The Insect Apocalypse That Never Was | Hacker News Reader

The Insect Apocalypse That Never Was

quillette.com

27 pointsyesenadam10 comments

Just for reference, the author of the linked article is the founder of the Genetic Literacy Project: "Its executive director is Jon Entine who promotes GMOs. Bloomberg and The Progressive have reported that lawyers suing Monsanto state in court documents that companies funnel money to the Genetic Literacy Project in order to 'shame scientists and highlight information helpful to Monsanto and other chemical producers.'"

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Proje...

This article is complete bollocks from beginning to end. I had to hold my nose reading the article. It even manages to rubbish some well regarded studies that comes to the conclusion that insects are indeed disappearing. I wonder who really funded that article?

The author paints a straw man that he then rails against. He claims that those who are gravely concerned about reports of declining insect populations are hysterics, describing them and their reporting as "churning out alarming stories", "framed in catastrophic terms", "near-inevitable and imminent ecological collapse", "the crisis narrative", "crisis promoters", "the recent hyper-focus", "the crisis narrative", "the inflammatory rhetoric", etc.

Furthermore, he uses weasel words to cast aspersions onto those he disagrees with, while he praises those he agrees with. He calls those who conducts the research that the 2017 study was based on "an obscure German entomological society". But this society was founded in 1905 and has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomologischer_Verein_Krefeld So probably not that obscure by German entomological society standards.

He calls Manu Saunders, whose opinions he relies on, "a prominent entomologist, and recipient of the Office of Environment & Heritage/Ecological Society of Australia Award for Outstanding Science Outreach." But Dave Goulson, who the author dislikes, is described as follows:

> Dave Goulson has a controversial reputation in the science community. As the GLP has previously reported, he is an admitted scientist-for-hire, who has produced research with a promised, predetermined conclusion for activist organizations. His views—which date back a decade now and are apparently impervious to new evidence—have not changed; he vehemently attacks the use of advanced technology in farming, including genetic engineering and targeted synthetic chemicals, and has specifically targeted the class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids while ignoring the ecological impact of organic pesticides. As he told the Guardian when his controversial 2017 study was published, “[The insect deaths could be caused by] exposure to chemical pesticides,” even though the study sampled populations from nature reserves and its purpose wasn’t to detect causes of declines.

This is the study the author refers to: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-017-9240-x Why this study is "controversial" is beyond me.

The author namedrops a meta study which he thinks is good science:

> A 2020 study from German researchers led by Dr. Roel van Klink represented the largest and most definitive study on global insect populations at the time of its publication. Their meta-analysis of 166 studies found that insects are declining much (three- to six-fold) less rapidly than previously reported, and freshwater insects are actually increasing. Other major findings included:

The first sentences of the meta study's abstract read:

> A worldwide compilation of long-term insect abundance studies shows that the number of land-dwelling insects is in decline. On average, there is a global decrease of 0.92% per year, which translates to approximately 24% over 30 years.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/845864

A 24% decrease in world-wide insect life over 30 years seems quite worrisome to me....

In the last 30 years temperatures have risen in most parts of the world, but notably not in the continental US. This could perhaps explain why no declines in insect life has yet been observed there.

So it seems that we have another attention-craving journalist spreading outrage for clicks, profit and free consulting. Right?

Great read, and I’m happy to be introduced to the phrase “advocacy journalists” (and “advocacy-focused studies” and “advocacy-focused scientists”). Speaking for myself, I definitely fell for the insect apocalypse news cycle and I can’t recall ever seeing any updates that redacted prior claims or attempted to correct the public’s knowledge. I feel like news media needs to ensure equal exposure (like on the front page) for corrections to past mistakes.

It’s also eerie reading this so soon after the recent heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, which was falsely attributed to climate change in a very similar collaboration between advocacy journalists and advocacy researchers. A Professor of Atmospheric Science recently analyzed how news covered this story and laid bare the immense failure of researchers and journalists to properly inform the public of the nuances involved:

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/flawed-heatwave-repor...

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/miscommunication-of-r...

Cliff is the same thing going the other way. He spends nearly 100% of his energy downplaying the role of global warming in current events. He isn't some centrist scientist driving nuance into the conversation.

I have a hard time understanding your perspective but would be happy to listen and learn more about why you feel that way. Here are my thoughts:

Looking at his blog’s home page, most of the posts aren’t about downplaying the role of global warming in current events. In fact, the most recent post is about a new investigation he’s working on to see if wildfires sparked by thunderstorms will change with global warming.

I feel he is approximately a centrist scientist driving nuance, because these posts are just raw scientific analyses that support his very precisely stated claims and conclusions. For example with the recent PNW heatwave, he explicitly stated that global warming contributed to the heatwave (a few degrees to peak temperatures) but that it would have been a record breaking event even without global warming. That feels very nuanced to me, but he has been criticized for it nevertheless. The advocacy study he is critiquing actually determined the same thing (read the full study not their blog post) but they published a misleading and sensationalist headline on their blog that implied climate change played a major role in the heatwave, which then got recycled blindly by advocacy journalists. It is especially odd because their deeper findings actually agree almost fully with what Cliff Mass had been saying about this weather event all along (the nuance I mentioned above).

I’m certainly not claiming that Cliff Mass is some kind of perfect being, but it seems to me that in the face of very common biased/unsupported/hyperbolic climate news stories, an expert who is trying to seek the truth would naturally seem to be “downplaying” things regularly when they are simply stating an unbiased case the whole time. It seems like a purposeful downplaying just because there is so much bad pop science journalism/activism out there that disagrees with the actual science. At least that’s my take.

Did you just claim that this recent pacific heatwave is not linked to climate change? That puts you in scientific fringe territory as an outlier. Such an event is statistically highly highly unlikely as a singular event. When you tie it into all the other One in a Million events such as extreme flooding in summertime Central Europe and China you start to really have to do a lot of handwaving to pretend that it’s not climate change caused by humans burning hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon.

Frankly, such radical statements as you made right here undermine this piece that we should be discussing here. It means that you are one of “those” people (climate change denialism in 2021 is an anachronism not supported by any substantive evidence) and it suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t take this piece here seriously, which is not what I grokked from reading it. You do this piece above an associative disservice if you truly hope it to be taken seriously you should refrain from attaching frivolous false commentary. The recent pacific heatwave would likely not have happened if we didn’t burn petroleum like there is no tomorrow.

This piece above, meanwhile, purports to debunk two studies that are claimed to be methodologically flawed. The author does not claim that neonicotinoids don’t harm insects, but rather targets the work of specific individuals. I only gave a cursory read, nor do I have access to the materials to evaluate, nor the domain knowledge.

> The author does not claim that neonicotinoids don’t harm insects.

I hope so. Claiming that one of the main insecticides used in the planet can't kill insects, would be like claiming that automobiles can't move.

I suggest reading the links I provided for an analysis. The summary is that the heatwave was highly unlikely both with or without climate change. It requires a number of weather factors to come together at the same time in a very unlikely way. The contribution of global warming to the heatwave was only 2 degrees at peak even per the study that was critiqued for using hyperbolic headlines - meaning that it would be a record breaking heatwave even without global warming. The problem with how news and social media covered this event is that there was a readiness to blame it primarily on climate change, when the role it played was very minor.

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