Global Warming Spreading Pests Far and Wide According To Study

An anonymous reader writes "New research has concluded that global warming is helping pests and diseases that attack crops to spread around the world. 'Researchers from the universities of Exeter and Oxford have found crop pests are moving at an average of two miles (3km) a year. The team said they were heading towards the north and south poles, and were establishing in areas that were once too cold for them to live in. The research is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.'"

Pine beetle

[blankinthefill]

This is actually believed to be one of the main culprits of the explosion of pine beetle infestations in Colorado, as the beetle is now able to survive at higher altitudes than it was previously able to due to increased warming, which has allowed it to infest species of trees which have no natural defense against the pine beetle. This in turn has driven a huge increase in the amount of standing and fallen deadwood in mountainous forests, and is believed to be one of the reasons behind the dramatic increase in the severity of wildfires in those areas.

Riiight. Pests never spread before global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Rats never spread bubonic plague prior to those evil Americans creating SUVs. Never happened. Nope.

Jesus Fucking Christ - if you really want something to be done about human-caused climate change, STOP THIS OVER-THE-TOP DRAMA!!!!

Why? Because it's way too damaging to credibility.

Re:Still want it?

[0111 1110]

The majority of Americans and probably even American scientists believe in a supernatural all powerful entity for which there is no evidence at all. Just because a majority of people believe in something does not make it true.

Evidence is what convinces me. Not opinion polls. Opinion polls are most definitely not a part of the scientific method. Once a large enough majority believes in a thing it becomes difficult for many people to disbelieve it. Just show me the raw data and I will draw my own conclusions. I don't need to be told what to think. Scientists are just as capable of being irrational as anyone else. Just because a scientist believes in a thing doesn't make it true.

Re:Pine beetle

[blankinthefill]

That's why I said ONE of the reasons. The forestry techniques of the last century certainly increased the amount of deadwood and undergrowth. Anyone familiar with the forest situation in Colorado will tell you that the pine beetle is ALSO a huge contributor to the large increase of deadwood in mountainous forests there. The worrisome thing about the pine deadwood, though, is that it's very often standing deadwood, which, unlike living trees, torches easily along it's whole length. This can very easily carry a fire into the crowns of trees, killing them where they may have otherwise survived. No one is denying that what the article from a few days ago said is true. But the increase in deadwood because of the pine beetle hugely exacerbates that situation. With JUST the forestry techniques, or JUST the pine beetle, we would be seeing the increase in destructiveness that we saw 30 or 40 years ago. With both, we end up with the destructiveness we see today. (Note, YES, I know there are also other factors, such as overbuilding, poor building practices, and the proliferation of unintentional fire breaks. However, those are minor issues when you consider that, without the deadwood and undergrowth situation as it is today, those fires would likely not be the problem they are today.)

Re:Still want it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The more shrill the global warming crowd gets, the less people believe them. The more "scientists" engage in gloom and doom hyperbole in front of the press, the less public support they're going to get. Technology and human development is often at odds with the environment, but the real danger to humanity is politics, and "scientists" aren't free of it. BTW, there is quite a lot of debate in scientific circles. The ones who deny that aren't scientists. They're ideologues.

Re:Still want it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Koch brother have their money, not that I would imply they are opposed to making more. They are actually spending money to forward their agenda, unlike other somewhat less uber-rich guys like Al Gore who make piles of money directly hyping their agenda.

So he're my position. There are guys on both sides of the debate who are far more knowledgeable than I, admittedly far more on one side than the other. So, I have to look at credibility. One side definitely has the numbers and the support of the scientific establishment, but the establishment has been wrong before (more than once). The establishment seems to spend a lot of energy on ad hominem attacks to discredit the opposition, which is a hit on credibility.

Most importantly, the loudest advocates of AGW fail to propose anything that might actually work. Most of their proposals advocate massive international cooperation to institute some schemes that will be economically harmful on a large scale. When has that ever happened? Any country participating will have a huge incentive to cheat, as they will get the same benefit as everyone else without paying the price. If AGW proponents want to be taken seriously by me, they need to start loudly advocating things like nuclear power, building dams for more hydro-electric, and maybe even geo-engineering.

Until I observe realistic solutions being advocated I have to conclude that AGW really doesn't even bother the people who believe in it, so why should it bother me?

Re:Why not, if other things can flourish also?

[Arker]

You're assuming the warming stops at 'habitable'...

Hot-house earth isnt completely uninhabitable. The violent storms and extreme heat in the tropical zones would make them indoors-only and dangerous to travel in, but the polar regions and for instance high mountain areas further south would be quite habitable.

Re:Still want it?

[mcgrew]

The majority of Americans and probably even American scientists believe in a supernatural all powerful entity for which there is no evidence at all.

2.3 of the world's population and over half of all scientists.

Evidence is what convinces me.

There is no evidence I was in possession of marijuana -- It's gone. There is no evidence Jimmy Hoffa is dead, but I'm pretty sure he is. There is no evidence for extraterrestrial life, but I think there probably is.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Re:Still want it?

[jovius]

Let's try this. Imagine if aliens started to pour carbon dioxide, methane and other gases to Earth's atmosphere. As you know from the elementary school Earth's greenhouse effect keeps the temps at a nice level. Greenhouse effect that has been known well over 100 years is actualized because of the called greenhouse gases, which trap heat to the lower layers of the atmosphere. So ask yourself this: what will happen when the amount of those gases is increased?

Would you be welcoming the aliens who pour gases to the atmosphere? One effect of that would for example be that hugely larger areas of crops are threatened because of pests. Your very source of food is in danger.

Wouldn't you be pretty sure who is responsible for the anomalously amplified greenhouse effect? I'd guess the media would be in full blast declaring a war against them. It's interesting why it isn't happening at the moment.

Re:Pine beetle

[riverat1]

One thing that has exacerbated that is the length of the warm season has grown enough in some places that the pine beetles are now able to have two generations in a year which has the effect of increasing their numbers far beyond what was seen in the past.