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Insect Collapse: 'We Are Destroying Our Life Support Systems' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished. His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming. "It was just astonishing," Lister said. "Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You'd be there for hours picking them off the plates at night. But now the plates would come down after 12 hours in the tropical forest with a couple of lonely insects trapped or none at all."
"We are essentially destroying the very life support systems that allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, along with all the other life on the planet," Lister said. "It is just horrifying to watch us decimate the natural world like this." Lister calls these impacts a "bottom-up trophic cascade", in which the knock-on effects of the insect collapse surge up through the food chain. "I don't think most people have a systems view of the natural world," he said. "But it's all connected and when the invertebrates are declining the entire food web is going to suffer and degrade. It is a system-wide effect." To understand the global scale of an insect collapse that has so far only been glimpsed, Lister says, there is an urgent need for much more research in many more habitats. "More data, that is my mantra," he said.
"We are essentially destroying the very life support systems that allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, along with all the other life on the planet," Lister said. "It is just horrifying to watch us decimate the natural world like this." Lister calls these impacts a "bottom-up trophic cascade", in which the knock-on effects of the insect collapse surge up through the food chain. "I don't think most people have a systems view of the natural world," he said. "But it's all connected and when the invertebrates are declining the entire food web is going to suffer and degrade. It is a system-wide effect." To understand the global scale of an insect collapse that has so far only been glimpsed, Lister says, there is an urgent need for much more research in many more habitats. "More data, that is my mantra," he said.
The most likely culprit by far is global warming.
Really? The most likely culprit?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We just need to get used to eating jellyfish and locusts.
5 step plan to fixing this, fast.
1. Remove 2 billion people from the planet.
2. HVDC lines built to all major deserts.
3. All major deserts covered in as much solar power as we can build.
4. LFTR reactor research funded to pre-Jimmy-Carter levels.
5. Ban coal power outright.
Keep in mind that if we want to reverse the damage, we need to build excess power capacity (a lot of it) to pull CO2 out of the air as a feedstock for hydrocarbons or some other sequestration.
We had this dance already :
https://it.slashdot.org/story/...
As I said last time :
"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)."
https://www.fs.fed.us/global/i...
That forest isn't as pristine as the researchers pretend it to be.
What about pesticides and other toxins as well? We're dumping this shit into our environment and some of it is persistent. Agriculture is one thing, but whenever I see a house with a perfect, green lawn, I want to smack the owners in the face.
got a great deal on some spray that allowed for more exports and more profits every year.
Every year they spray and use more.
More people are trying to use the same land every year.
So human population need to expand into forests more every generation.
How to fix this:
Consider what and who is using so much strange spray on their crops.
Set the forests aside like the US does as a huge new national park. No more human activity is allowed.
See if the insects and critter populations recover when the import and use of crop spraying is regulated.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"Name one ecosystem that is better off for having agriculture moved into it?" Toby Hemenway http://bit.ly/1pnapoW
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
As opposed to nicontinoid bee killers, glyphosate, GMO baked-in toxins, AND climate change making their current habitat niche obsolete? I mean did you think none of these things affected eachother also? You have no data.
You danced, did you prove anything? no. All you did is "re-convince" yourself that no change was needed on your part. How convenient that you come to that conclusion every time, without any expertise or data. Interesting.
With the government shutdown and on life support, what is exactly is Donald Trump president of?
We are in the midst of a huge mass extinction event. It's up to us, our generation, to save what little we can for future generations. If humanity gets through this.. it will be our time RIGHT NOW that will be judged harshly. Grow plants, create pools for insects in your yard. Do whatever you can. At least, lucky for us, we have strong leaders who want to do something about it.
It's a rainforest, didn't you even read the summary? I mean I get it, it's nice to see you're trying a *deflection* instead of a flat out "no global warming", but you might at least try something closer to Puerto Rico's rainforest. e.g. blame hurricanes or brown people or something.
https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/climate-change-pr.pdf
It seems to have faced a 2.5 F degree rise in sea temperature since 1900 with a loss or rainfall and 4 inch rise in sea level since the 1960s. So the rainfall is likely to be the cause. So yeh, Global Warming.
Trump the fourth stooge mothafux! Putin is Moe, boss stooge!
Decimate means 10%, not 98%. Annihilate (reduce to zero) would be a more correct verb.
We are all walking dead, just most are to dumb to realize it. Those that foresaw it where ignored. We get what we deserve.
Six legs good, eight legs bad.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
WOLF!!!
It's a rainforest, didn't you even read the summary?
Pretty amusing coming from someone who did not even read the PDF he posted...
It seems to have faced a 2.5 F degree rise in sea temperature since 1900 with a loss or rainfall
We aren't talking about sea insects, now are we? Your OWN PDF states PR has seen a 1*F* (not even C) increase in land temperatures since mid 20th century... vastly less than seasonal variation.
Furthermore the paper speculated rainfall MIGHT lower, based on... nothing at all.
In reality rainfall has been cyclical but remained fairly steady (click on "MAX" below the chart).
This would be obvious to anyone who understands the effect of heat on large bodies of water, which surround PR.... A warmer climate means MORE RAINFALL which I cannot believe how few people, even now, understand.
Sorry to disturb your manufactured panic with actual real data... carry on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
once it's too late you can expect all the deniers to go to the ovens and gas chamber
Fine, so what do we get to do to all the alarmists that attempted to kill millions with extreme proposals to address climate change once we determine there was never any reason to panic some 10-20 years hence?
I also find it pretty amusing that even by your own logic sending the deniers to the gas chambers (which, P.S. you do realize puts you right up there directly with Hitler as one of a select group of people to use that.. solution....) would give them the most merciful death compared to the rest of you that slowly die as the Earth turns into Venus.
If you truly believe climate change to be beyond hope at some point, would not the ideal solution be to get rid of yourselves and let all of the "deniers" live to suffer through what you see as the inevitable and horrible end? Why would you seek to give comfort to your mortal enemy? :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Commies are hilarious. Thanks to you guys we've already seen what people eat once you take money out of the equation. Rats and dogs for the people, and caviar for the politically connected.
You're politically connected to rats and dogs, and you eat their shit. Congratulations, you back an actual traitor. See you at Trump's public hanging.
After not being bothered to check on the insect count for 35 years, is it a coincidence this count occurred a little more than a year after Hurricane Maria?
I'm guessing a category 4 hurricane doesn't do insect populations any favors.
The Soviets had "money". The problem was the whole nation was run by state monopolies. In the USA you have corporate monopolies like P&G. You have a lot of brands, sure, but most of them are part of only a few conglomerates. The more the conglomerates grow, the less real competition there is, prices go up, and salaries go down.
In Soviet Russia the government controls the method of production. In the U.S. the methos of production owns the government.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
We have sen the GOP economic plan, give all of the wealth to the upper 1% of the wealthy through tax breaks, destroying the economy's base, we have the same situation in the environment, bad GOP policies are destroying the environment's basic functioning.
In the UK nsect abundance has fallen by 75% over the last 27 years. I notice in woods where I used to constantly hear bird noise it is now mostly silent
I'm doubting your credentials for casually opining as if better sourced than collective expertise. We all see you don't study this. We see that you personally kvetch about trivial video game bullshit with more emotion and expertise.
I'm questioning your intelligence for offering your denialist opine in conflict with the world scientific consensus, flawed though it is. I think people like you are why biodiversity on Earth doesn't stand a chance. You're too lazy.
except we are the Tribbles.
Here's the thing:
What is destroying the planet are a) humans, lots and lots of humans and b) progress, industrialisation, travel
Or, in other words: Our life, and the things that make it cute.
I don't see volunteers for giving up either of that. Oh, plenty of people who want others to give it up. But almost all the "back to nature" freaks are doing so from a position of 1st world luxury and comfort, not from a position of hard field work and subsistance farming and starvation winters.
The solution is at the same time easy and unbelievably hard: We need to reduce our footprint on the planet, and the only sure way that we know will definitely work is by drastically reducing our numbers. Which is not a thing that will voluntarily happen, hence the solution being unbelievably hard. How do we reduce our numbers without genocide and without forcing people into having fewer children?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's not just the rainforest. In the Catskills and Hudson Valley of New York, the insect population has been devastated. There were practically no crickets or katydids in Kingston in September and October. It was wierd. The zombies living around me scarcely noticed. People are oblivious or in deep denial. There's been no sudden deforestation, uptick in heavy industry...hell we even cleaned up a few Superfund sites. And except for some drought in the late 90's or early 2000's the climate has not been exceptionally hot, cold or dry. Just damn irregular. Something else is going on -- or we reached a global ticking point. Personally I find it hard to imagine that so many species, especially hardy ones with plenty of food like crickets, katydids and moths, suddenly reached a tipping point due to our local climate change. "Chemtrails" perhaps? Who the fuck knows.
It's the overpopulation, stupid.
"Blame global warming," they say as they indiscriminately spray neonicotinoid pesticides literally everywhere.
If insects could be wiped out by a 1-2 degree variance in temperature, they would have gone extinct hundreds of millions of years ago.
This is OBVIOUSLY a result of PESTICIDE use.
GMO baked-in toxins,
That's a very efficient way to emergency-jettison any scientific credibility you might've had.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Maybe you shouldn't do it then.
Wasn't expecting it... but this really bugs me.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Maybe the bugs evolved to avoid sticky plates?
The article seemed to go out of it's way to not say when the second stage of the research was done.
But if it were after the 2017 hurricanes, one might posit a reason other than "global climate change".
...want to colonize (aka destroy) other planets?
Haha.
All those scientists and their sticky plates wiped out the insects.
Monsanto and it's huge propaganda campaign is to blame.
"Scaling... not incompatible to be libertarian at the state level, communist at the commune level... Singapore vs China... Norway (size of NYC borough) vs Canada vs USA" --Nassim Taleb http://youtu.bet3m8s/
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
WOLF!
I think that's called "fascism." didn't Nixon famously say in 1971, "we're all fascists now"?
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Hahahahahahaha
Global warming
Yes singular focus with no possible solution and only a hint of man made intervention
Enough already. Go back and find the real reason.
I see this in so much science reporting these days. Everything is blamed on 'climate change' out of hand. I'm not speaking for or against climate change, I'm saying it's lazy. And the link-bait publication of these lazy findings are just used to stoke the political 'See? We're all going to die!' back-and-forth. You find drastically missing insects? Run through tests based on established scientific method and figure out why. If it is climate change then show how it is that and not something else.
Seriously, we are destroying our planet due to massive CO2. We need to stop burning all fossil fuel. The only way is adding Nukes to AE.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You contribute nothing to life. Go commit suicide and help the plant.
It's not the human population, it's the human resource consumption. As the average American uses 30 times the amount of resources as people in developing countries, removing the USA would be equivalent to "removing" the poor from around the world many times over.
Sure.
Cost and time make nuclear power unjustifiable. Taking 20 years and $20 billion to build a new nuclear power plant is already a non-starter even if climate change didn't exist. But if we need to replace coal, wind and solar can be rolled out in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, with none of the risks presented by nuclear energy.
You say that like it was a bad thing. Soviets had universal health care, education, housing, and no stock market bubbles that would periodically pop, that would make the poor poorer and the rich richer, as capitalists would swoop in and buy up assets at discount prices.
And trump said, we are all Nazis now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We'll find a way to make do with a shitty and changing environment. Unfortunately the only remaining insects will feed on us. We are made out of meat.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Opinion | Trump just deported a Nazi. That’s a move I can get behind. https://wapo.st/2whWU0F?tid=ss...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Rain forest insects aren't in my food chain. They could all disappear along with everything in that chain and I still get my burger and fries.
"Scaling... not incompatible to be libertarian at the state level, communist at the commune level... Singapore vs China... Norway (size of NYC borough) vs Canada vs USA" --Nassim Taleb http://youtu.bet3m8s/
corrected link: https://youtu.be/Dn_XEDPIeU8?t...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
There are plenty of examples across the globe where this clearly isn't the case, geography also plays a major part.
Exactly!, I've posted on this before and had Warming Alarmists deny that geography was largely responsible for deserts - sheesh.
From there, you ask if global warming is changing the GEOGRAPHY of Puerto Rico, or anywhere else? Which it is obviously not.
Then WHY do so many people think rainfall will alter substantially? Especially when as I said measured rainfall has not really changed at all over the decades.
People are talking about regions magically going to desert just because of a small average temperature increase which is sheer nonsense, because as you and I both say, geography plays a huge part in this.
it's not impossible that rising temperatures will dry Puerto Rico out somewhat more
Nothing is impossible, but I am not a unicorn yet, the sun did in fact rise this morning, and rainfall in Puerto Rico has not altered despite rising average temperatures.
it's equally possible that Puerto Rico's position as an island with decent sized mountains will increase rainfall around those mountains, whilst, say, drying out it's lower lying areas for example.
I've been to the deserts on the coasts of Peru. And I've been to Puerto Rico. They are very different situations, not the least of which is that Peru is part of a larger continent, where PR is, although large, still just an island that does not have whole mountain ranges scrubbing moisture.
So without the actual geography of PR changing, just how would that actually take place???
So before kicking off and implying people are dumb for not understanding warmer climate means more rainfall, please consider that that's a rather simplistic view,
I'm giving a simplistic view to people holding far more simplistic (really religious, based on faith and dogma alone) views; one step at a time man.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
. . . they also had a man-made famines, Holodomor. Millions died. Intentionally caused to supress an Ukrainian independence movement. Or maybe Stalin just really didn't like Ukrainians and Kazakhs. The standard of living in Moscow under soviet rule wasn't all that bad (as long as you weren't sent to the gulag in the night), but the other members in the union really got fucked over. IE, the rich fucks in Moscow got richer while the poor satellite states like Ukraine and Kazakhstan and the poor in the Urals got poorer.
Know your history before you expose the glories of a murderous and negligent system.
While this is true people even at the highest level of soviet society were mind blown by a simple visit to a supermarket in the U.S. They lacked incentive when it came to farming and had frequent shortages of foodstuffs probably due to lack of competition and existence of price controls. Granted they had less waste as result of scarcity.
Jesus Christ, I can't believe how lazy and desperate so-called "science" has become. It's as if science has been completely automated by a single line of code:
if (bad) blame_agw(); else praise_democrats();
You say that like it was a bad thing.
It was REALLY bad. And your UID is low enough that you should know this.
Soviets had universal health care
Translation: Everyone gets a burial.
education,
The U.S. has universal education through high school, which used to be harder to graduate from and actually teach you stuff. A HS diploma was proof you could be successful. Now even a Bachelors from big name state universities is suspect. That Russia gave free education to all makes me wonder how useful an education it was. Of course, the U.S.S.R. also gave free Reeducation to all. Hail the motherland!
housing
Ghettos and Slums for everyone!
no stock market bubbles that would periodically pop, that would make the poor poorer and the rich richer, as capitalists would swoop in and buy up assets at discount prices.
Just bread lines that would keep the ultra-poor masses in their place, starving and cold, and keep the richest Communist Party members rich.
The mentality that brought the downfall of life on Earth.
I just looked around a square meter outside, and there are no tigers or lions.
Therefore, I can only conclude global warming has decimated their populations.
Idiot Science == Idiot Answers
Sorry, assumed evolution made the insects avoid getting trapped
DIFFERENT PEOPLE entirely.
If the world's insects are dying, then why are the insects in office multiplying?
Just sayin'
And the worst pollution imaginable. Socialism doesn't work friend.
Except, there wasn't a drop in rainfall...
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I suspect it is all down to scientists over-collecting
Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You'd be there for hours picking them off the plates at night
If we engage more scientists to research the issue it will only get worse
Nullius in verba
bugs learning that sticky trraps are deadly?
OF course, this ignores the presumption that only humans are intelligent.
A presumption that life delights in smashing time and time again.
Nero is fiddling.
Not many movie fans here, apparently. I, however, appreciated the reference as that it really looks like if you watch the policies around land use and construction. Sure, private land use is tightly regulated, but when the local government does it in its lands, anything is possible.
The point is that the left refuses to recognise overpopulation as the real problem, making them as irrelevant as the right, which denies there is any problem.
It's common knowledge that Scandanavia and most of Europe are the nastiest shitholes on the planet. Africans and Indians both avoid it like the plague...
and I'm not your friend, dude.
Only if you follow the corporate narrative that Soylent Green is made from soybeans, lentils, and green. But people in the know, ya know SMART people, know what it's really made of.
You are one of the worst, not one of the best. Be more like EU or China.
"We have compared the performance of honeybees in cell phone radiation exposed and unexposed colonies. A significant (p 0.05) decline in colony strength and in the egg laying rate of the queen was observed. The behaviour of exposed foragers was negatively influenced by the exposure, there was neither honey nor pollen in the colony at the end of the experiment.”
Sharma, V.P. and N.K. Kumar. “Changes in honeybee behaviour and biology under the influence of cellphone radiations.” Current Science, vol. 98, no 10, 2010, pp. 1376-8.
Reductio ad Hitlerum is a debate losing logical fallacy.
Good thing I used Exposio ad Hitlerum then.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
all those insects probably moved to another place that now has the conditions their original habitat once had?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Have actually been to the rainforest in question. ... ... especially for insects which generally are a pretty hardy bunch of creatures.
Would really like to know how global warming is an issue
_This_ type of report is why there remain people highly skeptical of scientific pronouncements.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
You say that like it was a bad thing. Soviets had universal health care, education, housing, and no stock market bubbles that would periodically pop, that would make the poor poorer and the rich richer, as capitalists would swoop in and buy up assets at discount prices.
Have you actually met anyone from Russia? Have you asked them what they think about their "universal health care, education, housing, and no stock market bubbles"? It may be their home country, but they don't love the poor quality life that they have where they had to wait in lines to maybe buy food or maybe there wasn't actually any food. Not to mention all the other great quality things they have -- like Vodka so they can celebrate their fun, enjoyable paradise that the state gave them.