect on insect populations compared to the billions of gallons of insecticide we spew into the environment every year is OBVIOUSLY (to anyone with a quarter of a functioning brain) fucking retarded!
Gee...which kind of environment has more insects? Cold climates or tropical climates? FFS!!!!
Calling someone gay is a weak insult. Lame.
This is in the RAIN FOREST geniuses. There are zero paved roads there. Climate change is a major factor in environmental habitability EVERYWHERE. I don't see why you'd think anyone would take your gut instinct over the data.
Whatever your rationale for thinking you know better than the study's authors, having not even read it you obviously do not.
You forgot to mention Trump, but the study would have had the same results if Queen Hillary and First Lady Billary were in office.
Even if the cause isn't just 'climate change', whatever is causing it is almost certainly anthropogenic. Basically, it all comes down to humans should be pulling their collective head in if they want to keep living in harmony with nature on this planet.
Why not encourage it?
Not really, there are things we CAN DO. Stopping the pollution would be job one. We have alternatives, they cost a little more right now but it evens out. Replacing old tech with new creates jobs. Starting today makes $ sense.
It's such a braindead argument that dishonest faggots like Kendall make, that nothing we can do would make any difference and it's impossible, and then you catch them lying like moronic faggots about the science, lol. Get a rope.
So what's different this time? I mean, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period - all were hotter and longer than the current burst. I guess modern insects and mammals are just too wimpy...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
a uckers driving on t avement complaint of things as odd as their creme spoiled and the matchstick flames to light their tobacco mysteriously burns in only a blue color.
A few expeditions into thejungles reported of a strange species of spider that lives in social colonies lurking about the rainforest canopy. One man on the expedition died mysteriously of a strange wound and shipped back to Best America , USA without a worry or doubt.
What could go wrong?
" pulling their collective head in " - I read that as putting their collective head in the sand somehow. The current denialist GOP "plan"
And if the insect decline reported is accurate, I can no longer afford to feed them. Apologies to anyone who accidentally gets in their way. I guess there really is no limit to their growth...
Which companies do we start suing?
I'm sure I'll be labeled as a climate change denier, which isn't the case, but they only took two samples, one in the 70s and one today? With so little data, couldn't there be a lot of different reasons for the drop in insect population? Or did I misunderstand something with the study.
We killed it.. now (because we are so dim and slow) we are finally noticing, far to late.
And leave him there, so he understands the impact of aridity on sustaining existing populations that he also depends on. It will be a thirsty if brief revelation, but I think he'll finally understand how powerful it can be.
do you have any data to support this claim?
You forgot to call them Igor, Edgelord.
There is no mention in this summary to changes or significance in fly, beetle, cockroach, locust, flea, mite, tick, and mosquito populations.
Insects are annoying. They are also extremely adaptable. They will adapt, or other insects will fill the void left by those that don't.
The world changes, fucking duh. Ecosystems change. Climate changes. Even when we're not involved.
Ecosystem disruption, massive die-offs, and it scales up all the way through the food chain.
Not only are you far too stupid to even consider refuting his point or answering his logical question, but you even more retardedly decided that attacking the poster with a strawman even though you're so fucking stupid that you typed out a hashtag with spaces in it.
Great news. Really great news.
Signed: Malaria doctors. Other doctors dealing with insect-transmitted illnesses which are prevalent in tropics.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not some mysterious intellectual curiousity untapped by the scientific world, it's Lyinwood Rooster, known denialist shill, known Putin dick cozy, all of it.
We'll wait, you go catch up to the present, start at the beginning like we all did. Really take in the totality of the denialist faggot lies. Then come at me on tact again, bro, and we'll nicely debate why his premise is retarded and dishonest on its face as he tries to blather unsubstantiated half truths as if that counters scientific study of merit. And yes, he did claim "bugs are wimps" above, so run along now and take in your "scientific mind" at work.
We'll wait. Read up. Know who you're vouching for like we all know them, then continue being a fucking moron or whatever it is you otherwise do lol.
I'm super glad I don't have kids. Our rapidly changing ecosystem is going to make planet Earth really, really nasty for humans in the next century.
We're already starting to see mass migration due to climate change. That's going to get worse because currently habitable areas are going to become uninhabitable, and because of exponential population growth.
If we have some food systems collapse, as these insect studies seem to indicate is already happening, well... that's pretty scary.
Humans have grown technology much faster than than they have the ability to think about the repercussions of using it. This isn't good at all.
I don't respond to AC's.
You guys never tire of waiitng for the apocalypse to come?
If you want to post some annoying off topic anti-Trump stuff in an effort to ignite a political flamewar in every story, you could have said something like 'What do you mean invertebrate decline? We've got a spineless person in the White House!'
Instead, you give us this. Weak. Come on, show a little effort. Work for your rubles.
They've told us that meat production is unsustainable and in the future we will have to eat insects.
Maybe that prediction won't come true after all.
J
That's evolution, right there, in front of your eyes! Those critters are getting smarter!
I've been spraying pesticides by the gallon. It's finally starting to show value for all of my work!
oh!! it was expected
Should I be complaining about systemd using vi or emacs? Tabs or spaces?
I guess modern insects and mammals are just too wimpy...
Bloody snowflake insects!
If (Character != "Blindly Agree")
{
Deplatform( Character);
Harass( Character.);
Threaten( Character.);
Phyiscal_Violence(Character);
}
mosquitoes are still around, in droves.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The grannies need religious and political authorities to enforce their overpopulation agenda, so the suicide cult keeps rolling along.
Here in St. Petersburg, Russia, mosquitoes have all but disappeared in the city. There are fewer of them in the forests, too.
If you want to post some annoying off topic anti-Trump stuff in an effort to ignite a political flamewar in every story, you could have said something like 'What do you mean invertebrate decline? We've got a spineless person in the White House!' Instead, you give us this. Weak. Come on, show a little effort. Work for your rubles.
Let’s not forget his spineless Republican friends in Congress.
There has been a massive increase of diversion of the water from that rainforest.
https://www.fs.fed.us/global/i...
Lets not confuse the issue though ... it's all climate change.
Indeed.
"Given its long-term protected status (59), significant human perturbations have been virtually nonexistent within the Luquillo forest since the 1930s, and thus are an unlikely source of invertebrate declines. "
"Water diverted from the forest ranges from 7 to 17 percent of average flow throughout the year, with up to 54 percent of flow diverted from individual watersheds (table 5). A much higher percentage of average flow is diverted when intakes outside of the forest are considered (table 6)."
These assertions are not mutually compatible.
I have no problem with climate change. It's been changing for billions of years. And it used to be significantly hotter than it is now.
I can see this being a problem for the dumbasses sitting on millions in beachfront real estate, but their panic is not my panic.
Latex you Neanderthal.
What is different is that now the jet steam isn't pushing the weather like it used to do the hot periods today last 3-5 days longer. An interesting study showed that the closer to climatology you are for a career or knowledge the more likely you are to accept climate change. It also showed that individuals will become increasingly more skeptical depending on how little they know. Thus, judging by your comment you seem to know absolutely nothing about climate science. What I still don't get is even though conservatives are more traditional with their preferences they don't mind that in the case of the environment it doesn't matter if it is different from what they grew in. I suppose cheering for their team is more important. I was going to hunt down a link to the article but I don't feel like it.
I grew up in western Canada and have a vivid memory of the sheer mass of bugs that would get splooshed on the windshield, hood and radiator of dad's car when we went on summer holidays either east to Saskatchewan or west to BC on the no. 1 highway. Hell, I still sometimes have nightmares about the one summer when the grasshoppers flew into the car and were just blindly smashing their guts against the rear window as we drove through some godawful rural Alberta/Sask secondary highway to who knows where...
Now, moving me & my wife's stuff to the BC west coast over 6-8 trips by truck, not once have I needed to scrape the bug apocalypse off of my vehicle's hood. This alone tells me there is a definite collapse of invertebrate populations going on, as we speak, worldwide.
And I never thought of all things, *bees* would be something we'd have to worry about. Yet now we fret each summer about bee populations. This is not normal.
Nope. The "whoosh" has disappeared all those creepy crawlies...
Looks you never been to the tropics
Looks like*
"The study's authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates." - Sorry PinkBrain, you didn't refute their conclusion very well with your one-liner there. Science is harder than you've considered thus far.
Someday maybe after you've been to school for this and established your credentials and faced peer review and been published, your opinion on this will matter more than the scientific analyses of experts. Someday. Maybe.
Stay with it.
They discounted all other potential sources without justification or references. Diverting up to 54% of the water of watersheds inside the rainforest is significant enough by fucking common sense that it requires justification to discount.
Of course fucking common sense as well as normal common sense is in short supply, especially among modern scientists ... the ones in 2007 were a little more honest.
What I refuted was their assertion there were no other significant perturbations.
This just in; Hyperbole is up, normal reporting is down.
The insects are clearly in cahoots with the scientific community and are hiding out of site in a bid to trick the politicians into action.
Inherit this planet? Ha, my arse. I will piss on your grave you little pests.
Rate of change is different. Insects can move, just not fast enough when the change is hundreds of times faster than anything natural outside of an asteroid strike.
And even there, the great dying took centuries, and that was an asteroid plus the entire Siberian flats turning into a magma pond.
Here, we're still seeing change maybe twice that rate
That's pretty unusual.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think that's the Christians
Scientists don't think in those terms. You might be interested in how they do think, if so, you might try asking. If you don't care, then let the scientists think and do what they like. It's a free galaxy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You're forgetting several things.
1. When it was hotter, there was twice as much oxygen and no higher lifeforms.
2. The rate of change is greater than that from the asteroid strike that took out the dinosaurs. Rate of change, not magnitude, is what matters, as climate scientists keep pointing out.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No. This is in Puerto Rico, a place devastated by a hurricane last year. Of course the invertebrae population is in decline. The ones who hitched a ride off the island did so. The rest fell to their environment getting ripped up. To link this to climate change would first require peoving that that particular hurricane was a DIRECT result of climate change. Otherwise you just have plausible theory.
Some scientist needs to see if the lowering of biomass correlates to the increase in c02 in the atmosphere.
Temperature change in this case may not be the key. It could be the change in the atmosphere.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Not really. Those doctors will be frankly terrified by the news. Maybe you'll understand why, maybe not. If you don't, and are interested, ask. If you aren't interested, I can't help.
However, expect people including people you know and care about to die of malaria and other tropical diseases in higher latitudes in very large numbers over the coming decades.
And that's not good news.
I
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, they didn't.
The judge ruled there was no case to answer, which is not the same as losing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How about stopping polution because of real-world benefits instead of a doomsday phrophecy as likely as armageddon or ragnarok. Im all for efficiencies and closed loop ecosystems, purely from the logic of it. Im turned off by people standing in town square preaching âoethe end is nighâ. I immediately shutdown discorse when someone leads with rediculous hyperbole.
Found there where less and it must be climate change
Clearly they have proof or other scientific studies to base their claim on.
I mean by their logic I could take a stroll through Canada find a distinct lack of frogs and claim this was caused by a roving band of frog eating leprechauns
The rate of change was slower, so more time to migrate and adapt.
Rainfall patterns due to more forest and thus lower albedo meant less impact on the environment.
More forest and more open grassland meant a larger reserve of insects, so greater genetic diversity, so greater capacity to endure.
More wildflower species in existence meant alternative food sources.
Don't look at one variable, if you want to understand anything
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A couple of weeks ago I went about 1,000km inland from the coast. The outback is in drought and severely parched, but the flies are as oppressive as they've always been (hard to open your mouth without some flying into it) and there were moths and other light-attracted bugs swarming like crazy at night.
Back here on the coast, ants are everywhere. They were going crazy the other day in preparation for a storm that rolled through. This year there have been more mosquitos around here than I have seen in the 10 years I've been here.
Yeah, anecdotes don't equal data, but meh...
I've mentioned this before to family and friends.
When I was a kid (NOT THAT LONG AGO), I distinctly remember the HUNDREDS of lightning-bugs glowing. The night would pulse with flickering dots. We would run around and catch them and put them into jars and keep them overnight as lanterns.
Now, like, 10-15 years later, I have not seen more than a few dozen. It's just occasional blips. It doesn't matter where I go. It doesn't matter if I go home to my family's house where it was originally. I barely see them at all. If I tried to put them in a jar, I'd probably struggle to get more than twenty.
I think it is insecticides and herbicides. A recent study found roundup to be responsible largely for Honeybee Colony Collapse. You also have the huge amounts of insecticide people add to their lawns to control things like cinchbugs and snails, the vast amounts applied around peoples homes to control household pests, etc, the herbicides added to fields also affect insects and move up the food chain. All of this stuff washes with the rain into rivers and bodies of water and circulates through the environment.
The current rate of change (0.3%/century) is effectively zero compared to insects' breeding and adaptation rates.
How convenient--they waited to publish until after the hurricane wipes out the entire forest making it impossible to reproduce the results.
The judge ruled there was no case to answer, which is not the same as losing
Being ordered to pay Trumps legal fees means she lost.
Agreed. While possible that a centigrade shift in temperature played a role it seems unlikely.. More likely would be agriculture in the area and the accompanying use of heavy amounts of pesticides and herbicides. We keep a lot of bee hives where I live and I know we try to talk to the surrounding farms around us to ask them not to spray over the fields when plants are in bloom. One careless farmer within a few miles can kill half our bees. Seems pretty lazy to attribute to climate change when there are so many other likely factors. It's also the least desirable contributor to the problem because if it is the primary reason... there's nothing those poorer countries can do. I would want to be very sure before attributing it to climate change because it seems to me almost an apologist position.
So what's different this time? I mean, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period - all were hotter and longer than the current burst.
Well, the evidence suggests that you're probably wrong about the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warm Period being hotter and longer than the current warming.
I guess modern insects and mammals are just too wimpy...
Or, I guess you could ignore the evidence and invent your own explanations...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
AC there, showing us all the kind of company you keep when you vote Dem. Every post you make is a new Rep. voter. Congrats!
Yep, because Republican voters only have spite and resentment. They have no positive vision and can therefore only react to what other people do. So sure, run to the right when news of climate change gets too uncomfortable. Just watch Fox News; they'll tell you who to blame.
1) Okay, that's relevant how? And were dinosaurs really not higher lifeforms? What exactly is your definition of higher life form?
2) Absolute and utter horse shit, and you should know that. The asteroid strike is thought to have brought on a 2-3 degree change in a matter of months. We're at 30 years and something like 1 degree. Turns out when the sun doesn't shine, it cools off fast. See cloudy days and night.
It has been reported before, I think also here on slashdot. It would be interesting to estimate if the missing insects (their body is made of carbon and other elements) had a significant role as a carbon sink. A back-on-the-envelope calculation gives me roughly 1% or less of the world CO2 production, but I am not very expert in this field.
Diverting up to 54% of the water of watersheds inside the rainforest is significant enough by fucking common sense that it requires justification to discount.
That's not what your quote says. It says 7%-17% percent overall, with up to 54% of individual watersheds. You have provided no evidence to substantiate that they were studying in an area that had any significant reduction in the watershed, and no evidence to substantiate that a reduction of that magnitude would have the effect of reducing the insect population by between 75% and 87.5%.
Also from what I read of the report you linked, the water diversion happens between the rain forest and the ocean. That's after it left the area they were studying, which leads me to wonder if it even matters at all. Really, you seem to desperately grasping at straws. Personally, I think the scientists, who had previously studied the insect population in the rain forest, would have noticed if it was now dried out to the point that the majority of insects can no longer survive.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
what idiots, jumping on the "it's all climate change" bandwagon.
destroying forests for farmland with pesticides and herbicides is the cause.
Can't speak for Puerto Rico, but in the desert of Arizona, the bugs are very plentiful. Perhaps those missing frogs should start adjusting for the desert and come over here. And bring their friends. They'd have a full buffet to dine on.
Seriously, though, the question should be if those insects are all dead (gone forever) or if they moved elsewhere?
The homophobia gets old, and it doesn't win anybody over to your cause. Aristarchus on the red site wonders why homosexual men wind up being pushed to the alt-right. Well, he does not wonder, because he is clearly homophobic and has the icks, as does much of the pseudo-left these days. Now, I would prefer not to make excuses for people who move even farther right in response to the Democratic Party and its adherents embracing homophobia, so I hope to only provide a sociological reason.
Capitalism is the root cause of the paralysis surrounding climate change. People on the far right (the so-called "alt right") are being ground up and crushed by the systematic theft of wealth from the working and middle classes, and they rightly suspect that the costs of remediation for AGW will be extracted from the working class (that's them) by the ruling elites (even if they do not know why they are correct in this).
The only way that we will be able to effectively address climate change is a revolution by the international working class according to a socialist program. The democratic control of the means of production by the working class will enable us to both raise living standards--yes even in the USA--and begin the work of climate remediation. UN report warns of catastrophic consequences of climate change within 20 years:
The urgent measures needed to address climate change come into conflict with the two basic contradictions of the world capitalist system: the contradiction between a global economy and the division of the world into rival nation-states, and the contradiction between socialized production and the subordination of economic life to the accumulation of private profit.
That is, the global coordination and scientific planning required to organize the necessary transformations in energy and infrastructure is prevented by the fact that each capitalist state represents competing ruling elites, and the economy as a whole is controlled by the corporate and financial elite.
The development of mankind’s productive forces is not only impacting the environment, it has also made it possible to address this impact in a rational way. However, the development of these resources to tackle climate change—along with war, poverty and inequality—requires a complete socialist reorganization of economic life. The economy must be placed in the democratic control of the working class, the only social force capable of establishing a society based on human need, including a healthy global environment.
I, for one, welcome our new lack of insect overlords
What about us "faggots" who would really like to do something about climate change before ecosystems change too quickly for humans to adapt?
Or is this now a lesbian-only pursuit? Maybe you think you somehow have exclusive guardianship of the Earth because we are to presume you have a womb? I think we need your long form birth certificate and verification from two independent doctors that you menstruate regularly! Alas, this divisiveness gets us nowhere.
Earth abides. We need the Earth. She does not need us. Life will go on without us.
captcha: subverts
I said "up to 54%". As or the intakes being outside the rainforest, I quoted the relevant part already ... but I guess I can just do it again.
"Water diverted from the forest ranges from 7 to 17 percent of average flow throughout the year, with up to 54 percent of flow diverted from individual watersheds (table 5). A much higher percentage of average flow is diverted when intakes outside of the forest are considered (table 6)."
Why there are intakes in the forest at all I have no idea, but it is what it is ... which is to say a significant perturbation, something the current researchers maintained did not exist. Maybe those scientists were as perceptive as you, or maybe there is a need to manufacture a consensus.
The parent post is an example of the easiest way to spot paid Russian trolls: they use English incorrectly, with an emphasis on attempting argumentative vocabulary that they use incorrectly.
Projection.
I lived in PR during this time period. The major driver of year-to-year changes is the weather. The largest single driver is without doubt hurricanes. Hurricanes that pass over only one end of the island are much more tolerable than hurricanes that pass length-wise through the entire island. The area most renown for it's rain forests is, El Yunque, which is where I presume these measurements were taken. El Yunque, which also happens to be a 3000ft mountain on the East coast, is known as the protector of the island, bearing the brunt of west-ward progressing hurricanes.
The question is: how long does it take the fauna and insect population to recover from a CAT-3 direct hit? The vegetation substantially recovers within a couple of years. I suspect some insect populations are driven out of the island entirely under extreme circumstances and must be re-populated from neighboring islands. /wlb
Where's the study of the actual effects, in a controlled lab environment, of a 2C temperature increase on the creatures they're saying are so negatively impacted? There are none? Really? I'm shocked. (No, I'm not actually shocked).
What they're basically saying is my dog will die if I raise the temperature in my house from 20C to 22C. Or if I take him outside in the summer, I guess by their logic he'll spontaneously combust and start a forest fire.
There is so little science or scientific method being applied to "climate science." You get some people who claim to be scientists who will go observe something then jump STRAIGHT to a conclusion of "climate warming." And they wonder why they have such a credibility problem.
There was not twice as much oxygen during the Jurassic and Cretaceous period. And I would think dinosaurs and pterasaurs would be considered higher lifeforms.
I agree with your 2nd point.
I'm going to guess that you're thinking "oh he probably doesn't know that global warming is pushing the belt of biological viability of malaria-carrying insects north, and I'm going to pretend to be a wise-ass about it".
Now go read what we're actually talking about, and comprehend why you're wrong in both yours assumption about me, and your assumption about the increase in malaria deaths due to things discussed here. The only thing that is making malaria issues worse is the progression of the strains immune to drugs due to people not taking full doses as necessary in East and South Asia.
Mosquito eradication is one of the primary limiters of spread of both those types of malaria, and the types that are treatable.
Make up your minds already.
I've already been told I had to worry about global warming resulting in the disease-carrying insect population growing exponentially and putting us all at tremendously increased risk.
Now it's a "massive insect loss"?
When you keep contradicting yourself, people eventually stop paying attention. *That's* the first problem the global warmists have to solve - agree amongst themselves. You can't call it "settled science" when you make diametrically opposed predictions.
Stop debugging your system, it's causing climate change! You must not use Pentiums because they run hot, instead you must use only esp8266 arduinos. Bitcoin mining is right out!
Yeah, I am suspicious of pesticide use as well. Some of them stick around for a while, so the effects can be cumulative.
THAT SAYS : "Plastic is inert, that means it's harmless to life." and goes from there to defend plastic in the oceans as also totally harmless. Bear that in mind if you're considering Luckyo a source of any actual information, lol.
He's a moron.
I don't know that it is climate change, but what explains Germany's 76% decline in flying insects in pristine nature preserve habitat? That shit has me worried.
"In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves."
The study in question concluded in 2013, so no devastation, no hurricane, no man made displacement. Try again.
"The study's authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates. "
How is this NOT a good thing?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Adapt or die. Climate is always changing. Weak species will go extinct. This is a good thing if you actually believe that evolution makes species better.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Species that mutate faster will survive. Species that mutate slower or that move slower, will die. Good thing from an evolutionary standpoint.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Climate Scientists are like Creationists, they don't believe in evolution.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Twice as much oxygen is probably a good thing for some humans. Certainly for those with sickle cell anemia.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Bad for him; President Trump yesterday signed a bill to clean up the garbage gyres.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
That's ok, the greater oxygen content of the atmosphere combined with the malaria pressure will just increase the sickle cell anemia subspecies to compensate.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Eyewitness evidence is the best kind in the court of law, but try to reproduce it in the lab and "see" what you get.
Blah, Blah, Blah. Bill Clinton had sex in the White house, and it weren't with Hillary.
No need to worry CLIMATE CHANGE can do everything!
Lost your car keys? CLIMATE CHANGE!
Icy roads on the way to work CLIMATE CHANGE!
Hurricane in Florida Cli...oh sorry that was SUPER TRUMP!
Well, the climate sometimes changes, and typically changes slowly but that seems a bad reason to want to change it quickly. It's like saying because you can survive a low speed bump in a car park you should drive head on into another car at 70, and it'll be OK because it's just enabling the strong to survive.
I can think of multiple other sources of pollution that would as likely if not more so to cause this than temperature change. Plastics pollution would be the most obvious choice and in terms of invertebrates and reproduction rates actually somewhat supported by studies.
What does "Climate Change" really mean? Please, don't give me the line that it is all man made, we a destroying the earth. The Earth is NOT immovable! The orbit changes, the climate changes with it.
Who is the "denier"? a person who goes with the flow and _only_ accepts what he is told by the media, like CNN (Liberal?) or the Weather Channel (using undefined terms) or the Democrats (load and long) or the Republicans (business first)?
What is Earth's average temperature? In Seattle, the temperature increase when the third runway was built, leave the weather instruments between the runways and cutting off the upslope breeze from the Sound. The change to digital instruments that had to be located closer the buildings because wifi range was limited, so you get an increase. But wait, that was factored in and corrected, you really trust that correction? The forecasts can't tell you the weather five days out because of calculation truncation/rounding/incorrect starting values.
Use your head, not not that one, the one on your shoulders.
Humans breed slowly, thus mutate more slowly...
Meanwhile, Mosquitoes never seem to disappear...
If you actually believe that evolution makes species better, then you better explain what "better" means. I'm pretty sure survival of the fittest just means being able to survive the given environment, not being some subjective "better" species.
You're forgetting several things.
1. When it was hotter, there was twice as much oxygen and no higher lifeforms.
2. The rate of change is greater than that from the asteroid strike that took out the dinosaurs. Rate of change, not magnitude, is what matters, as climate scientists keep pointing out.
Both of these statements are myths. Even the MWP was hotter, and the change was just as fast.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The study in question concluded in 2013, so no devastation, no hurricane, no man made displacement. Try again.
SO those guys are such geniuses they took five years to publish?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I will laugh myself unconscious when some vile insignificant bug like nitrogen fixing bacteria suddenly go extinct and you starve to death. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. If you become the most important species left standing then there is nothing else left to feed yourself with. Also expect to have to exterminate all those people living somewhere that changed to uninhabitable first because they will want your lunch too if you still have one. It is also far more cost effective to stop the biosphere from dying out than it is to be try and be a winner on a world with a failed biosphere.
Unless you are the 1% of course because they think their money will save them. You do know that most of what passes for political discourse these days is the paid for opinions of the 1%?
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Mutations are random. So, no, that's bad from an evolutionary standpoint.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cheap shots are like bad whiskey - they only look good on the outside.
Climate scientists technically do not believe in evolution because science is not a belief system. They do, however, accept evolution - on the scale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. The speed everyone else accepts it as being for all higher lifeforms.
Climate change due to humans is taking place hundreds, maybe thousands, of times too fast for that. That matters.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Irrelevant. Dragonflies have remained unchanged for over 250 million years. Change for insects is very, very slow.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't worry. Once the damage is done, we can always sell high yield investments, use the money to buy rural property, dam/pollute the local watersource and then seize the downstream farm when it fails to meet Its loan payment and is sold at auction, heavily discounted. So we rich will still have food and wealth.
And thanks to tough on crime proposals, the sheriff will jail trespassers detected by my border funded drone security patrol, if I run out of castle doctrine backed ammo.
It's relevant because oxygen levels affect insects, what they can survive, where they can survive, how large they become.
That warming was brief. Brief spells do not a climate make. There was no significant warming, from a climate standpoint, from that strike.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
During the Carboniferous, oxygen was 40%. Last I heard, 40% is twice 20%.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What, you're saying that you have solid, compelling evidence that Carboniferous had 20% oxygen?
Want to share this?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ummm, no, it doesn't. The case was not thrown out with prejudice.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So what's different this time? I mean, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period - all were hotter and longer than the current burst.
Well, the evidence suggests that you're probably wrong about the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warm Period being hotter and longer than the current warming.
Viking vinyards in Canada. They thought it was mighty warm.
I would of waited the hurricane have cut a bit before doing a biomass count. That type of rain is hard on everything.
All that means is that species that are slow to adapt die and species that are quick to adapt survive.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I didn't say that we would survive....Though we have one advantage: technological evolution can happen extremely quickly.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yes. And so those species better able to survive the new environment, better able to adapt, will survive. Those that can't, didn't deserve to.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
But that won't happen, because some OTHER bug will just take its place.
Nobody said we were going to be the last species standing. The rule is adapt or die. If we can't adapt, then we die.
I suggest we stop trying to freeze our favorite climate and start adapting.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Mutations are random, but we already know of one hypermutative species, the tardigrade.
Those that are able to adapt, will survive. Those that don't, will go extinct. The question is, will we adapt, or will we waste a bunch of resources trying to fight the change?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Evolution can happen in a single generation, and does all the time.
TECHNICAL evolution, which our species and a few others are capable of, can happen even faster.
Adapt or die is the rule, but I see nothing in this situation that is going to prevent those species able to adapt from doing so.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Why would we want to live in harmony with nature? We should aspire to live in mastery of it.
They can attribute all they want regarding a changing climate. I no longer believe anything I hear or read about climate change.
/. can stop posting these stories.
As far as I'm concerned,
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Ummm, no, it doesn't. The case was not thrown out with prejudice.
okay. Go with that. She lost round 1.
Washington post says
Judge throws out Stormy Daniels’s defamation lawsuit against Trump
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from adult-film actress Stormy Daniels that claimed President Trump defamed her when he suggested she had lied about being threatened to keep quiet about their alleged relationship.
U.S. District Judge S. James Otero in Los Angeles ruled that Trump’s speech was protected by the First Amendment as the kind of “rhetorical hyperbole” normally associated with politics and public discourse in the United States.” He ordered Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, to pay Trump’s legal fees.
Trump attorney Charles Harder cheered Otero’s decision.
“No amount of spin or commentary by Stormy Daniels or her lawyer, Mr. Avenatti, can truthfully characterize today’s ruling in any way other than total victory for President Trump and total defeat for Stormy Daniels,” Harder said in an emailed statement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
What about all those Chinese stink bugs.
They seem to be doing ok.
Insects thrive in heat.
What is more like is plastics.
It is unusual but it's not climate change. There was a 2C change in the early antiquities warm period and no corresponding drop in insects. It's most likely plastics.
Here is kind of a smoking gun (yes I know it's a tabloid but it's regurgitated from science somewhere):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6183865/Microplastics-spread-food-chain-insect-larvae-eat-waste.html
You don't really understand how ecosystems work, do you...
Citation for this antiquity warm period?
I understand how EVOLUTION works, to build ecosystems. If one fails, another will take its place. There is nothing magical about it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Global Warming Means More Insects Threatening Food Crops â" A Lot More, Study Warns
https://insideclimatenews.org/...
One wonders who to believe...
No, it doesn't work like that. So no, you don't know how Evolution works.
Then explain the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade, which is so hyper evolutionary that it picks up new genes from what it eats.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Oh yes, it cannot possibly be cold in Antarctica if it's hot in the Kalahari,is that it? The world is a complex place, and the same change can have different effects in different places. Is it so hard to grasp that making hot places unbearably so, and temperate places more jungle like might not have such effects?
Were that I say, pancakes?