a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by am_Unition
am_Unition  ·  1866 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature’

It sounds like one end result is that we're going to accidentally hand some species monopolies by frequently fluctuating the local conditions in a way that only favors a few types of insects. My girlfriend told me just a few days ago she heard about a study that concluded we're likely to see cockroaches (and presumably other species that cohabitate with humans) enjoy a disproportionate advantage in their odds of preservation. Logically, there will be serious repercussions from the loss in biodiversity that ripple up the food chain, even if we preserve the total amount of biomass comprised by insects. And I don't think we're going to manage preserving biomass very well.

Most people seem to have a very poor intuition when it comes to grasping exactly how quickly the climate is changing on a global scale. Yes, it's been this warm before, but not when it was as relatively cold as it was only two or three hundred years ago. Typically, a similar variation of global temperature takes at least several tens of thousands of years to fully manifest.

But 'dem jobs, boi. We're going to create so many jobs to stay alive! Will the number of jobs created be comparable to the number of deaths? 'cuz then it was totally worth it.

rthomas6 Unstable and/or "developing" countries will take a disproportionately large hit. If you're on Hubski, the odds are that your offspring will fare well.





Devac  ·  1866 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'd also add that switching from cow/pig/chicken to insect farming is among the best things we could do for helping the environment, if only because it takes about 2000 times less fresh water to make a kilogram of edible cricket biomass vs a kilogram of pork whilst producing negligible amounts of ammonia or methane. It's not going to be an option once they go extinct.