From the UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT and the “plague of locusts” department
Global warming: More insects, eating more crops
Global loss of wheat, rice and maize projected to rise 10-25 percent per degree of warming
Crop losses for critical food grains will increase substantially as the climate warms, as rising temperatures increase the metabolic rate and population growth of insect pests, according to new research.
“Climate change will have a negative impact on crops,” said Scott Merrill of the University of Vermont, a co-author of the study published today in Science. “We’re going to see increased pest pressure with climate change.”
The research team looked at how the insect pests that attack three staple crops – rice, maize and wheat – would respond under a variety of climate scenarios. They found that rising global temperatures would lead to an increase in crop losses from insects, especially in temperate regions. Losses are projected to rise by 10 to 25% per degree of warming.
Just a 2-degree rise in global average temperature will result in total crop losses of approximately 213 million tons for the three grains, the researchers say.
Insects like it hotter – up to a point
The losses will come from an increase in insect metabolism, and from faster insect population growth rates. The link with metabolism is straightforward. “When the temperature increases, the insects’ metabolism increases so they have to eat more,” said Merrill, a researcher in UVM’s Dept. of Plant and Soil Science and Gund Institute for Environment. “That’s not good for crops.”
The link with population growth, however, is more complex. Insects have an optimal temperature where their population grows best. If the temperature is too cold or too hot, the population will grow more slowly. That is why the losses will be greatest in temperate regions, but less severe in the tropics.
“Temperate regions are not at that optimal temperature, so if the temperature increases there, populations will grow faster,” said Merrill, an ecologist who studies plant-crop interactions. “But insects in the tropics are already close to their optimal temperature, so the populations will actually grow slower. It’s just too hot for them.”
Key grain crops to take a hit
According to the study, wheat, which is typically grown in cool climates, will suffer the most, as increased temperatures will lead to greater insect metabolism, as well as increased pest populations and survival rates over the winter. Maize, which is grown in some areas where population rates will increase and others where they will decline, will face a more uneven future.
In rice, which is mostly grown in warm tropical environments, crop losses will actually stabilize if average temperatures rise above 3°C, as population growth drops, counteracting the effect of increased metabolism in the pests. “Rice losses will taper off as the temperature rises above a certain point,” said Merrill.
That means that the most substantial yield declines will happen in some of the world’s most productive agricultural regions. “The overall picture is, if you’re growing a lot of food in a temperate region, you’re going to be hit hardest,” said Merrill.
“I hope our results demonstrate the importance of collecting more data on how pests will impact crop losses in a warming world — because collectively, our choice now is not whether or not we will allow warming to occur, but how much warming we’re willing to tolerate,” said Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington, who co-led the study with Joshua Tewksbury, director of Future Earth at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
France, China and the United States, which produce most of the world’s maize, are among the countries that are expected to experience the largest increases in crop losses from insect pests. France and China, as major producers of wheat and rice, respectively, are also expected to face large increases in losses of those grains as well. “The areas that produce the most grain, especially wheat and corn – the US, France and China – are going to be hit hardest,” said Merrill.
Reduced yields in these three staple crops are a particular concern, because so many people around the world rely on them. Together they account for 42% of direct calories consumed by humans worldwide. Increased crop losses will result in a rise in food insecurity, especially in those parts of the world where it is already rife, and could lead to conflict.
As farmers adapt to a changing climate by shifting planting dates or switching to new cultivars, they will also have to find ways to deal with pests, by introducing new crop rotations, or using more pesticides. But not all of these strategies will be available to all farmers. “There are a lot of things richer countries can do to reduce the effect, by increasing pesticide use or expanding integrated pest management strategies,” said Merrill. “But poorer countries that rely on these crops as staple grains will have a harder time.”
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Of course, the press release and study apparently assumes static pest management practices. Meanwhile yields don’t seem to be affected by bugs:
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It’s worse than we thought.
Think of the children!
Exactly! Our First-Born are in grave danger….
Does anyone know if Michael Mann was the eldest child in his family?
I am not sure but he is definitely one of the founding generation of CAGWarmista locusts.
The bad news is…warmer climate has been modeled to create a more voracious insect population. The good news is…warmer climate has been modeled to create grains with significantly less nutritional value……
So I guess the modeled bugs in the modeled environment will not be able to consume a sufficient quantity of modeled grain and will become starving models, perhaps even starve to death
Exactly!
“Just a 2-degree rise in global average temperature will result in total crop losses”
And then there will extinction of the insects and Voila! Life is good
What a load of crop
No, sadly computer models will show that they will now have to eat ALL of the food to get enough nutrients.
He has a brother, who is IIRC, a statistician. The irony never stops.
It’s not unusual. Piers Corbyn, the ultimate climate sceptic, is the brother of Jeremy Corbyn, a devoted true believer.
If insects start harvesting the crops, can’t our future children simply harvest the insects? Bugs! Delicious bugs!
Yikes! now I’ll have nightmares about a choice between only vegan and insectivorian menu items at Appleby’s.
With all the genetic engineering we can do now, just put some obese chicken genes in those locusts and viola, trillions of little tasty drumsticks on bugs that can’t fly away
read your labels now.
already starting to throw crickets n mealworms either crispy bits or as flour in “healthy” (gag) snackbars
Repent!! and Let my people go!! …….or ye shall burn in the fiery crucible of Ivanpah’s solar CSP fraud.
I thought all the insects were disappearing!
That’s in the other alt universe of the pub mill.
Yeah, there are studies that claim that. But when the law of non-contradiction disturbed a pseudo science?
Both stories are out there. The cause of both is “Man-made Climate Change”.
Whichever actually occurs, the other story will be forgotten.
Predict everything because of “The Cause”.
Whatever actually happens is proof of “The Cause”.
They seem to ignore the fact that a theory which predicts everything actually predicts nothing of any value.
They appear and disappear wherever and whenever the meme dictates the need.
The climate change means wrong insects disappear. Because climate was optimal (everywhere) in 1950.
If you are familiar with the Bible, you will see that everything these Cultists come up with is plagiarized from the Bible.
Cribbing from Revelation apparently did not work. So, now they are gonna give us the Plagues. I expect a story about frog invasion next.
Remember the ‘Noah’ movie with Russell Crowe?
I was trying not to.
Plagues of boils next?
Plagues of warming alarmists is more like it.
We’ve had that for 30 years already
Same difference
JonScott
“Plagues of boils next?”
Boiled what? Maybe it will taste like chicken.
If you read the story of the Ten Plagues carefully you will find that the narrative suffers from some pretty extreme bad continuity. Egypt’s livestock gets killed, afflicted in various ways and then killed again for good measure. When the Isreaelites finally leave, they are persued by the Egyptian army on chariots. With all the livestock having been killed, sometimes twice, it is not explained what pulled the chariots. Husky dogs presumably.
Slaves.
To judge from the Green Blob’s desired population mix of no more than 750 million [marginally less than one tenth of the current global human population].
And most of the 750 million will be employed are servants/slaves for the enlightened few.
Old Pharaoh was a wa-a-a-ay ahead of his time!
Or her time, of course.
Auto
The Hebrew’s animals were protected grazing in the land of Goshen..since you were wondering.
Stony,
Domestic livestock were killed only once. But you’re right. Draft animals and beasts of burden, ie horses and donkeys, are specifically mentioned in Exodus.
L. Anthony,
Yes, and Pharaoh allowed the Hebrews to leave with their livestock. So his chariot horses couldn’t have come from the Hebrews’ saved animals. Somehow his military horses were magically resurrected in order to pursue the escaping slaves.
We also grow a lot of corn for ethanol and don’t need to use it for that and should not do so anyway
I agree 100%. To offset burning fossil fuels, you have to create a new sink. Using existing carbon sinks does nothing.
The planet is mostly ocean. The oceans are the biggest sink of CO2. What process can you propose that will sink more CO2 than falling SSTs like we are presently witnessing?
I find the fretting over CO2 to be way off-base when pondering future climate cyclicality (or trends, to the more myopic observers).
So … we should expect to find higher pest losses in the wheatfields of Kansas vs Manitoba? Has anyone checked this out?
We have experience from the dirty thirties. The losses would be 100% in both cases.
Usually when the alarmists call something unprecedented, it’s just because they never learned history and would prefer to ignore it.
It’s inconvenient.
In NJ there is a plague of deer. They will eat your flowers around your house and in the fall you can watch Wild America right out on your lawn of stags butting heads or mating, and the occasional out of its mind that will t=bone your car on I 287 or come through the front windshield … it’s worse than we thought… but don’t shoot the most holy deer. Farmers don’t have to worry about insects, the deer get about half.
What cracks me up is that there are many different climates already. Yet they talk about it as if there is just ONE, and it is going to hell. Warming? Move a few hundred miles further away from the equator, and you’ll have a completely new climate. Or, move up the mountains a few hundred feet. Presto! New climate!
You just need one climate if a publication credit is the goal in the volume-based system. It’s efficient that way.
One Climate to rule them all….
Three Climates for the IPCC Kings below the sky
Seven for the Sceptic Lords below the salt;
Nine for mortal men doomed to die – if the greenies get their way;
And One for the Great Mann on his Great Throne
One Climate* to Rule them all
One Climate to ruin them all
And in the Marxian Darkness bind them . . .
* (from one tree)
With, of course, acknowledgement – and apologies – to JRR Tolkien
Auto
No poet – and I know it.
But – : – ‘Throne’, in the UK is an occasional synonym for the great porcelain receptacle in the smallest room in the house . . .
Just sayin’. That’s all.
Auto, you’re a poet and don’t know it!
Your feet might show it,
If they’re Longfellows.
Like all those one-environment-only planets in the Star Wars movies.
Good thing Luke didn’t crash land into either of the poles of Dagobah or the impact would have been harder!
Isn’t it weird how gravity works the same everywhere in the movies?
Then how do they fly faster than light?
Gravity doesn’t work the same everywhere quite obviously.
The solution is to find uses for the insects that make them highly valuable. The insects will then be harvested and the alarmists will complain that the insects are in danger of extinction.
How about locust biodiesel? link
John the baptist ate them with honey.
Protein supplement for livestock. Hey if the locusts can guarantee a crop of themselves each year, we can harvest them.
guy in sth aus put a giant vacuum on the front of his tractor sucked locusts into fans , spat the muck out the back onto paddocks
he was amazed at the boost to the crops after
not so surprising all the minerals and nitrogen from the bugs/guts was a huge fertiliser boost.
as well as crushed bugs being a very good deterrent to others of the species, its one of the biofarming “tricks” for non chem pest control
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-08-13/news/mn-715_1_lygus-bugs
Not new. Note the date — 1989
Bug-vacs have to be tweaked for the type of insect.
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-locust-and-vs-grasshopper/
A repetition of an event written up in the Bible is just that … a repetition.
But of course this has never happened before… which is why we know so much about what is going to happen.
And, it also assumes we haven’t learned anything…which is probably a safe assumption for those who believe this junk.
I guess they never heard of a crop duster.
Or bait. Or birds. Climate change would have to eliminate a good portion of the predatory critters too.
Every 8 years or so there is a bloom of Mormon Crickets which can plague the western US. They are named after the religious sect who found out first hand how devastating this occurrence can be, but they were saved…by birds (seagulls to be exact).
Why is it the news is always bad news when it comes to a warming climate? They state, “When the temperature increases, the insects’ metabolism increases so they have to eat more,…” I would expect that would apply to the insects that prey on other insects as well! They aren’t looking at the whole picture. They are just looking at the things that will have negative outcomes. That is, they are biased researchers that haven’t examined all the variables.
Not to mention all those giant spiders – they should take care of some of them too!
‘They are just looking at the things that will have negative outcomes. That is, they are biased researchers that haven’t examined all the variables.’
And that’s called working backwards from a pre-determined conclusion.
You cannot examine all the variables. The system is too complex and in consequence, really unpredictable. Already with four interacting species you can get chaos, with more and other factors added on top of that… nobody knows and nobody can know. But with an extremely simple system with some cherry picked things they might pretend they have something predictable. Of course, it’s a fairy tale, but that does not stop them. https://compphys.go.ro/chaos/
If their metabolism increases won’t they age and die faster?
DDT!
This of course is just another prediction, which means it is modeling, which means the conclusions are driven by assumptions of those who wrote the paper, and the reliability of those conclusions is comparable to their belief that the world is ending soon because of SUV’s. It would be inseresting to know how much of what is called science today is simply a new version of reading the tea leaves or casting bones in a bowl. Without real world validation this is just mental masturbation and doom mongering.
All with their eye on the money
If you read about it in today’s news papers or in the media, it is of the divination variety.
The stuff that you don’t hear about, but rely upon everyday, is what emanates from real science.
It’s a disservice to reading tea leaves and casting bones in a bowl. Achieving a near 100% accuracy of getting things wrong is what ‘climate change’ is. Statistically, guessing or flipping a coin you wouldn’t get that many things wrong to that degree.
Meanwhile, here’s a study from Germany, 75% of insects lost….
ttps://phys.org/news/2017-10-percent-decrease-total-insect-biomass.html
Rhoda
Do you recall reading here that a 10% drop in the termite population would offset 100% of human emissions of CO2?
I suppose with all that extra biomass growing now from CO2 fertilisation, we can expect the termite population to increase.
Should be OK as in warm weather we don’t need as many calories anyway. Always look on the bright side of life doomsters.
Intoning Biblical imagery. Imagine that.
Telling, isn’t it?
Quite, although you can imagine the connection will not be made. That is also telling.
Millions of Species die off, but crop eating insects multiply. Who could of thunk it; could it be another convenient truth?
Global Warming only targets certain species. It’s a really insidious conscious effort.
Of course ‘his holiness the High Gore’ has the list…
and he’s checking it twice…
Odd – over the last 100 or so years during rising temps – crop losses due to insects has decreased, crop yields have increased.
So they are predicting the opposite of what is actually happening. but is it peer reviewed.
Well, it was definitely reviewed by their ‘peers’.
There was an old Mad Magazine cartoon, where a perp was standing before a judge awaiting trial – the judge told him he could be judged by the judge himself, or by a jury of his peers.
The perp asked, ‘what’s ‘peers’.’
The judge replied, ‘people just like you’.
And the perp said, ‘I’ll take my chances with you, your honor. I don’t want to be judged by a bunch of criminals.’
It will give all those planet saving UN types something useful to do and maybe they’ll stop bugging normal meat eaters-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9937633/10-reasons-why-we-should-eat-insects.html
Hold on now…..aren’t we supposed to be moving to a more insect heavy diet to get rid of the dangers of eating [red] meat? So what’s the problem?
It must be a terrible way to live, waking up every morning worrying about everything.
And the hell of it is that most of these fretting worry-warts are most often living in exceptionally good conditions from a historical and global point of view.
I remember once when I was a kid, after having a little run of bad-luck, asking my dad, ‘why do bad things have to happen?’
To which he replied, “if everything went great all the time, you’d start bitching about the good stuff.’
Did these ‘researchers’ take into account the increased crop yields?
If not, they are fools.
If they did and then omitted that data, they are intentionally misleading and mendacious.
I suspect it’s the latter.
This is yet another example of “if this changes, but not that as well” mentality. One cannot claim that a changing climate will have a multitude of effects on numerous different systems, and then IGNORE OR DISMISS those other effects and be truthful.
Sound like locust pocus to me
Badder worser! It reads like a cracked record! Do any of these people know how to write a scientific paper anymore? In mist cases you can read the boring conclusions in the slant of their study
This is not a problem, since more CO2 will cause greater crop yields that will allow insect pests to dine at a level never known before. CO2 will provide more food for the NATURAL creatures of Earth, as a positive offshoot of allowing them to proliferate. Mother Nature has it all figured out. We should feel good about Her being able to take care of Her creatures like this.
It’s a win-win for humans too. All those extra insects will increase the supply of protein — just harvest the insects and cook ’em up. If people don’t have enough grains to eat, then those that don’t will die — NATURAL population control. What’s important is that those humans who DO live can feast in the bounty of more bug meat, as they lead more spatially fulfilling lives with less crowding and competition for resources.
“Stupid”, you say. Well, yeah, but no more stupid than the claim that inspired me.
Isn’t insect population mostly about the food available? Is this also going to increase 15-25% per degree of warming? It’s not magic, they are affected by more than just temperatures.
Hehe-
“Climate change on track to cause major insect wipeout, scientists warn …
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/…/climate-change-on-track-to-cause-major”
You can’t make it up!