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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."
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.
"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
Also, crops are one thing, but I'm fine with banning frivolous uses of pesticides and herbicides. Nope, you don't get to have a perfect, green, dandelion-free lawn to impress Mr. and Mrs. Stepford next door. Mother Gaia is more important than the fuckin' Stepfords.
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.
I proved that the paper said :
"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. "
I proved that an USDA study said :
"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)."
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.
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 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
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.
100 corporations are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions. Even if every would-be environmentalist dropped dead tomorrow and took themselves off the board, we'd still be in trouble (assuming you want carbon emissions to go down). Meaningful change is only going to come at the the policy level. As an individual the change you can effect isn't even a a drop in the bucket.
It's nice if you try to be "green" as an individual if it makes you feel good, but as a consumer it's not very obvious whether a given admittedly ineffective decision will actually be a net benefit, and it's unreasonable to expect every consumer to read an environmental impact report every time they buy a can of beans.
100 corporations are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions.
That headline is misleading. From the article, "These companies, led by Saudi Aramco, Russian gas giant Gazprom, and Exxon Mobil, have produced about 923 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalents between 1988 to 2016."
Those companies produce oil and natural gas. So who's "responsible" for carbon emissions: the people who produce the oil and gas, or the people who burn the oil and gas? (As another note, people can use oil indirectly, for example by buying goods transported by ship, truck, or air: people tend to concentrate on their direct consumption while ignoring the indirect.)
Meaningful change is only going to come at the the policy level.
Probably true. A very large collection of individuals, acting together, could make a difference, but how likely is that?
I think one mistake people make is blaming, e.g., Big Oil. Corporations (in the US) have a disproportionate effect on government policy, but if people stopped buying oil-related products, Big Oil wouldn't be Big any more. It's always tempting to blame Somebody Else for problems, but I think the main problem is that billions of people just don't want change -- especially if they view the change as making them worse off. In addition, there's a lot of propaganda to convince people they don't need to change, or they don't need to change much.
I actually have some reusable plastic bags with the slogan, "I'm saving the planet". As if reusing plastic bags is going to save the planet.