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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.
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.
"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
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes. I "hear" that silence here in France too. That silence is frightening me. Nobody under 20 would understand and the others mostly don't care or don't notice
Another german study on insect collapse https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-04774-7
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.
This sort of shrill hyperbolic alarmism is counterproductive to getting people to take climate change seriously.
I keep saying that.
If anybody's wondering why folks like me are skeptical, it's because of decades of shrill alarmism.
If you were trying to make skeptics, you couldn't have done a better job.