A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It's a catastrophe

[donotpissoffacow]

You think there will be fewer insecticides sprayed on farmlands around the globe in the years to come? Think again. It is the most uncomfortable of truths, but one which stares us in the face: that even the most successful organisms that have ever existed on earth are now being overwhelmed by the titanic scale of the human enterprise, as indeed, is the whole natural world.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/21/insects-giant-ecosystem-collapsing-human-activity-catastrophe

Contrary to some beliefs, humans did not arrive here via spaceship. We are part of the natural world.

[octoberlib]

1. Scary to even contemplate

The astonishing report highlighted in the Guardian, that the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by three quarters since 1989, threatening an “ecological Armageddon”, is the starkest warning yet; but it is only the latest in a series of studies which in the last five years have finally brought to public attention the real scale of the problem.

Does it matter? Even if bugs make you shudder? Oh yes. Insects are vital plant-pollinators and although most of our grain crops are pollinated by the wind, most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants, from daisies to our most splendid wild flower, the rare and beautiful lady’s slipper orchid.

Furthermore, insects form the base of thousands upon thousands of food chains, and their disappearance is a principal reason why Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970. Some declines have been catastrophic: the grey partridge, whose chicks fed on the insects once abundant in cornfields, and the charming spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, have both declined by more than 95%, while the red-backed shrike, which feeds on big beetles, became extinct in Britain in the 1990s.



Ecologically, catastrophe is the word for it.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/21/insects-giant-ecosystem-collapsing-human-activity-catastrophe


I keep thinking of the Black Mirror episode with the mechanical bees.

[democratisphere]

2. Spiecies of all kinds of creatures are being wiped out and made extinct

across this planet. Humans typically respond to crisises like this after it is too late and the species are gone.

[tecelote]

13. Case in point

Also from the Guardian:

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn

[democratisphere]

15. I know. The next Armageddon on Earth rests squarely on the shoulders of huMANs.

[roamer65]

21. Just wait until the nukes come out.

...and they will.

[Eliot Rosewater]

52. I keep saying within a month. The only reason it hasnt happened is

the guy in NK is not as much of a nut as trump is, at least I am hoping so.

I think Kim knows that there might not actually be a way to survive nukes while trump thinks there is.

Kim might be figuring out that trump actually is a complete idiot. Unable to process any information, at all.

Imagine how fucked we are that we have to rely on that loony bastard in NK to survive.

[red dog 1]

3. Kick for exposure!

In this case, the insects are "the canary in the cage."

IMO, if the world-wide use of pesticides and insecticides is not curtailed, we are all doomed!

[Irish_Dem]

4. Our turn will come. We already see it in increased illness,

learning disorders in the young and dementia in the old. Increased cancer rate.

[malaise]

5. Off to the greatest page for visibility

Rec

[Gidney N Cloyd]

6. I was out on the highway in farm country the other day...

It was a route I used to frequent as a kid with my parents going back to the 60s. Chicago to DeKalb. Still plenty of active farmland along the way despite decades of sprawl.
Anyway, for whatever reason, I noted to myself after I finished the roundtrip how little bug splatter I had on the windshield and grill. Back in the day they'd be caked on the car even this late in the season.

[gvstn]

7. It really is astounding.

3/4 less flying insects in Germany. That is a lot of clean windshields that should have dead bugs on them. Decreasing by 3/4 is a huge effect.

[donotpissoffacow]

8. when was the last time ...

you wiped bugs off your windshield? And where?

Me.. Maybe 1970, California. Drove 40K one year in the 80's--up and down and around, Canada to Reno to Palm Springs and don't remember more than an occasional lonely insect carcass. More bird poop than bugs.

[Mr.Bill]

11. I live in Lake County about 100 miles north of San Francisco.

Been here about 27 years and there are bugs on my windshield every day, with the possible exception of a very cold winter day.

[ornotna]

12. Plenty here in Florida

My work vehicle looks like a Jackson Pollock creation.

[sagesnow]

9. I've been able to sit out on my back deck in the evening, in the middle of farm country,

and get only one or two mosquito bites this summer. Crazy. BUT, there has been a HUGE explosion of Pirate Bugs this month like I have never seen. Their bites will drive you crazy. Something is definitely out of kilter...

[BigmanPigman]

10. Some insects and bugs are growing in numbers due to Climate Change too.

Bed bugs and mosquito's as well as fruitfies are becoming more abundant and they love, love, love to bite me 5 months out of the year for the past few years.

[Yupster]

14. There are simply way too many people in the world

and the population explosion goes on.

I just finished the book "The Exile." It covers Al-Quaida from 9-11 to the present.

Here's a little nugget. Osama had four wives, Najwa, Khairiah, Seham and Amal.

Najwa had her first of 11 children at age 16 when Osama was 14. Altogether he had at least 20 children. The girls were married off at 13 and usually had their first kid by 14.

I attached a table showing the birthrates of countries around the world. The current population explosion in Africa is astounding. The problem Europe is having is not so much a refugee problem as an out of control birthrate problem in Africa and the Middle East. This wave of immigrants will only be followed by many more.

Here's the table...

https://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=25

[roamer65]

22. We need to start providing financial incentives for birth control and abortion.

Stop paying people to have children and pay them NOT to have children instead.

[donotpissoffacow]

25. And pile on taxes if they have more than replacement

[Yupster]

29. But we're not the problem

The US birthrate is barely at replacement. Europe and Japan are way below replacement.

The problem is the incredible population explosion in Africa and the Middle East. You're going to need a better solution than raising their taxes.

The country with the highest birthrate in the world is Niger. Raising taxes isn't going to reduce Niger's birthrate.

[SaintLouisBlues]

33. By the raw numbers you are correct. By carbon footprint

the Western World is a huge part of the problem.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/

It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.
Tilford cites a litany of sobering statistics showing just how profligate Americans have been in using and abusing natural resources. For example, between 1900 and 1989 U.S. population tripled while its use of raw materials grew by a factor of 17. “With less than 5 percent of world population, the U.S. uses one-third of the world’s paper, a quarter of the world’s oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper,” he reports. “Our per capita use of energy, metals, minerals, forest products, fish, grains, meat, and even fresh water dwarfs that of people living in the developing world

[Yupster]

38. Yeah, so what happens when the one billion

people of India start using carbon at greater and greater rates. That's their goal and they have as much right to a car as anyone else does.

What happens when Africans come to Europe? Do they keep their African carbon footprint or do they get to have cars too?

The problem is a pretty clear bit of mathematics.

Population times consumption equals a big problem.

You can't solve the problem without solving the population problem.

[SaintLouisBlues]

40. We're fucked either way, but don't pretend the Western lifestyle is not the problem.

[Yupster]

41. It's just arithmetic

energy used times population

We could cut back our energy use 20 %. That will help, but if one billion Indians double their energy use in the next generation, any cuts we make will be overwhelmed.

There's no right to tell the Indians that we want cars but they don't have them, so the only answer is population reduction.

So how do you convince the people of Mali, Uganda, Niger and Afghanistan to stop having the highest birthrates in the world?

[donotpissoffacow]

34. Do you seriously think...

the US, Japan, Europe will not be African or Indian sooner or later?

[Yupster]

36. Demography is destiny

That's for sure.

Japan allows in few immigrants so they won't change nearly as fast.

For Europe the numbers are already cooked in. The philosophical question is, "Is it important that Germany exists with its German language and German culture?" Or France or Austria or Holland?

The Byzantine Empire survived as an imperial empire for over 1,000 years. Then one day they were gone and their elites were killed or fled. Is the world any worse off? Does the world miss the Byzantines? Will we miss the French or Germans any more?

[Yupster]

30. Is anyone paying the people of

Niger and Mali to have a lot of children? That's where the population explosion is, not in the USA. If it wasn't for immigration, our population wouldn't grow at all.

[SaintLouisBlues]

39. It is not about the shear numbers, it is about resource usage per capita.

[Yupster]

42. It's multiplication

energy use per person times number of people equals total energy used.

Right now we have energy use going up dramatically, especially in eastern and southern Asia and we have a population explosion going on in Africa and the Middle East.

The west's energy use isn't going up much if at all and its population isn't going up at all. If the whole world was just the west, we'd have energy consumption stable and population declining which wouldn't create a bad equation.

The solution isn't in the west cutting. Every little bit helps, but that's not where the equation breaks down.

[SaintLouisBlues]

43. I did not propose a solution. I don't think there are any realistic ones.

You said we're not the problem. I said we're a big part of it.

So what's your solution?

[Yupster]

44. There is only one solution

The population of the earth needs to be dramatically reduced.

[donotpissoffacow]

53. Don't worry, that is going to happen.

[Locut0s]

16. The sixth great mass extinction...

I agree with the statement. The fact that insects are now being affected on large scales is really terrifying. Large mammals are always the first to go because they lie at the top of the food chain. They have huge territorial land requirements to survive. They are extremely vulnerable to habitat loss. But insects are some of the hardiest and most adaptable of creatures. You know this are really really had when we start loosing large numbers of them.

[cilla4progress]

17. Noticed this earlier this summer

In our rural mountain home in e. Washington.

[NJCher]

18. Here's something you can do

Get rid of your lawn. And contact your state roads department and see if they have plans for eliminating lawn.

The reason is you want a lot of plant diversity to support all these bugs. And birds.

I am heading an effort in my town to do just that. I got rid of my lawn over 15 years ago. I have all kinds of stuff growing out there: shrubs, ground cover, flowers, ornamentals, and garden plants.

In NJ, there is an effort underway to get rid of lawn and mowing on the state roads. Yesterday I drove past a huge and very long patch of cosmos. It was simply stunning.

What do you grow in the winter? A cover crop, like rye, that will replenish the soil. Just turn it under in the spring and you're good to go. Turning it over does not necessarily mean digging, although most of the time just a light turnover will do the trick. And it saves you buying and lugging compost home, too.

Here's a transcript of a podcast from Freakonomics on it. The statistics cited in it will absolutely stun you.

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/

Read or listen.

[missingthebigdog]

20. We have had the pleasure of doing this

When we bought our place ten years ago, it had nice, thick, green grass but little else. The prior owners had fertilized, herbicided, and pesticided it into submission.

It is in a rural area, about three acres. We don't mow- we have horses and goats for that. We don't spray for bugs- the chickens happily keep them under control.

It took several years, but we have an ecosystem now. We have several kinds of frogs and toads, including tree frogs. We have gorgeous dragonflies. Cool little lizards. Bees. Birds. Squirrels. Much better than a lush green lawn.

As an added bonus, we don't spend all of our spare time manicuring the landscape. We couldn't be happier.

[NJCher]

55. that makes me so happy to hear

What's more fun? Tree frogs, dragonflies, bees? Or having lawn people over every week, blowing and mowing everything into submission?

Not to mention no bills for it at the end of the month.

Congratulations. You've already received your thanks from Mother Nature, I see.


Cher

[hunter]

19. There's good reason to be suspicious of insecticides.

Not only are they bad for the natural environment, they may be making us stupid and violent.

[womanofthehills]

37. The excessive use of Roundup on our food crops is obscene - messing with our bodies & the bees too!

Our food supply is now pretty much contaminated with glyphosate; the FDA cold not find honey without glyphosate. If all the honey has pesticides, what is this doing to the bees?

In the records released by the FDA, one internal email describes trouble locating honey that doesn’t contain glyphosate: “It is difficult to find blank honey that does not contain residue. I collect about 10 samples of honey in the market and they all contain glyphosate,” states an FDA researcher. Even “organic mountain honey” contained low concentrations of glyphosate, the FDA documents show.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/fda-finds-monsantos-weed_b_12008680.html

[Major Nikon]

45. Parts Per Billion

1 PPB = 1 drop in a swimming pool

[roamer65]

23. It must be cow farts.

[Plucketeer]

24. "We are part of the natural world."

Indeed, we are. And BEING a natural outgrowth of life on this planet, we're no different from other facets of this whirling rock than earthquakes or volcanoes. Sure - we have self-awareness that we think elevates us above everything else. But we're not "apart" from the list of possible catalysts for catastrophe. We're just one more of them. We can't control quakes, nor asteroids, nor greed. All of what we're currently lamenting is just the wholly natural force of change.

I grew up in the countryside - fascinated with the flora and fauna that was all around every time I stepped off the back stoop. I rescued baby birds, caught and marveled at frogs and tortoises, searched for cocoons of moths and butterflies so I could watch them hatch, caught and categorized butterflies in a display, picked wild strawberries and blackberries. It was great growing up there - I wouldn't trade my childhood experiences for anything. Of course, I couldn't re-do them even if I wanted to. That "world" of mine is covered with blacktop and housing developments. I don't know why it had to go like that, but it's still surging with reckless abandon - and there's only the tiniest of voices calling for it to stop - or at least moderate out of respect for the ecosystems we recognize as being essential to our own ultimate fate. We're just a slow-spewing volcano or a slow-smashing asteroid. Obviously, having self-awareness does NOT afford us the chance to avoid an extinction event.

What happened to life after the prior extinctions revised this outpost? It had survivors that picked themselves up, recognized the various niches that mutating forms could adapt to and gave us a nearly complete makeover of "life forms". This scenario has played out like this time and again. So what makes us THINK or gives us the right to think we can hold everything in stasis? My personal hunch (IF we don't strangle ourselves with pollution or fry ourselves with nukes) is that AI will come to the fore and truly bring about world order thru oppression or outright elimination. And who would be to blame for that?

[donotpissoffacow]

31. Yourself.

You, we, humans, built AI using human thought, human terms, human ethics (hey, not even humans learn that one), we mimicked human activity and told them not to turn around and kill us. Even if we succeed in transferring our brains into AI containers, they'll still do the same damn thing because that's what organisms do.
Best that could come of AI is exoskeletons that will allow us to get off this planet.

[defacto7]

26. We're an anomaly, a genetic burp in the natural world.

[Plucketeer]

27. Every life form is an anomaly.

If that's not so, point to what the "standards" are.

[defacto7]

35. Roaches, ants, jellyfish, dinosaurs, sharks, flies, bees

mosquitos, crustaceans, LUCA, barnacles, macaques and thousands more that will be hundreds or even thousands of times more successful than human beings, who's brain took a sudden leap in size and intelligence faster than their ability to adapt to the planets ecosystem.
We are a genetic mistake if you compare succesful organisms to the failures. A measily million or two years, a measily hundred and sixty thousand as homo sapien sapiens, a few thousand years of civilization... Sharks have been here for about 200,000,000.
There's your standard. We're not even a mark on the scale.

[Plucketeer]

46. So sharks

roaches and barnacles were just "here" from day one. I don't think so.

[defacto7]

48. Well, you sure missed the point of that one.

It's a complicated concept and I can't make it any more simple than this.

Be well.

[Plucketeer]

49. OK then

keep spreading your whizdumb.

[quaker bill]

28. As part of the natural world

it might be important to note that roughly 90% of all the species of life that have ever existed on this planet, are now extinct. Species can become poorly adapted to a changing environment. Species can evolve down blind alleys. Species can become so well adapted that they overpopulate, strip resources bare, and suffer a complete collapse. These are all options provided by mom nature and only a few of those available.

Ecology is not stasis, it is a system of dynamic tension/equilibrium that is altered by periodic extraneous perturbations that reset the balance point. We as a species can easily create the sort of perturbation that resets the balance point away from our survival. Other species have done this without need of tools to get it done. With tools, we are far more capable.

[donotpissoffacow]

32. Tools have gotten us ways

to kill more things at longer distances. The tipping point for us was passed long ago. Perhaps with the invention of tools. We do tend to forget that even the universe will one day cease to be. Perhaps we could work on extending our horizons.

[Plucketeer]

50. Sadly

said "tools" you mention are a double edged sword. And while our species is good at creating those tools, they're not good at seeing into the future as to what ultimate impacts such tools might yield upon Earth and it's inhabitants. IF we could see 10 or 20 years into the future, would the climactic havoc we're seeing today have an impact on how the folks of today go about spewing carbon into the paper-thin atmosphere we all depend on? But we don't have such a "crystal ball" to stare into. All we have are the trends we try to adapt to every day.
I have 3 parrots in my home. Each of them is native to locales that are being stripped and devastated by the humans that are encroaching upon and thereby forever changing those environments that these species of parrots are/were integral pieces of. One bird that I have - it's natural habitat is 90-some percent stripped bare of the thriving forests that used to be this species home. Our bird was hatched by a breeder in this country. I see my home as an ark of some sort. Not that I see myself as some sort of savior for my birds, but even if I had the notion to return and release them to their natural habitat(s) - what would they do to survive? The point I'm trying to make is - I hold this bird's destiny (and thereby a percentage of it's species that still exists) in my hands. She's a cuddly "sweetheart" of a bird and yet I might be willing to part with her for purposes of repopulating the habitat her species had evolved to survive in - IF that habitat had a hope in hell of being there for her offspring. Thing is, the humans of that place are STILL making charcoal from what few bits of forest are left. Like the Passenger pigeon - the Moas and myriad other bird species we've elbowed out of existence, They're on an inevitable course to extinction.

As you stated, life here is NOT at some defined stopping point as to development. It's responding to the environment at this very second and has been since life sparked into being eons ago. While I'm as intrigued by the diversity of the life around us, the futility of us trying to "hold things" from changing nags at me as I watch nature programs about saving this rare species or that. We humans are afraid of change - that we recognize. I don't like the way my once agile and energetic 20-something body has morphed into a creaky-boned codger. But it's just the way things are. IF we don't FRY this globe with a downpour of nuclear warheads, life will rebound. But to hold it as is is to assign ourselves god powers.

[donotpissoffacow]

54. Each and every one of us believes...

...deep inside some obscure gene that we are the center of the universe and we are god. At this moment, some tiny bacteria in your gut is saying to itself "it's good (or not) to be-all and end-all". Some slime mold in a laboratory is telling itself "as soon as I glide perfectly (again) through this damn maze I'm gonna tell those big things where to stick it". Imagine what fruit files have planned for us. And don't forget to apologize to your lettuce.
You and I evolved with that same self-centeredness because it was necessary for survival. Imagine the first hominid standing upright in the veldt, looking around, realizing the futility of it all and committing suicide. Not much future for that species.
Instead we kept our heads down, ran for our lives, scavenged a relatively safe spot and congratulated ourselves on intelligence and clever planning. The intention (keep road to hell in mind) was to stay there forever, safe from pesky tigers. The trouble with tigers is they shape-shift into nukes.
Change is dangerous. An odd comet in the sky changed earth. Ask a dinosaur. Discovery of gravity waves will...who knows...introduce communication with other dimensions? That could certainly change a few textbooks. Similar to finding inhabitants on other planets. We are right to be afraid.
My choice for permanence would be long, tender southern nights, lying on grasses soft with dew, listening to whippoorwills, bobwhites and my own breathing, safe in dark lit by every star in the universe and a saber of light from a train so far away it can't be heard. Hard as I've tried, couldn't stop it all going under concrete. I hate change!
But I want to ride on a rocket ship.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

47. K&R.

As if we weren't already totally fked the moment Trump got elected, more tragic things come to light every damn day.

[beachbum bob]

51. mother nature usuallu has a way to correct a problem, perhaps in 100yrs humans won't be causing one