Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The giant spider climate story is making the rounds again. The story is, if we don’t mend our wicked ways, we’re going to end living a real life version of the blockbuster movie Arachnophobia.
According to The Telegraph;
Forget floods, droughts, sea-level rise and even the melting polar ice caps. Here’s a really compelling reason to worry about global warming. Spiders.
Research has already suggested that there will be more of them – and they will grow bigger – as temperatures rise. Now a new study, published in the journal Experimental Biology, has concluded that they are likely to be able to run faster and therefore, be harder to catch.
The study on which all this nonsense is based, didn’t actually say we will all be overrun by giant super spiders. The researchers just wanted to know what happens, if you put a tarantula on a hot plate. The answer – surprise – is they run around really fast, but they fall over a lot.
So what is it really like to live in a place which is infested with giant tropical spiders? As someone who lives on the edge of a tropical swamp (described by real estate agents as a “delightful tropical lagoon”), I feel qualified to answer this question. I love the spiders. The spiders don’t bother me. What I find annoying is the horse flies, like the huge half inch monster which just bit my ankle. The mosquitoes can be annoying as well. At dusk, the mosquitoes stop pretending they care about insect repellent.
Don’t get me wrong, I love living here. There is no such thing as winter, and the sea is as warm as bathwater, for almost half the year. But with my ankle stinging from that horse fly bite, times like this, I really wish there were a lot more spiders.
Sigh…it must be Sunday morning in the Village
Village Idiot,
Your astute observation that it’s Sunday morning leads me to think that you are making progress.
I assume your sigh results from the extreme mental exertion you needed to do that figuring.
It’s very appropriate that you show up while Eric is mentioning horseflies since you and your pals can be viewed as the Hybomitra micans of the blogging world.
Horseflies are, indeed, very annoying as they never leave you alone for long and when they finally sneak in and start biting they are so tactlessly clumsy that they are immediately detected and smacked.
Smacking horseflies is not particularly rewarding since half of them fall into the dust, stunned, only to return to life and fly away, while for each one that dies, 10 come to its funeral.
Yeah, horseflies can be a real aggravation, but think about one of these buzzing you (out of curiosity probably because you are in their area). They are large, loud and menacing but will go away if left alone. Wouldn’t want want to actually swat one by hand for obvious reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius_speciosus
http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/Insects/Cicada%20Killer/cicada_killer_wasp.jpeg
BFL April 19, 2015 at 8:58 am
We had those Cicada Killers in our front yard, their burrows right next to the sidewalk steps where they mounted our small terrace. We left ours alone for the most part – ‘scattered in terror, actually, when they were flying around – but I recall as a young guy watching an amazing midsummer adventure when some people down the street mounted an attack on Cicada Killer nests at the base of their hedge.
There were 15-20 people standing around but keeping their distance as a few of the men poured gasoline down the hole, ignited it, and poured on some more gas, trying to get the flaming fuel to go down into the wasp’s burrow. Finally, this cautious approach was rewarded when a couple of the big wasps crawled out with their wings on fire. Even that was enough to set several of the men hopping and running around in some kind of giddy panic, as a more steadfast member of their number smashed at the burning wasps with a shovel.
When the engagement was over, and all the Cicada Killers were burned and smashed. and the hedge was extinguished, a small crowd gathered around the remains, bending over to peer at the dead insects. One of the men picked up a dead wasp by the wings and stuck it in the face of one of the women. That sent all the women scurrying back into their house.
This all happened in that remote period of history before high 5s were invented, so the men soon ran out of things to do. It was getting dark anyway, and so they put away the hose, shovel, and gas cans, and shuffled on up to their house where they had cold beer and a big table – just the right setting to begin embellishing on the great wasp wipe-out.
I went back home and asked my grandfather if we should kill our wasps, and he just laughed: “They don’t sting, and they catch the cicada in our poplars.”
http://www.impawards.com/2013/posters/giant_spider.jpg
Well the other story that floats around in a second or third LIFE is the one of melting ice caps and that March 2015 was the worst. Please look at Reality check: Does polar bear need more Ice each than twice Malta’s? please notice that 2006 was minimum not 2015…..
I have a couple of hand-sized huntsman spiders in my shed – whilst it can be disconcerting when they pop out unexpectedly from under my motorbike seat or unfurl from the fridge handle and scuttle up my arm – they’re pretty harmless by and large I am grateful for their presence as they eat all manner of other nastier spiders and cockroaches that I’d rather I didn’t find by accident..
That gorgeous spider looks very familiar to those I encounter on my walks on the hills around Hong Kong. I have no problem with them and if they trap and dine on alarmists, what’s not to like? 🙂
Well the family pet spider that inhabits the space behind the driver’s side outside mirror on my wife’s car, may have suffered some severe climate trauma yesterday.
I had to drive us to Gilroy on the freeway yesterday, and virtually the entire superstructure of its mirror covering web got discombobulated major league.
Maybe a couple of days before we find out if the pet is still with us, or got flown away by the wind.
This one is only about nickel size though, but very feisty when the web actually catches something. Takes about 15 seconds for the resident to come and wrap up and carry off its groceries.
Wonderful !
I took the mirror glasses out of their housings on my Merc a while ago and was intrigued to find thriving colonies of spiders happily living behind both. Judging by the number of empty egg capsules, they have been there for some considerable time. They must be some of the most travelled spiders in the country.
And they are a better laxative than Agarol when they land on your shoulder.
I don’t know about ‘evolving’ spiders, researchers are finding new species hidden away in museum collections: http://pindanpost.com/2014/07/14/horrors-hidden-away-in-a-museum-new-species/
Spiders make excellent pest controllers.
Oh No, not rising seas and climate change again: http://www.sciencewa.net.au/topics/environment-a-conservation/item/3477-museum-spider-expert-takes-out-wa-famelab-final
“Dr Beavis is also identifying spiders collected on biodiversity surveys in the Pacific Islands.
“That’s really interesting to me because these are islands…where the arachnids there are going to be affected by rising sea levels and climate change,” she says.”
Since they’re all going to drown when the ice caps melt, then there’s nothing to worry about really, is there?
The spiders will “evolve” and if threatened by rising water… will evolve floties… like the ones in my swimming pool!!!
“Dr Beavis is also identifying spiders collected on biodiversity surveys in the Pacific Islands”
Hmm. I wonder what Dr. Butthead has to say about that.
Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh good one Beevis
If we can genetically engineer spiders to eat climate modellers it should be a win-win.
The giant CAGW spider has been enmeshing climate modellers in its web for some time now. One day before too long, when they have ‘aged’, it will devour their reputations even in the MSM.
I needed a laugh today, and got it from Eric’s well written article! Thanks, especially for your “dusk” observation, that applies to the blackflies that hang around here in Maine.
Our hope here was that rising seas might drown them, but thats not happening either. D’ya think we can tax ’em???
We can but hope 🙂
Jus’ makes ’em easier to swat. Spiders get too big, well, that’s what concealed carry permits are for.
hahahahahah
Eugene WR Gallun
I find that replica pistols firing plastic pellets are effective against most spiders – as also is the trusty aerosol flamethrower.
our state export should be those damned things.
I think the Telegraph article itself is even more of a hoot. And it goes perfectly with the serious, sober-looking portrait at the beginning. (The picture must be from an archive – the author couldn’t possibly have written the piece while keeping a straight face.)
“Now a new study, published in the journal Experimental Biology, has concluded that they are likely to be able to run faster and therefore, be harder to catch.”
No problem for me as I am not into chasing spiders anyway.
What a load of malarkey.
Reblogged this on Human Relationships and commented:
The giant spider climate story which simply won’t die
Spider protein……it’s the future!
People already do eat big spiders (And other bugs), esp in countries like Thailand. Considered a delicacy. I’ll stick to the three main protien groups, pork, bacon and ham.
i’m still smiling.
One time I pointed out that the “king crab” is actually an arachnid rather than a crustacean … causing a promising dinner date to adjourn sine die.
One time. Live and learn.
In the words of Harry Potter “Ridikulous!”
Another amazing climate story from the ‘Journal of Made up Stuff’.
I love the commenter “BetaMax” in the article. He’s actually trying to defend this drivel. With drivel.
“… horse flies, like the huge half inch monster which just bit my ankle. ”
Horse flies are predicted to get bigger in a warming world ……computer models show that their bites will be more TOXIC as CO2 increases.
Please try to keep up 😉
With any luck the super spiders will be able to keep the hideously enlarged horse flies in check… 🙂
From the article:
Now a new study… has concluded that they are likely to be able to run faster…
Being faster, they will be able to run down their prey, including squeamish women and men who are already terrified of spiders.
So that covers the arachnophobia subset of the population. Check.
Global warming is gonna getcha… with SPIDERS!
http://home.messiah.edu/~aa1213/smallergiantspider.JPG
http://wac.450F.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/1027kord.com/files/2012/06/giant-spider-300×200.jpg
http://estonianworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ballpark-spider-2.jpg
http://www.filmmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/giant-spider01.jpg
Nice old cars – bottom photo – so giant spider arrived post WWII with war industry emissions converting to civilization industry emissions (in the anthropogenic automobile phase of the interglacial) and, I imagine, is due to the new nucularized CO2 = NukeCO2, not to be confused with Natural Non-NukeCO2.
I seem to be a bug magnet, especially flies, mozzies and spiders and I absolutely do not like spiders anywhere near me. Mossies and spiders here in Aus. Sand flies in New Zealand (NZ), drawn to animals that exhale CO2. I tried all the usual products like Dimp etc. The only thing that worked for me was Johnson’s OFF! Skintastic. I always have a bottle/can of it nearby, especially in summer.
There is a bug that scares me in to doing something I have not done since I was a baby, and that’s the NZ Weta. I had one stuck in the verticle runners of a garage roller door. When I opened the door it sounded like it was well and truely rusted. To my surprise it was the door grinding against the Weta. I managed to dislodge the thing upon which it fell to the floor, started walking towards me, hissing all the way. Seemed really pi$$ed off. I made a quick retreat. *rolling my eyes*
Patrick, there is no evidence that individual Weta events can be linked to climate change . 😉
[Groan. .mod]
I wonder if I can apply for a grant to build a computer model which shows that individual Weta events could be linked to climate change? It worked for the rabbit study!
Mike, a thorough search of the scientific literature will show there is no proof that Weta are not behind climate change.
Modelling the situation mathematically should resolve the uncertainties.
I like New Zealand.
We visited Karapiti, a bulging mound of very slowly oozing lava, a Maori sacred site, just down the road from Lake Taupo. Karapiti is covered with awesome steaming lakes of acid, geysers, and other geothermal attractions. You get to walk around on top of the thin crust which has formed over the molten lava, though the signs advise tourists who want to live, to stay on the marked path. It is always very hot on top of the bulge of lava at Karapiti – so you are advised to bring plenty of water to drink.
I asked the manager of the tourist centre at Karapiti about the volcano, how often they get a big eruption.
He replied “we get a major eruption every 5000 years. Last time Karapiti blew its top, it covered all of New Zealand with 10ft of ash”.
“When was the last time it blew its top?”
“5000 years ago”.
Yup, NZ is a great place to visit and live. I was there for over 9 years, been to Taupo (Usually pronounced by the locals as “toe pour”) many times in both summer and winter. I have been to all three of the main volcanos in the area as well as Huka Falls. Stunning!
As a point of interest, and mentioning that area of NZ, I used to work for a company in Wellington that used to manage the then Windows NT4 server lehar monitoring system on Mt. Ruapehu. There was more chance of hearing about a lahar through local news than through the monitoring system. Another great bit of tecnology deployed by the Department of Conservation. Almost every month someone had to go to the monitoring site and give the server a “3 finger salute”.
“I like New Zealand”
My wife and I vacationed there in 2007 and I fell completely in love with New Zealand – both the land and the people. It is the only country I’ve been fortunate enough to visit that I was willing to pick up and move to (we live in the U.S.). I seriously started looking into this, but as my wife said she would only be willing to move outside of the U.S. for 5 years or so, I stopped because I knew I would not want to leave (New Zealand, not my wife ).
Patrick, you should know they’re harmless! It was just trying to get away from that mechanism which was trying to rip it apart. You’d be a bit pi$$ed too, if that happened to you.
All you needed to do was stand aside, show it the way out, wish a good day and …. head in the other direction.
I know they are harless, just like huntsman spiders that can grow to the size of my hand. It’s a fobia of mine. Eventually it did do just that, and it seemed unharmed by the experience and looked intact to me, legs antenae etc still apparent.
Thanks, Patrick. It is now becoming clearer to me as to what is really going on.
Can you identify this creature, the world’s heaviest insect?
Well, get ready to rumble!
(Answer below)
Photo: The Giant Weta of New Zealand enjoying much-needed hospitality at Wellesley College.
It’s autumn in New Zealand, so the Giant Wetas are headed north to America right now.
Pictured above is one of the early arrivals in Massachusetts, arriving via PanAm # 666 two days ago,
It was given transport (under the new federal illegal immigration mandates) to the local Wellesley College tropical greenhouses where he/she/it is enjoying these early spring days & nights (the Weta is mostly nocturnal).
Dozens of climate change experts from our fabulous local world-leading universities estimate from computer model outputs that we can expect to see about 3.7 gazillions of these endangered guests (at night, in our bedrooms) as global climate disruption progresses under presently trended increases in man-made atmospheric carbon dioxide. If our leading super-duper-extra-special global climate computer models are just a little off (due to various uncertainties in their workings), the experts aver that we could expect even bigger climate disruption-driven migrations of these hapless presently-endangered critters, with perhaps as many as 5.2 – 5.8 gazillions of these hungry immigrants, which would require federal interventions to help ensure that the Wetas can be safely and humanely accommodated. This could also impact national security issues.
You see, it’s all connected, but very complicated.
Stay tuned while we still can afford to…
Terry Burch
Try a 50:50 mixture of Dettol and Baby Oil. Keeps them off and soothes if you are bitten.
i rather like the idea that my favourite spider, the 4mm Peacock Spider in Australia, could grow bigger, tho my arachnophobic niece wouldn’t be happy, as she is even scared of this video, which ends spectacularly:
Peacock Spider 7 (Maratus speciosus)
WOW! That is so kewl!
That was amazing!
How cool it that? Check out the eyes on that rig – I’d pay money for a set of those right across my forehead – not to mention the pop-up emoticon! Talk about a babe magnet!
That has to be in the jumping spider species. Very cool spiders. They can easily be trained and will actually follow their human companions around if that companion presents a meal.
I kept expecting the presenter to say,”Incon-theavable!”
I am fairly arachnophobic myself, but I realize the good that spiders do and try not to kill them on sight, Unless they sneak up on me, in which case, too bad. However, for some reason I have no trouble with Jumpers and Wolf Spiders. They seem more comical than anything.
That peacock jumper is incredible. I want one.
Tough break getting to be a Meal worm, but the thought occurs, if there was anything in the Re Incarnation malarky, it might prove a justly deserved next phase for Alarmists ?
If spiders get bigger and run faster we can chain them to a treadmill to generate our renewable electricity. Then when they die we can eat them with a nice Chianti and make spider fur coats.
It just occurred to me: didn’t average human height increase over the 20th Century? Aren’t new track and field records being set all the time? Maybe there IS something to this global warming “growth” effect and it works on us, too!
Which means we have nothing to worry about. If the spiders do get bigger and faster, we’ll just out-evolve the little buggers!
/humor
Living in Oz, I find that it pays not to worry about spiders that run away from you. It’s the ones that run (or even jump) towards you that you should worry about, in my experience!
I was under the impression that the size of both spiders and insects was limited by the amount of atmospheric oxygen. They don’t have lungs, they breath through holes in their skin.
Huxley wrote a great essay “On Being the Right Size” showing how insects etc are structurally limited in such ways and I think that their spiracles, as they’re called, can only transport air about 1/2 an inch. Just checked Wikipedia and in spiders they’re called trachea.
Some spiders have book lungs, some have tracheae (I think all insects have tracheae). All, however, have open circulatory systems and use hemocyanin rather than hemoglobin as an oxygen transporter; except in a few circumstances, this much less efficient than vertebrate respiratory and circulatory systems.
When I used to live in the Top End of Australia, the mosquitoes used to discuss whether they would dine in or carry you off for later.
Well, in Alaska they would eat you there. If they carried you home, one of the big guys would take you away from them …
Wait, the next scary story is coming, an unknown supervirus killing people in 24 hours Nigeria, a nice opportunity to calim global warming for growing new type of superviruses.
I love spiders they will not hurt you unless you upset then, in Australia we live in sydney and the funnel web spider the worlds most dangerous spider in the world, live in our back yard no problems as I have not told them about global warming
They are also practically blind and will “attack” anything. A very old spider species. There are more recently evolved spiders on a par with a funnel web in terms of venom, but just do not cut the mustard with it, better eyesight, but just too slow and not aggressive enough. I have not seen one yet…but I am possitive I will do something childish in my pants if I did! Watch those gutters!
Unusually for spiders, the male is more deadly than the female, with (I am told) venom four times as strong. They grab you and bite repeatedly, with fangs that can pierce fingernails. But the horror and pain only lasts for about fifteen minutes.
Giant spiders?
Well of course this is the world wide web.
…and a tangled one it is.
in keeping with the “animal” theme of this thread!
18 April: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Will Welsh eels scupper the craziest ‘green’ project ever?
The absurd Swansea tidal lagoon would cost a fortune to build and would produce the most expensive electricity in the world
If you wanted a single example of how far all those who aspire to govern us after this election can lose any touch with reality, a good place to begin might be page 56 of the Conservative manifesto. Here, in a section on “Energy”, we are told how the Coalition Government has “unlocked £59 billion of investment” to produce “low carbon” electricity to meet our commitments under Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act. All the projects listed are, of course, hugely subsidised, to produce power costing us all twice or three times as much as that from conventional power stations. But there at the end is a mention of “the Swansea tidal lagoon”.
I admit that, until recently, I had no more idea what this was about than 99 per cent of the population. But I was struck by the remarkable array of backers this scheme has attracted, from the Prudential insurance company and Ed Davey, our Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary, to George Osborne in his recent Budget speech, and the BBC, which has been giving it excitable puffs…
TLP insists that its £1 billion scheme will only work if it is allowed to charge for its electricity at 330 per cent of the normal wholesale price of £50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This would give it a subsidy of £118 per MWh, even more than that for offshore wind, making it easily the most expensive electricity in the world.
But even more interesting is how much electricity we would be getting for our money..READ ON
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11547082/Will-Welsh-eels-scupper-the-craziest-green-project-ever.html
spiders eat mosquitoes, spiders are our friends. So this is a good news story which has been spinned (pun intended).
Yes, natural pest control. I usually have one or two wolf spiders that roam along the ceiling keeping it clean of other pests. When they get too big we just put them outside in the garden. Also have a couple of southern racers (snakes) roaming the landscape to keep away larger “things”.
Actually it has been spun to death.
scientist trains spider to go to door for food in response to bell ringing. Scientist removes legs of spider and observes that spider no longer goes to door for food, thereby proving that spider’s ears are in it’s legs.
Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
who sat down beside her
And said “We’ll all fry today.”
/CAGW nursery rhyme
Mary had a little lamb,
it’s fleece was white as snow.
But ’cause of AGW the lamb refused to grow.
But then the climate modelers,
(of course to their surprise),
found AGW made all the lambs grow up to giant size.
/CAGW nursery rhyme
Hilarious – my wife Mandy says “I’ll never run out of wool again” 🙂
Next up will be humungoid snakes able to crush and/or swallow you and your EV whole, and bumblebees the size of Volkswagens. With climascifiscience, every day is April Fool’s Day.
Just look up spider bites on Google images. Keep them out of your house, your shed, wherever family or pets can go. Even harmless types can leave a long-lasting injury.
I like the story about the spider injected anaesthetic into a guy in his sleeping bag who woke up to find all of his top lip chewed off.
Spiders are GOOD! They eat plenty of undesirable insects.
There WERE giant insects back in the Permian, but that was because the atmosphere was about 30% Oxygen then, not the current 21%, All arachnids are limited in size by the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere. When the level of oxygen dropped to the current 21% later in the Permian, the giant dragonflies disappeared. For giant spiders to appear, , we’d need oxygen levels to go back up to around 30%, Maybe that’s what the writer is hoping for..
Submit your fear-based paper on climate change/disruption/warming and get a grant. Money for jam.
The Telegraph story was put out by Geoffrey Lean, who delights in lying about sea level rises, melting ice caps and global warming generally.. I would ask him why a little extra warmth creates bigger spiders? Temperature and weather can have an effect on numbers of insects, . which always seem to normalise when the weather and temperature normalise. but I have never heard of it having an effect on size. If it does, then are we to get bigger snails, earwigs, flies, mosquitos, or fleas? And is this a different slant on Darwin’s theory of evolution? Interesting..
I notice the greens don’t report on the plight of the horsefly, rattle snake, anopheles mosquito and other charming creatures under a warming scenario. They get their inspiration from Hollywood.
A paper in pres in Nature will reveal further how rising CO2 will lead to the emergence of a mutant spider-dog hybrid according to reliable computer modelling – this clip is from the supplementary materials:
It gets worse! The jackalope and loggersexual are not myths!!!! What have we done?!?!?!?!?
Canada has done some fine research, investigating the effects of common drugs on spiders:
https://youtu.be/sHzdsFiBbFc
I’d pay to put warmist alarmists barefoot on a hot plate.
Though we’d likely get the same results, it would be research $$$ well spent.
Videos on Youtube of course.
Good yarn, we need to encourage the idiocy.
The tales of cataclysmic climate are going to be the folk lore of the future.
How about these Chinese military-grade hornets?
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/10/08/article-2449483-187F47DC00000578-460_634x423.jpg
Whoa NELLIE!!!
Their nest is probably so large that they have 3-car garage and a game room with a billiard table, bar, and home theater in the lower level.
They look like flying nail guns.
Great, my subconscious has already filed this picture away for future use in nightmares.
I try to post this link on anything to do with spiders
You must have worked with this post’s author so that he and you could post this together. Too FUNNY! Way better than my bugs bunny opera.
Here’s your horsefly main course…
https://youtu.be/d12MV0rzhSU
I was once killed by a team of deer flies.
Me too. It is difficult to use a fly rod while things are biting you faster than you can slap.
Can’t say I have ever tried to catch a spider. Is it something they do in UK? Is it like fishing except with spiders?
Add one more to their failed list of predictions.
In my little world you better not let me catch you killing a black snake or a spider.
Tiny flies seem to inhabit the ‘coffee ground container’ and the spiders that I dare not disturb keep a web of sorts in the window that keep the little flies in check. I really hate it when I need to clean the window over the sink.
Now if you are ever blessed with the presence of a ‘garden spider’ enjoy the intricate web and the beauty of your guest. Just wish I could get one to live in the house!
I‘m all for peaceful co-existence with critters, but I draw the line at my front door.
Flies trying to get in from outside may have just taken off from a pile of poop somewhere, commonly a gift from irresponsible dog owners, and a possible disease vector that does not even make Wikipedia’s list of diseases caused by insects:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diseases_caused_by_insects
Needless to say, if a fly lands on my food, I’m done eating that particular dish.
I’ve been battling the tiny flies for the past several months, and I’m envious that you know exactly where yours are breeding, but I think I’ve narrowed my infestation down to the garbage disposal.
Killing fruit flies and other tiny, related Diptera may be accomplished with a vinegar trap. I try to squirt any stragglers on my kitchen window with the familiar blue window-cleaning fluid, and apply the coup de grâce with a paper towel.
I also like to have a look with a magnifying glass at the dead fruit fly. Some are infested with mites, as I was startled nay horrified to discover one day when I saw a tiny dot suddenly shoot out from the dead fruit fly I was examining. For its body size, a mite is said to be the fastest creature on Earth.
https://student.societyforscience.org/article/move-over-cheetah-mite-sets-new-speed-record
When possible, I catch and release outside any insect not on my kill on sight list, which includes flies, mosquitoes, termites & cockroaches.
Outside is a completely different story, of course
Back on topic, it seems the big danger from “sprinting spiders” is that they stagger around when moving too fast, and may fall into your bath, at least according to TheTelegraph article linked by the author.
No word though, on how runaway man-made global warming affects their ability to swim, or if the staggering impairs their ability to avoid climate change.
-☺-
Spiders have eight legs, thousands of eyes, and no mercy. If we face these
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n5w_xXU8jto
we’re doomed.
I don’t know, man. I’ve got a large house spider over here.
These little beauties will eat birds and bats if they get the chance, and snakes…..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpN2fFh78nI
But they shouldn’t be able to get bigger unless atmospheric oxygen goes up
So more CO2/warmer [so 97% percent reckon] /faster spiders but C02 displaces O2 therefore the little critters will remain small
Unlike in the Carboniferous when O2 levels reached 35%.
Bushfires back then must have been spectacular
As we are on the spider stories I’m a bit late to the party but here’s another one.
The World Gliding Competitions were held in South Australia’s Murray River town of Waikerie in 1973.
About a hundred gliders plus pilots and a couple of hundred members of the support crews from all over the world were there for the fortnight or so the competition ran for .
We were up at the end of the “tie down line”, the parking grid where the gliders were tied down after the day’s flying.
This particular morning well down the line there was quite a kerfuffle and a large crowd rapidly appeared around one of the British gliders and it’s pilot so we ambled down to take a look ourselves.
Things had quietened down by the time we got there except for the hilarity amongst the Aussies and Kiwis.
The British pilot had gone to his glider to prepare for the day’ flight, opened the cockpit canopy and there sitting in the middle of his parachute on the seat was this enormous “Tarantula” of varying immense sizes depending on who you talked to but it appeared it was around 8 to 10 cm’s across.
In midst of the resulting hullabaloo one of the local Waikerie bushie types ambled up to have a look and with the crowd standing back a couple of metres in case the “Tarantula” got them and cameras flashing non stop, the Waikerie bushie carefully put his hand down to the “Tarantula” so as not to frighten her and carefully herded her onto the back of his hand from where he displayed aforesaid “Tanrantula” to a fast back stepping crowd while proclaiming that she was a real beauty and a bigg’n wasn’t she plus other suitable embellishments. And he hadn’t seen one as big as this for a long time.
Then he turned around back to the cockpit and very carefully moved that big but harmless fly and insect catching Huntsman spider from his hand and carefully parked her back in the middle of the pilot’s parachute in the cockpit and ambled off.
The aussies along with a number of other “bush” minded types wet themselves laughing.
As for that poor Huntsman spider, a spider which we often had in our farm house over many years sometimes for months or more for an individual who was free to roam through the house catching insects and was always known as “Oscar” , I think somebody eventually rescued him / her and put him / her into a nice quiet spider spot somewhere.
The limiting factor for the size of insects is how much oxygen there is in the air.
Fear me next, please, please…
?w=640
Like so many of the CAGW studies or actually just CAGW stories since there is really no actual science involved… remind me of a saying I used to hear from my father; “son, if you can’t blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t.” with the climate change orthodoxy all they have is bullsh!t so it is a never ending onslaught to try and baffle.
Cheers!
Joe
Of course I am sorry for the large horse-fly bite Eric Worrall sustained – and I do hope he gets a bandage on that, along with a helpful medicinal tonic administered at the proper hour – but surely he could refrain from complaining, when he remembers what the cleggs’ namesakes are doing in GB::
Cameron, Clegg and Miliband sign joint climate pledge
http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-1920/h–/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/2/13/1423839957830/9399a50c-d057-4cc4-b982-c1c066d249c0-2060×1236.jpeg
“Three party leaders make cross-party declaration to tackle climate change in a rare show of unity in the runup to the general election”
And what have we here – the Swansea tidal lagoon green energy project:
I don’t find a billion pound lagoon from a politician named Clegg very amusing.
South Thanet, do the right thing, or the swamps and cleggs will get bigger and bigger!
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65455000/jpg/_65455505_65455504.jpg
The only party that differs on Energy:
– UKIP will repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 which costs the economy £18bn a year.
– UKIP supports a diverse energy market including coal, nuclear, shale gas, geo-thermal, tidal, solar, conventional gas and oil.
– We will scrap the Large Combustion Plant Directive and encourage the re-development of British power stations, as well as industrial units providing on-site power generation.
– UKIP supports the development of shale gas with proper safeguards for the local environment. Community Improvement Levy money from the development of shale gas fields will be earmarked for lower council taxes or community projects within the local authority being developed.
– There will be no new subsidies for wind farms and solar arrays.
– UKIP will abolish green taxes and charges in order to reduce fuel bills.
One does not simply get power from a lagoon.
http://eububble.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/o-NIGEL-FARAGE-facebook.jpg
reference meme: