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Comment by twodave | Hacker News Reader

As a Floridian, my understanding is that disease is a much worse problem than climate. For example, nobody yet knows how to effectively control the bacteria that causes citrus greening. It is transmitted via insects, grafting, etc. and very difficult to prevent the spread of once it's in an area. So once it showed up in Florida (it originated in South China) it was basically just a matter of time before it became a widespread problem. And if a cure isn't found we could lose a lot more than oranges, and in a lot more places.

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>disease is a much worse problem than climate.

But the two aren't discrete issues. Climate is the reason Malaria isn't prevalent in northern Europe and people are starting to worry about it in southern Europe.

Areas with severe winters are typically protected from many crop plagues and disease vectors, because their populations went through a bottleneck every year. Warmer climate tends to ease or eliminate the bottleneck, and with year-round large populations, their spread and recovery becames much faster. They will not need to start from scratch after every winter, in many places where this was typically the case.

To me this is like complaining about humidity causing slip and falls while there’s a hose on inside. Anyone who has lived in Florida as long as I have (39 years, so far) knows that it’s never really gotten that cold here in the winter to begin with. We have had snow once in my lifetime, and that was really only in my area of Northeast Florida.

Its primary vector is the asian citrus psyllid. But you're right, once the bacteria is present in the plant tissue it can be transmitted to other healty plants via diseased grafts.

> it originated in South China

Oops. Wonder if there was a virus research lab near that location too? /s

explain why this is funny

Please refer to the happenings of 2020

Knee jerk low effort references are funny?

They definitely can be. :)

"/s", I thought, means "end sarcasm", which is the lowest form of humor and not every one thinks other person's funny actually is

These diseases are mostly consequences of climate changes (including pollutions increases, plastics, ..), so long term, mid term, short term it's always climate change the most important challenge, at global and local scale

You also can't neatly separate disease issues from climate issues. Insects and diseases are both expanding their ranges in a warmer world.

In a normal world with enough biodiversity, it's balanced, some species can die, newer comes. In a human society whole ranges of species are killed because human have such an impact, insect mass is 10x less than 30 years ago, the problems is certainly not too much insects, it's the opposite, their lack of habitat too because we put concrete, roads everywhere, so instead of trying to fight directly and incorrectly these diseases, it's much better to fight the source issue, reducing car traffic, reducing/stopping air traffic, maritim traffic, etc..

Uh i get what you are saying but we still have to directly fight disease and it's vectors.

Reducing emissions to 0 right now isn't going to work fast enough.

Uh, normal ecosystems are rarely what humans would call balanced for long. There are regular die offs, population booms and busts, plagues, etc, all the time in untouched ecosystems. (Hell, just look at ‘red tides’).

Some human impacts make things worse, some make things better - depending on the criteria used.

For instance, draining swamps is a classic human behavior that dramatically decreases disease vectors. It also removes habitat for a large swath of animals, including alligators.

Overall a good thing, or a bad thing?

It’s rare that things like frequency of car or truck traffic has much bearing itself, though making roads definitely can.

> some make things better

Do you have examples where human presence help the environment?

I don't know some, obviously there are constant changes, normal ecosystems are strong due to their biodiversity, so they recover and adapt quicky. With humans there are holes, more room for strong diseases. It's like on a more local scale the health of an average rich country human, it's very weak and subject to diseases, because of a bad lifestyle. If for a decade this lifestyle is changed with more diversity, interaction with nature, the change is incredible, it's the same at larger scales

You might want to read my comment again.

Not really. There are a huge number of invasive species that are perfectly happy taking over even without climate change. There is nothing magic about the temperature change from the bacterial perspective

Because they don't have enough predators, because of humans presence (birds, and more medium size insect eating animals are depleted, because humans prefer dogs, cats, cars, plastic wrapping, and laziness

It's not that. Many of these thing have no native predators on the north American continent,and easily out compete local organisms.

When it comes to things like soil bacteria and root fungus, it is even more pronounced. You can loose thousands of acres of monoculture tree to pathogens that they have evolutionary exposure to and we're not previously present in the area.

> There is nothing magic about the temperature change from the bacterial perspective

I'm not sure about that, when there are insects carrying these bugs. e.g.

Malaria: https://apnews.com/article/malariaclimate-changemosquitos-48...

Zika: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33037740/

And many, many other such articles.

The first part is true enough, but most bacteria thrive in high temperatures (20-45 degrees C).

Most everyone from the north who have gone on summer vacations further south can attest to this...

I think the mean temperature change in Florida falls in that range.

The main exception to this is some locations and elevations that experience shorter winter freezes, which can have a major impact on seasonal insect population

Isn't it more a globalisation problem? ie stuff being transported between countries all the time now, and invading species seem to be good hitchhikers?

It's both. Globalization causes the outbreak, but climate change makes the world more habitable for these microbiotics.

Globalisation and lack of care are more probable reasons.

Raising the temperature will not made a new species materialize magically from the other coin of planet. Commerce can do and will do it. Fruit sector has been also traditionally vulnerable to sabotage. There are several old examples where a disease was introduced deliberately.

About Pongamia trees, they are legumes, so:

1) seeds will be typically toxic without processing. Toxic in a subtle but still dangerous way.

2) will alter the Nitrogen in soil probably (but will be able to grow in poor soils).

3) There is a risk to became invasive, as other legumes like Kudzu proven to be. Specially when planted at scale.

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