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Insects Could Vanish Within a Century At Current Rate of Decline, Says Global Review (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a "catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems," according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century. The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are "essential" for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.
Insect population collapses have recently been reported in Germany and Puerto Rico, but the review strongly indicates the crisis is global. The researchers set out their conclusions in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper: "The [insect] trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting [on] life forms on our planet. The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanization and climate change are also significant factors. "One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects," the study says, noting a recent study in Puerto Rico where there was a 98% fall in ground insects over 35 years. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit.
Insect population collapses have recently been reported in Germany and Puerto Rico, but the review strongly indicates the crisis is global. The researchers set out their conclusions in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper: "The [insect] trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting [on] life forms on our planet. The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanization and climate change are also significant factors. "One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects," the study says, noting a recent study in Puerto Rico where there was a 98% fall in ground insects over 35 years. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit.
Is it really necessary to talk about extrapolation?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I see you did not pay attention in grade school AC. this is not surprising.
https://www.ck12.org/biology/i...
While the article is very short, I understand that your attention span is ALSO very short, as evidenced by your lack of creativity in your word choice in your ad-hominem. So, here is the pertinent portion of the article, with added bold emphasis.
I propose you see if there is actually a problem before acting or panicking. Wow, what a radical concept, to insist on replication of results.
Why not check to see if there are other comparable results before using rhetoric which depends on their non-existence?
https://journals.plos.org/plos...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Why, so you can bury your head in the sand and sing la la la la la whilst we exterminate the planet? Sure there will be some slow down eventually but so far in Europe at least half the insects are dead already and we are heading for a disaster the likes of which we've never seen before if we don't change our rape and pollute the planet ways.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanization and climate change are also significant factors.
No, habitat loss from intensive agriculture and urbanization are both the main driver.
The heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers are second.
Invasive species and diseases from microorganisms are third (not mentioned).
Climate change is fourth.
From the abstract:
The main drivers of species declines appear to be in order of importance:
i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation;
ii) pollution, mainly that by synthetic pesticides and fertilisers;
iii) biological factors, including pathogens and introduced species; and
iv) climate change.
The one time humans could have maybe made dent, with DDT and mosquitos, they checked out thanks to more fake science [reason.com] that claimed DDT harmed birds eggs.
No, that's not fake science.
DDT and Birds
Birds played a major role in creating awareness of pollution problems. Indeed, many people consider the modern environmental movement to have started with the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring, which described the results of the misuse of DDT and other pesticides. In the fable that began that volume, she wrote: "It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh." Silent Spring was heavily attacked by the pesticide industry and by narrowly trained entomologists, but its scientific foundation has stood the test of time. Misuse of pesticides is now widely recognized to threaten not only bird communities but human communities as well.
The potentially lethal impact of DDT on birds was first noted in the late 1950s when spraying to control the beetles that carry Dutch elm disease led to a slaughter of robins in Michigan and elsewhere. Researchers discovered that earthworms were accumulating the persistent pesticide and that the robins eating them were being poisoned. Other birds fell victim, too. Gradually, thanks in no small part to Carson's book, gigantic "broadcast spray" programs were brought under control.
But DDT, its breakdown products, and the other chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides (and nonpesticide chlorinated hydrocarbons such as PCBs) posed a more insidious threat to birds. Because these poisons are persistent they tend to concentrate as they move through the feeding sequences in communities that ecologists call "food chains." For example, in most marine communities, the living weight (biomass) of fish-eating birds is less than that of the fishes they eat. However, because chlorinated hydrocarbons accumulate in fatty tissues, when a ton of contaminated fishes is turned into 200 pounds of seabirds, most of the DDT from the numerous fishes ends up in a relatively few birds. As a result, the birds have a higher level of contamination per pound than the fishes. If Peregrine Falcons feed on the seabirds, the concentration becomes higher still. With several concentrating steps in the food chain below the level of fishes (for instance, tiny aquatic plants crustacea small fishes), very slight environmental contamination can be turned into a heavy pesticide load in birds at the top of the food chain. In one Long Island estuary, concentrations of less than a tenth of a part per million (PPM) of DDT in aquatic plants and plankton resulted in concentrations of 3-25 PPM in gulls, terns, cormorants, mergansers, herons, and ospreys.
"Bioconcentration" of pesticides in birds high on food chains occurs not only because there is usually reduced biomass at each step in those chains, but also because predatory birds tend to live a long time. They may take in only a little DDT per day, but they keep most of what they get, and they live many days.
The insidious aspect of this phenomenon is that large concentrations of chlorinated hydrocarbons do not usually kill the bird outright. Rather, DDT and its relatives alter the bird's calcium metabolism in a way that results in thin eggshells. Instead of eggs, heavily DDT-infested Brown Pelicans and Bald Eagles tend to find omelets in their nests, since the eggshells are unable to support the weight of the incubating bird.
Shell-thinning resulted in the decimation of the Brown Pelican populations in much of North America and the extermination the Peregrine Falcon in the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. Shell-thinning caused lesser declines in populations of Golden and Bald Eagles and White Pelicans, among others. Similar declines took place in the Br
The insect loss rate is a grossly inaccurate, and covers tiny little chunk of land.
What do you mean by "grossly inaccurate"?
As in plus or minus how much?
The authors seem to have data for 19 years (1993 to 2011, inclusive) for the walking sticks, and each of those was taken with 5 days of sampling over 10 traps for 50 samples to get each of the 19 points.
So there's some evidence of statistical rigour. How small is the "tiny little chink" of land?
As in what area?
Do you have any reason to suspect that this area isn't representative?
The 98% ground insect loss" between 1976 and 2012 was taken from a research plot of land in the Luquillo Mountains.
This plot of land was DESTROYED in 1990 by Hurricane Hugo, as was the insect and animal populations.
As you can see from figure 5 C, the walking stick population was declining overall since 1991. The decline is correlated with temperature (figure 5 D, same link as 5 C, above). It does not show a flat or recovering population as if the 1990 even had destroyed the population.
The paper attempts to blame this on an increase in temperature and max/min temperatures without any conclusive evidence, without any good data points
No they don't. They show that that is the likely cause using multiple regression, and discuss the alternative hypothesis of the effect of clear-cutting, showing to be not the case in the study area.
Oh, you're one of those conspiracy theory crackpots that think that climate scientists simply do 25 years of education, then get pathetically lowly paid positions as post docs rather than getting a highly paid job in the private sector, so that they can compete for grants that barely fund their research, and they do not get to pocket any of, because that's a sensible route to personal enrichment by deception?
Not a wonder you had so many misconceptions about the paper. Which science-denial website did you pick up your opinions from, if you don't mind be asking?
FYI, the only data points that are year on year contiguous that they have (2012 and 2013) actually show a small growth in the population.
Nope. As you can see from the figure I link, they have data for every year from 1993 to 2011 for walking sticks as well. Decreases occurred on 10 of those sequential years.
Climate Change is real and terrible, but the science behind this crap is utterly disgraceful.
Irony (adj): a bit like an iron.
This 98% is not BS. This was something that was put into peer reviewed scientific journals. You know, reviewed by scientists more qualified than either of us on this topic.
We are talking facts here and permanent ecosystem damage, not Alex Jones propaganda.
You might laugh at this, but no insects might mean a food shortage. Food shortages mean riots and wars as countries go for what fertile land is left. Wars, especially when people have nothing to lose, so they will be happy to fire up their backyard CRISPR lab to make bioweapons, will be devastating.
Yes, people make light of it, because Trump and the Republicans are able to keep the US and world economy at the most prosperous levels yet... but once people start starving, all bets are off.