[cleanair (OP)]

 “We wanted to really wake people up. When you consider 80% of biomass of insects has disappeared in 25-30 years, it is a big concern. In a few decades, the insects are gone.”

 “We have now entered the world's sixth mass extinction event, the biggest and most rapid global biodiversity crisis since a meteor ended the age of the dinosaurs.”

Scientists agree that Earth is at the outset of a mass extinction event—only the 6th in half-a-billion years—which could drive a million species, or one-in-eight, into oblivion over the coming decades.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-bumble-bees-extinct-climate-chaos.html

Multiple eco-crises could trigger ‘systemic collapse’: scientists

Overlapping environmental crises could tip the planet into “global systemic collapse,” more than 200 top scientists warned Wednesday.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-multiple-eco-crises-trigger-collapse-scientists.html

What could explain a potential collapse of nature on Earth? Is it logical that some species "give up" or is it plausible to assume that millions of species are actually forced into extinction by humans or an other factor, in decades of time?

[cleanair (OP)]

According to several sources the decline is mostly blamed to "new pesticides".

NGC: "Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides" (2019)

America’s agricultural landscape is now 48 times more toxic to honeybees, butterflies and other insects, than it was 25 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/insect-apocalypse-under-way-toxic-pesticides-agriculture/

The past 25 years is the same period that GMO or genetic engineering has been introduced on a large scale. I wonder if profound corruption of nature by genetic engineering may be a possible cause.

Toxins can be circumvented by nature. It will find a way to clean up the mess. It can create new bacteria for example. The plastic in the oceans is already being cleaned up by new bacteria.

Genetic engineering however is something else. GMO can 'corrupt' vital parts of nature that affect the purpose to live in tiny creatures. The symbiose between animals and plants that is obvious for humans, such as ants that live together with a plant, or flowers that are adapted for bees, may be applicable on a much greater scale than humans could comprehend.

How does a bee and a flower establish a symbiose? As my footnote argues, something that is good as it was doesn't have a reason to come into existence. The bees and flowers are not just meaningless humps of chemicals. They serve life in a greater whole and the complex coherence of genes may hold vital information for reaching the future, for serving others (nature) in the best way, for purpose.

Big Pharma like companies are currently investing trillions of USD per year in 'synthetic biology' for a planned 'revolution' to redesign life.

Big pharma raises bet on biotech as frontier for growth

Biotechnology is already a bigger business than many people realize. Rob Carlson of Bioeconomy Capital, an investment company, calculates that money made from genetically engineered animals and plants accounted for about 2% of American GDP in 2017.

Those given to grand statements about the future often proclaim this to be the century of biology in the same way that the 20th century was that of physics and the 19th century was that of chemistry. ...

Humans have been turning biology to their own purposes for more than 10,000 years. ...

Reprogramming nature is extremely convoluted, having evolved with no intention or guidance other than making money. But if you could synthesize nature, life could be transformed into something more amenable to an engineering approach, with well defined standard parts.

https://www.ft.com/content/80a21ca2-136b-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e


economist-gmo.jpg (60.71 kB . 400x526 - viewed 21664 times)

The idea by which synthetic biology is possible implies that there will be literally 0% respect for nature. Animals and plants will be considered meaningless humps of chemicals that can be "done better" by a company.

The corruption would be purely driven by "making money" which could be seen as a deviance of a potential "good" purpose of nature.

Maybe GMO is destructive for the will (purpose) to live.

[cleanair (OP)]

A recent study showed that nearly 90% of all seabirds have plastic pollution in their body. In the past decades 67 percent of all seabirds have died. In the next decades many seabird species may go extinct.

The plastic pollution in the ocean is estimated to kill millions of seabirds and over 100,000 animals per year and the toxics also have an effect on reproduction and the wellbeing of the animals.

https://www.ecowatch.com/seabirds-plastic-pollution-2609353767.html



In some areas that are bigger than land continents, there is 6x more plastic in the water compared with plankton.

Would it be bad if the animals are gone? If so, why?

[alancalverd]

Lots of estimates, few facts.

This week, you would have a hard time convincing the population of east Africa that pesticides are a Bad Thing, as the biggest locust invasion in my lifetime is set to reduce half the continent to famine. The fault is not with Big Pharma but with the  religious perverts who are at war in Somalia and Yemen, where the buggers breed.

The eradication of mosquitoes is the only way to control  malaria, otherwise you will have to pay Big Pharma to develop an effective antimalarial (it's pretty resistant nowadays to quinine) that doesn't induce hallucinations.

I'm no great fan of tsetse fly, warble fly, or a dozen other things that infect humans and cattle with various parasites, nor of cockroaches and the like that spoil about 20% of all human food.

Wasps and hornets are OK, particularly those that prey on other insects, but once you get a nest in  your house it's hard to persuade them not to eat the woodwork and sting your grandchildren, or to go back to the forest where they belong.  Poison works. Likewise termites - OK in the desert, but not in houses, bridges, telephone poles....

Head lice are an annoyance, but fleas and bed bugs can kill you. No great loss to the rest of the ecosystem - they only eat people and nothing else eats them.

Real life isn't all about butterflies and honey bees, alas.     

[cleanair (OP)]

Maybe you are correct but the warning (on phys.org) originates from "200 top scientists".

You argue that some insects that are annoying or even dangerous to humans are value-less and it wouldn't be a problem when they are gone.

How can you be certain that those insects are not vital in an unforeseeable way?

[alancalverd]

How many "top scientists" are there? Is 200 a statistically significant sample, even if stratified by relevant expertise? When was scientific consensus (flat earth, geocentric universe, phlogiston, Aristotelian gravitation, suspensory ligaments, Aryan superiority, Lysenkoism, spontaneous generation of microbes, no conceivable military use for the airplane (US Academy of Science, 1910), five computers will suffice for the UK (British Association, 1954).....)  ever correct? 

Humans delude themselves by thinking that we are the top of all food chains. As far as most species are concerned, we are either food, providers of food,  or competitors for food - i.e. somewhere below the middle. By all means look for the vital link between bed bugs and whatever pleases you, and run a Save the Cimex campaign, but I think you will have a problem convincing anyone else that this part of God's creation deserves a place on earth.

The New Scientist ran a public question (and indeed published a book of answers) "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" IIRC the answer was pretty close to "no".  Same goes for crab lice.

[Bored chemist]

The New Scientist ran a public question (and indeed published a book of answers) "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" IIRC the answer was pretty close to "no".

That's interesting because it implies that the world should be full of dead wasps.

It's true that we don't really know if the insects are doomed.
But we do know that, if they go, they take us with them.

So it makes sense to highlight their fate.

[alancalverd]

OK, what happens if we eliminate all the bed bugs, crab lice and locusts? Or even just decimate their populations?

[Bored chemist]

OK, what happens if we eliminate all the bed bugs, crab lice and locusts? Or even just decimate their populations?

In the past what typically happens is that we discover that, without "easy pickings" bed bugs or whatever, the thing that eats bed bugs dies of starvation and thus stops keeping the population of malarial mosquitoes in check (or some such thing).

Also, unless you plan on going on a hunt armed with very small spears, how do you plan to target one type of insect without killing the others?

[alancalverd]

AFAIK nothing eats bed bugs. They are named for their principal habitat, though they may possibly hang around in the nests of other primates where they might just provide the occasional snack for any bird bold enough to fight off a gorilla or chimpanzee. Killing them is easy and highly specific - just spray the bedding with any good insecticide.

The crab louse seems to have evolved entirely within the pubic region of homo sapiens. Unless you are in the habit of keeping starving tarantulas in your underpants, you are unlikely to find anything that relies on them for food.  Nor is there much evidence of  insectivorous birds or chameleons mobbing schoolchildren for their head lice. Once again, a good squirt of DDT or other banned substance will zap the bugs and nothing else.

If anyone can breed a friendly predator that devours locusts faster than they eat green crops, the world will be eternally grateful. In the 20th century, these beasts were controlled by spraying their breeding grounds, but religious stupidity has turned those areas into war zones, hence the current plague. Apparently the plague cycle has cunningly evolved so that there is no significant predator. The eggs mostly lie dormant for around 7 years, by which time any bird species will have given up, found something else to eat,  or died from starvation. It's an interesting aspect of evolution that relies for the survival of a species on the intelligence of its potential predators! Which is why I am interested in harvesting them on an industrial scale, because humans can wait anything up to 100 years for a one-off crop (forestry!) and we have means of preserving protein and rationing its distribution.

The population of Anopheles has been substantially and fairly specifically reduced in some areas, though once again civil war has interfered with the program in many places. AFAIK there have been no negative consequences to the population of swallows and swifts, as there are plenty of flying insects that are not malaria vectors.

Free-range chickens will happily eat free-range cockroaches, but most small cockroaches stay under cover and spoil human food on a massive scale. Barn owls and foxes eat them too, but not in sufficient quantities to qualify as genocide.   

[Bored chemist]

they might just provide the occasional snack for any bird bold enough to fight off a gorilla or chimpanzee

Unlike the village idiot's plan to visit the Sun, they might choose to go during the day.

AFAIK nothing eats bed bugs.

Then, like the wasps, the world should be covered in dead bed bugs.

Once again, a good squirt of DDT or other banned substance will zap the bugs and nothing else.

Tosh.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-penguins-ddt/pesticide-ddt-shows-up-in-antarctic-penguins-idUSN0933540320080510

AFAIK there have been no negative consequences to the population of swallows and swifts,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

[chiralSPO]

From my perspective, cleanair is being overly critical of technology and alancalverd is being far too dismissive of the hazards.

GMOs are not necessarily bad (I would argue that there is great potential for harm or good--but the stigma corresponding to the harm is much more easily spread than the complexities of the good). Pharma is not necessarily bad. And pesticides are not always unwarranted.

That said...

DDT is necessarily bad for human civilization (we've done the experiment, and thankfully it was terminated before the damage was completely irreversible). And it appears that several other pesticides will join DDT in the hall of technologies that were too good to be true.

I am by no means a buy-organic-only type of person (definitions of "organic" have little to no relationship with actual harms to people or planet). But surely it is no far stretch of the imagination to consider that insecticides might inflict as much (or more) damage to pollinators as (than) herbivores?

[alancalverd]

Indiscriminate use of persistent pesticides is certainly contraindicated. Which is why I have only considered their use in limited, enclosed systems (beds, underpants, maybe infested hair). You can kill mosquito larvae by spraying stagnant ponds with vegetable oil - it suffocates the bugs but just adds a bit more nutrient for the fish.

Bees' main problem seems to be varroa mite infestation, which seriously threatened the UK swarm a few years ago. But if you grow sterile, high yield GMOs, you don't need pollinators anyway.

[cleanair (OP)]

Some of the vital purposes that an animal or insect fulfills in Nature may be hidden for hundreds or thousands of years.

Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal and cause immense human suffering. Despite this, mosquitoes may fulfill vital purposes in Nature's bigger whole that are unknown or difficult to comprehend from the human perspective.

The bizarre and ecologically important hidden lives of mosquitoes
Mosquitoes have many functions in the ecosystem that are overlooked. Indiscriminate mass elimination of mosquitoes would impact everything from pollination to biomass transfer to food webs.

https://theconversation.com/the-bizarre-and-ecologically-important-hidden-lives-of-mosquitoes-127599

Mosquitoes are critical to the perpetuation of diverse microbes. Some (such as the agents of malaria, filariasis, and arboviruses as dengue) infect and burden human beings and other vertebrates but there are also many good microbes.

The word ‘microbe’ sounds scary — we associate them with the flu, ebola, flesh-eating disease, you name it. But microbiologist Dr. Jonathan Eisen has given an illuminating TEDTalk that will make you put down the hand sanitizer. As Eisen explains, “We are covered in a cloud of microbes and these microbes actually do us good much of the time rather than killing us.”

https://blog.ted.com/6-great-things-microbes-do-for-us/

The human perspective on its environment may very limited.

Is the value that the human can 'see', all there is to be considered if it concerns an insect or animal?

[Bored chemist]

Which is why I have only considered their use in limited, enclosed systems (beds, underpants, maybe infested hair).

Those are roughly as "enclosed" as the ones  from which DDT escaped and reached the penguins.

[alancalverd]

Speak for yourself. The rain does not run off my bed into a river.

I take it you wash your linens though... where do you think the effluent goes?

SORRY ALAN! I accidentally "modified" your statement instead of "quoteing" it, and I can't figure out a way to undo it... --chiral

[Bored chemist]

You may be prepared to sacrifice a few million people to save the penguins,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

[alancalverd]

Perhaps the people will survive on American rice, if they can overcome greed, corruption and civil war for long enough distribute it (nobody ever has, but the UN keeps trying) but your long-term choice is between Kenyan vegetables in the supermarket and penguins in Antarctica. My guess is that you eat vegetables.

Good work by Extinction Rebellion today. They held up the traffic in Cambridge for long enough for a few patients to miss their hospital appointments, and dug up the lawn of Trinity College*. One has to admire people who only eat food that was hand ploughed and walked to the door of their igloo, and would never take an ambulance, helicopter or lifeboat ride, or drink artificially pumped and purified water, thus acquiring the right to destroy other people's property and damage other people's lives. I thought back to my days with the Committee of 100. Difference was we actually had a policy to promote, whereas all XR seem to want is for governments to admit that they haven't, which is blatantly obvious or blatantly untrue.

During some previously fashionable outbreak of middle class hooliganism, the New Yorker printed a great cartoon of a lecturer saying "I have been instructed to teach you that education is a meaningless and socially divisive bourgeois affectation. Please write down: education is a meaningless and socially divisive bourgeois affectation.  Returning to triangle ABC...."

*even the Luftwaffe thought this beneath their dignity!