Essay by Eric Worrall
Scientists ignoring obvious solutions to problems?
Climate change may cause crisis amid important insect populations, researchers say
By Adam Yamaguchi, Kerry Breen
February 24, 2024 / 11:08 AM EST / CBS NewsThey might be tiny, but insects rule the planet, making up over two-thirds of the world’s 1.5 million known animal species and the backbone of the food chain. But despite their immense impact and large numbers, bugs might be in trouble.
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In greenhouses, Sheldon simulates a warming planet to see how the beetles react. Sheldon and her team have found that smaller dung beetles struggle to dig deep enough to protect their offspring from the warming climate and extreme temperature swings.
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While climate change is contributing to insect population declines, the loss of dung beetles may in turn exacerbate extreme swings in temperature, creating a climate doom loop.
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Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-may-cause-crisis-amid-important-insect-populations-researchers-say/
Kimberly Sheldon seems to have written a bunch of similar dung beetle climate studies, so I’m not sure which one the CBS article refers to. Maybe all of them.
In my opinion the premise of the claim is nonsense. Dung beetles are in no danger of dying out due to climate change, because there is a substantial reservoir of hot weather extremophile dung beetles which could be used to supplement any local species which are struggling with the weather.
Between 1965 and 1985, a dung beetle introduction project was run in Australia, in which beetles from Europe, Africa and North America were introduced in an attempt to reduce buffalo fly populations. Native dung beetles couldn’t deal with dung from introduced cattle, and blood sucking Buffalo Flies, which breed in cattle dung, and cause irritation and sores on cattle, were a serious agricultural problem.
Unlike Australia’s infamous Cane Toad disaster, the dung beetle introduction was a success. While Buffalo Flies are still a significant problem, the introduced dung beetles reduced dung available for flies to breed, and substantially mitigated the problem.
But what about the impact on the dung beetles? Those introduced dung beetles have had decades, 10s, perhaps hundreds of generations, to adapt to Australia’s scorching hot climate. We know the beetles are completely compatible with the cattle industry, because they were specifically introduced to mitigate a cattle pest.
My point is, even if the very worst climate predictions came true, there is no chance dung beetles in the USA would fail. if necessary, faltering US dung beetle populations could be supplemented with their hot climate relatives from Australia, ensuring the continuity of the species and the important service they provide.
I find it difficult to believe an expert like Kimberly Sheldon would not be aware of the hot climate reservoir of European descended dung beetles in Australia. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Kimberly did mention the possibility of transplanting hot climate dung beetles, but this information somehow got left out of the CBS article.
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Obviously, to many scientist are victims of Climate Change.
Very nice article – “We were able to kill beetles in an experiment, we’re all doomed!”.
I suspect that dung beetles will survive in just about any climate if they adapt to eating bullish!t.
They already do, literally.
Can beetles eat “climate science”?
They would be very well fed if they could !! 🙂
I don’t know why, but Mr Mann comes to mind when skimming this article.
In the photo of the beetle on the ball of stuff, it is easy to imagine the beetle replaced with a happy little caricature of Mr. Mann, arms outstretched, & balanced on the ball.
Amazing, what passes for modern science.
2.0 C degrees rise (maybe) in 100+ years I doubt will change anything measurable or meaningful, too much noise in such measurements. No need to worry!
I’m curious ….. of all the species that have gone extinct, what has been the consequences other than “they’re gone forever and any contributions they might have made (whatever they are) are gone with them”. Would we decry the extinction of mosquitos even though many creatures rely on them as a food source (they’ll adapt to other food sources). I understand the basic premise of extinction but it has been going on for as long as the earth has been around and the affect on humans has been what? If cows/cattle became extinct now that would be a problem.
The CBS climate alarm is contrived nonsense based on dung beetle ‘research’ concerning just one species.
Superfamily Scarabaeodiae has three subfamilies and about 9500 known species. Three dung beetle behaviors: rollers, tunnelers, dwellers. CBS ‘research’ concerns one North American species of small tunneler.
Dung beetles are found on all continents except Antarctica, and in all terrestrial ecosystems. 27 different species were introduced to Australia to solve the cattle fly problem.
No amount of climate change will affect the superfamily.
From Texas to Florida and Minnesota to Maine, we have the American Carrion Beetle (Necrophila americana). I have watched these in action when cleaning up my yard after my dog does its business. They are not above ground long so are difficult to see, but they are there.
I have not bought into the CO2 causes doomsday warming since finishing my chemistry degree, but I would admit to the possibility of a gentle increase of solar warming causing increased metabolic activity of insects and a modest increase in CO2 levels. Nothing to worry about.
The issue about digging holes was/is perfectly explained via the garden of my house in near Newark (nth Notts UK)by comparing its soil/dirt to that of the surrounding fields.
Myself and the farmer/owner (Dave) of those fields chatted about it often.
The soil is ‘Glacial Till’ – a mix of course/sharp sand interspersed with clay. Sometimes mixed intimately together and other times laid down in distinct layers
The house and garden dated from late 60’s and were built upon The Local Soil
Since mid 60’s when the house was built and the garden marked out, the garden has been treated ‘organically’
i.e.No ploughing, fertilising, weed-killing and all the other things that happen in intensive agriculture growing wheat, potatoes, sugar-beet, corn and occasionally carrots
I knew from via the operations of my friendly local mole and my attempts to ‘make him go away‘ that the soil in that garden was a soft as freshly fallen snow.
Especially in what was the (previous owner’s) vegetable plot, you could dig a hole 10, 12 or 15″ deep with just your bare hands.
The soil was always moist, soft and warm
After the crops had gone and the surrounding fields were bare/fallow over winter to , the sand that they were comprised literally turned to rock – the course/sharp sand attempted to reform itself into the sandstone it originally was.
And where water had puddled or sat, especially along the lines of tractor/machinery tracks, the effect was even worse. When it dried out in the spring any normal hand-held digging spade simply bounced off it.
And THAT was the reason the farmers all around used multi-leg chisel ploughs to do their primary cultivations – to break up that reforming sandstone as it occurred every winter
In the mid 60’s, the soil in those fields would have been just the same as the cotton-wool soft fluff in my garden..
And THAT is Soil Erosion writ large and why farmer Dave spent many of of our chats bemoaning ‘poor quality soil’ on his farm.
He was a livestock farmer just like I was, he could have been my son.
He KNEW the vital importance of Soil Organic Material and via the cattle he kept did everything in his power to maintain it.
Yet in the face of the juggernaut that is ploughing + nitrogen fertiliser + Glyphosate, he hadn’t a hope in hell
So what chance do the poor little beetles have of digging a hole – when farmers need 150hp tractors and chisels to dig holes in their fields just to grow a field of Biomass every springtime?
boys and girls, we ARE in a lot of trouble here – the clues are all around us if you care to look elsewhere than into a computer screen
Interesting story about introduction of non-native dung beetles to Australia.
And I’ve never seen a buffalo fly, but I guess they really do!
https://www.flyfrontier.com/plane-tails/endangered-animals/wiley-the-bison/?mobile=true
We already know that Buffalo have wings. Really tiny ones.
You must be a PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) member.
Wow! Kimberly studies dung beetles in a greenhouse. I wonder if she needs an assistant?
Well ….. she does seem to push a lot of ….. dung !
😉
I’m sure you can kill all the beetles in a greenhouse for any number of reasons, most of them probably unknown….and raising the soil temperature might be a way to interfere with their egg laying or whatever…but in the real world, the dung beetles will just have their roll-a-thon on a shadier side of the coulee, hill, or rock.
Let me guess… This experiment created an environment to simulate X amount on warming in coming years. And it didn’t give the dung beetles an opportunity to adapt to change, it just threw them into the enclosure.
In the real world, there would be multiple generations for the beetles to adapt to the changing environment. Epic fail.
One of the problems with the “disappearing” dung beetles is the use of protein tubs spiked with insecticide. When I first added cattle (long horns) to my little piece of heaven, I noticed that they were being bothered by horn flies. Feed store suggested putting one of their insecticide protein tubs out. It did clear up the problem, but I soon noticed that all the dung beetles were no longer working. I solved that problem by only using non-spiked protein tubs (mostly molasses), and once again I have a healthy population of those little guys working away. After all, if it weren’t for those dung beetles we would all be knee deep in crap.
Thanks jvcstone it never occurred to me pesticide in cattle feed could be causing such a problem,
“”may””
And then again, most unlikely. They’ve been around since the Cretaceous period.
What are they imbibing?
“”the loss of dung beetles may in turn exacerbate extreme swings in temperature””
Answers on a postcard…
Here in south central Texas it is hotter than dung all summer long and they are rolling their balls around like there’s no tomorrow. Maybe do some field research out here. Just wish they would stop rolling them into my pool.
You can’t have pool without poo
or the pee
It looks like a lot of job openings soon for Warmists, especially all of the former CLIMATEGATE Frauds. They can roll dung into balls and even make hockey sticks out of it.
A dung beetle walks into a bar and asks the bartender, “Is this stool taken?”
I’ll show myself out…
AS a geophysicist I felt kinship with the dung beetle . I would assemble bits of data,threads of inspiration and hours of hard graft, parcel it up into a neat little ball and roll it up the hill with murderous difficulty to present to a big slothful creature with a bulging big sleek irredescent carapace, called “Management”. Management would look it over ponderously before passing judgement . “Its a ball of dung!Take it away. Work on it and bring it back when it is bigger and smellier”
I suppose Climate Scientists feel the same when a skeptic calls them out for trundling big balls of shite up the Mountain of Truth
Looking at that picture of the dung beetle atop this thread, I am reminded of Dr Michael Mann, and the similarity of what those two creatures are engaged in.
No Mike–those dung Beatles serve a necessary and useful function—Michael Mann?? not so much
Pretty much every living thing is adapted to diurnal and seasonal temperature swings ranging from 10 to 70 C or more. None are specifically adapted to survive only at the average 15 +/- 2 C global temperature. Speculation about how a trivial change in global average temperature will lead to dramatic changes in local climates with catastrophic consequences is not credible.
Eric you are far too kind to people like Kimberly Sheldon, my guess is that she knew exactly what she was saying and meant exactly what she said. Rather than cut them slack we need to hold their feet to the fire.
We are dealing with people who are making their living by using ambiguous language that can mean anything and therefore means nothing. They are screeching about one thing and one thing only. Man using fossil fuel and adding CO2 into the atmosphere. They claim that the CO2 man is adding to the atmosphere is causing catastrophe. They claim that the added CO2 man causes will lead to catastrophe if the the average global temperature raises as little as 1.5 degree C from preindustrial times.
We have almost certainly passed 1.5 C and yet here we are. They have been given a free ride for far too long, time to put a stop to it.
Dung beetles like it hot and when they see bullshit, they just lap it up. They cannot wait for another posting by Climate Alarmists.
Eric, you overlook the fact that anything humans do is is really really bad evil so any effort to deliberately introduce beetles from somewhere else would face decades of massive protest, sabotage, and lawfare.
Were these claims IA generated?
(They sound robotic.)
“Rabotic” ?
Yes, but will there be enough dung beetles left for us to eat when we have to eat bugs to save the planet?