11 ms·

Countless species are already going extinct all the time, both known to us and completely unknown to us, and both "naturally" and from human impact, and no one

• artificialLimbs 5y ago
  70 years ago (roughly, may be inexact), everyone who also "knows anything about it" said it was a fantastic idea to spray our kids with DDT. I wish I could pin down the reasoning to explain why I feel this is wrong, but intuition is the only thing I have to go on, even as heavily discounted that is in this day and age. Mosquitos are horrible little devils, and we swat every one we can and destroy their habitats when we find them. Glad to see you at least have a seed of skepticism in you. Humans are notoriously bad at playing god.
  • tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    I feel like you are are ignoring the fact DDT is still commonly used around the world as it does more good then harm.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • jacobolus 5y ago
      > it does more good then harm This is an oversimplification. If used as a limited last resort it can do more good than harm (which is why e.g. the WHO still recommends using it). DDT is very effective and has certainly saved a lot of lives by preventing malaria infections. But if used carelessly it can do a lot of harm, and various groups of experts who have studied the question have come to the conclusion that its use should be dramatically curtailed, and replaced where possible by other methods of malaria control. DDT causes fertility problems, birth defects, cancer, etc. to humans, as well as environmental damage. (Malaria also kills a ton of people, and we should be investing more resources in fighting it, ideally without resorting to heavy DDT use.)
      • garmaine 5y ago
        DDT is not known to have reproductive effects or cause cancer in humans. Please do your research and be careful about sources because there is a LOT of misinformation out there.
        • jacobolus 5y ago
          Here’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Human_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Human_health I am not a medical expert, just passing along what I have read.
          • duskwuff 5y ago
            Moreover: we know from observation that DDT has severe effects on numerous wildlife species -- some of them intended, many not. It would be highly surprising for humans to be immune to these effects.
        • WarChortle18 5y ago
          Sounds like you did the research care to share your sources for that. Otherwise I'm sticking with my sources that day DDT does cause cancer and birth defects. See Wikipedia article on DDT linked by someone else.
  • pembrook 5y ago
    Humans are in fact, really good at playing god over long periods of time. You can look at any metric of human wellbeing over the past 1000 years and the results are dramatic. Take child mortality for example. In the 18th century, the average family suffered the deaths of 3-4 of their children before they reached adulthood. Then, from 1800 to 1950, global childhood mortality dropped from 43% to 22%. Accelerating further, from 1950 to 2015, global child mortality dropped again by nearly 5X to just 4.5%. And it's still going down. [1] The reasons for this are numerous. Reductions in famine through agriculture, beating disease with medicine, reducing War through economic interdependency, expanding education and access to information through digital technology, etc. While we make mistakes in the short term , in the long term, we tend to get stuff right. The problem is, we're also really good at getting distracted by bad news stories while missing the big picture. And we LOVE the idea of humans being the cause of the end of the world for some reason. It's the basis of most of our religions. Of course, the arc of progress is paved with setbacks. But before getting pessimistic and cynical because you read some bad news stories, it pays to zoom out a little. [1] - https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality#:~:text=Across%20the%20entire%20historical%20sample,died%20before%20they%20reached%20adulthood.&text=On%20the%20very%20right%20of,rate%20is%20now%20is%202.9%25 https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality#:~:text=Across%20....
    • artificialLimbs 5y ago
      I suppose if we love the idea of humans being the cause of the end of the world, it is because we are the only thing on the planet capable of causing the end of the world, such as it is. This is the result of science. Maybe you could call it scientism, if one needs something to which to ascribe a bogeyman or create division. I am not ungrateful for our current actualization. Getting here took (and continues to take) tremendous sacrifice.
      • stickfigure 5y ago
        > capable of causing the end of the world I really think you give humans too much credit here. The world has been here for billions of years, and will be here for billions more. Even if we bombed ourselves to extinction, in another million years there'd be little more to mark our passing than some fossils and a few hunks of concrete.
• briga 5y ago
  >pretty much everyone who knows anything about it ... agrees it can be eradicated with no meaningful impact on the ecosystem. Any citations for this? Seems like a very bold claim considering this has never been done before.
  • bedobi 5y ago
    I encourage everyone to read up on it themselves. Other commenters have already pointed out this species is invasive everywhere outside Africa, constitutes only a tiny fraction of the mosquito population where they exist, and doesn't fill any meaningful ecological role anywhere. > considering this has never been done before But that's the point, it kind of has. Countless species are going extinct all the time. The only thing different about this case is it's deliberate and using a scary sounding means.
    • developer93 5y ago
      I think maybe they were taking specifically about mosquito eradication
      • bedobi 5y ago
        Even talking only about deliberate mosquito eradication, we've been doing that for a long, long time too, overwhelmingly with far more devastating methods than this targeted one.
      • Loughla 5y ago
        That's already a thing. They fog the streets at night in the closest town to where I live, in the summer. Consequences - every bug dies as well as mosquitoes. This seems slightly more targeted than that approach.
  • galangalalgol 5y ago
    Actually this exact approach has already been used to great effect for several years in south america. And if you google there are a lot of pop science stories with scientists saying they fill no noche and are fine to eliminate. Only found one saying we should keep them. Some guy from perdue.
• GavinMcG 5y ago
  I think we live in a pretty skeptical and critical age. There are plenty of decently-educated people ready to jump into any discussion and either a) share their contrary opinion, regardless of the basis for it, or b) point out weaknesses/downsides/concerns as a "contribution" to the conversation. I don't mean to claim that this is always bad or inappropriate. Just that it's the in thing to do these days.
  • jjcon 5y ago
    > There are plenty of decently-educated people ready to jump into any discussion and either a) share their contrary opinion I completely disagree with you sir!
    • chrisco255 5y ago
      Reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit, where a guy goes to a clinic to pay to argue with someone: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ "I'd like to have an argument, please."
      • not1ofU 5y ago
        https://youtu.be/QereR0CViMY?t=29 https://youtu.be/QereR0CViMY?t=29
  • ehnto 5y ago
    I also find people make dichotomies out of every topic, and lump everyone into the extreme ends of each view. This turns every discussion into a Team A vs Team B win or lose scenario, which just isn't how most things work. Two ideas can be perfectly valid at the same time, even if they conflict on some points, and the ideas likely exist on a spectrum of possible views with neither Team A or Team B truly being at the logical conclusion of their ideologies. Likewise, it's perfectly valid to know something is good for the environment on paper, yet still "feel" like it's the wrong thing. Humans are not calculators, and whether or not you'll get the right outcome from going by your feelings, you're fully entitled to them all the same.
• azernik 5y ago
  And in fact many of those disastrous attempts to modify the ecosystem have also been aimed at killing mosquitos, notably the draining of swamps in Northern Israel. Having more precise mechanisms will not only allow the same interventions to happen with less collateral damage, but will also let us get much more experience on the specific attempts of adding and removing species.
• publicola1990 5y ago
  This type of Sterile Male method for mosquito contol has been quite extensively studied. I think there is much literature/experimental results in this approach from the past 50 years.
• waihtis 5y ago
  Human track record for understanding complex systems is poor, let alone tampering with them. That is the likely culrpit for the knee-jerk here.
  • AmericanChopper 5y ago
    Science dogma strikes again. Science can’t predict anything with absolute certainty, I’m quite skeptical of the idea that a prediction about a system this complex could be made with even a “very good” level of certainty. But when it comes to communicating science to the public, the only message that can be put forward is one of perfectly unanimous, absolute certainty. The people are too stupid to make their own judgements, so they must not be given the opportunity.
    • waihtis 5y ago
      Thats an interesting stance for sure. Unfortunately this kind of approach is flawed and will sow contempt in the populace against the government, resulting eventually in riots & overthrow
      • AmericanChopper 5y ago
        I was being a bit facetious. I was criticizing what I view to be the shortcomings in contemporary science communication, and I would suggest that you can already see how it has resulted in contempt and mistrust directed towards our institutions.
        • majormajor 5y ago
          I think the mistrust came before the contemporary communication. Especially in the US. A pro-agrarian/anti-development conservative strain goes back to the original colonies.
          • wildmanx 5y ago
            Interesting they integrated diesel trucks and assault rifles so centrally into their existence. I'm sure those were not around in the original colonies.
• StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >while these mosquitoes do cause a lot of human deaths, the environmental "benefit" of those deaths are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things Benefit to whom? What is the grand scheme of things? >pretty much everyone who knows anything about it (including otherwise very environmentally minded people who as a rule would never, ever agree with deliberately eradicating anything) agrees it can be eradicated with no meaningful impact on the ecosystem The hubris in this statement is absolutely stunning and, ironically, the perfect example of why we, as an extremely limited, ignorant, species of upright apes should not be exterminating other species because we think we have it all figured out.
  • khazhoux 5y ago
    > The hubris in this statement is absolutely stunning and, ironically, the perfect example of why we, as an extremely limited, ignorant, species of upright apes should not be exterminating other species because we think we have it all figured out. How are we extremely limited and ignorant? As far as we know (and with zero counter-evidence), we are the most capable, most knowledgeable species in the entire universe. We reign supreme. In fact, the only logical reason we shouldn't exterminate other species for our benefit, is if doing so somehow harms us in some different and greater way.
    • goache 5y ago
      Humans have trouble dealing with three particle systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem), so "limited and ignorant" seems like an good description imo.
    • StanislavPetrov 5y ago
      >How are we extremely limited and ignorant? I can't answer this any better than your response already does.
      • developer93 5y ago
        Lets leave the personal insults to reddit, shall we?
• cbhl 5y ago
  I suspect this is the bikeshed effect at work. There's an episode of The Magic School Bus (the original one, from the 90s) where a cacao farmer eradicates mosquitos and the cacao trees stop producing cacao beans. The episode ends with the reintroduction of the mosquitoes, and you get to eat chocolate again. So you've got at least one generation that grew up on the message that mosquitoes are a species that you don't eradicate, or else, no more chocolate. And that's a simple enough message that people would feel comfortable making public comment to that effect.
• goseeastarwar 5y ago
  I cannot tell you how refreshing it is that this is the top comment. Discussion around these sorts of articles is almost always railroaded with the objections that you've mentioned. While I agree that it's human nature to be skeptical, I don't see how it's a foregone conclusion that nature is always right and that certain disease-carrying mosquitos and homo sapiens should have to exist simultaneously. We know conclusively that evolution doesn't always make the correct decision, one only needs to examine the human eye or appendix to know this to be true.
• danmaz74 5y ago
  If the goal was to eradicate all mosquitos, I would see the ecological risks. But here it's about just one specific species of mosquitos which only represents 4% of the local population, and the widely used alternative is insecticides, which are damaging to so many different insects. Reducing the need fir insecticides looks like a worthy goal.
  • 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    Years ago I would have agreed with you but they have been studying the possible impact of mosquito eradication for over a decade now. And it looks like they can do it with minimal impact. Off with their heads!
  • godelski 5y ago
    Save the bees, kill the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Though I think Disneyland will still spray for mosquitoes even if they don't carry Zika. I doubt that it'll seriously reduce spraying (unless this becomes an alternative to spraying) but I'll go with the scientists that studied this. I'm also kinda curious if this could help eradicate invasive species. I'd imagine it'd take longer with species that don't reproduce as fast as mosquitoes.
• lwhi 5y ago
  Come on people. We've all seen Jurassic park. This kind of thing never ends well .. what are they thinking? Edit: bioengineering projects released into live ecologies have unforeseen consequences.
  • lwhi 5y ago
    Minus two points for this comment; one word .. nerds,
• wesleywt 5y ago
  Surprisingly my reasons for not eradicating pests like mosquitoes and tsetse flies is that these insects protect natural environments from human encroachment. Remove these pest, makes it easier for humans to enter and region, then do untold environmental damage.
  • bedobi 5y ago
    I'm not surprised at this argument at all, it's guaranteed to come up given the nature of hacker news commenters. Which is why I said even the armchair criticism from cynical misanthropes who consider human deaths resulting from this species a good thing "because humans are bad for the environment" - while these mosquitoes do cause a lot of human deaths, the environmental "benefit" of those deaths are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things)
  • finiteseries 5y ago
    Historically ignorant cynical misanthropy that at the end of the day, still condemns millions to disease and billions to poverty in the name of some nebulous environment. Humans are the ones who brought Aedes aegypti, yellow fever, and the malaria parasites to the “natural environment” of the Americas in which >100,000,000 people lived prior to contact. Yellow fever came with the English colonists from their infested coastal marsh natural environment (where people lived). Parasites from their slaves, taken from their malarial natural environments (where people lived). Imported into the New World, helping kill 90% of the people who already lived there, perpetuating the use of chattel slaves thought less susceptible to “fevers and ague”. One of the single most important components to the Colombian Exchange, the idea of mosquito borne disease protecting any natural environments from human encroachment at this point is borderline delusional / actively malicious.
• na85 5y ago
  >and suddenly people care and object, a lot!? I object because I have no confidence that the unintended consequences won't be ecologically disastrous.
  • bedobi 5y ago
    You do realize this is an invasive species that doesn't even belong in the ecosystem in question? Would you also oppose controlling fox and deer populations in Australia?
    • na85 5y ago
      >Would you also oppose controlling fox and deer populations in Australia? By using genetic engineering? Yes I would.
• absove 5y ago
  > Countless species are already going extinct all the time, both known to us and completely unknown to us, and both "naturally" and from human impact, and no one really cares. Many people care, only those that have financial gain to make from this state of affair choose to ignore it.
  • bedobi 5y ago
    I care deeply, everyone does! The question is, out of all the species that go extinct on literally a daily basis, why on god's green earth would you pick this one to protect? What is it about it that is so vital we can't afford to lose it?
• virtue3 5y ago
  I'm much more concerned because this is a species that is very closely tied to human interactions. Having -potentially- genetically modified organisms sucking my blood and introducing who knows what into my blood stream is non-ideal. We've also got an incredibly bad record of fucking with ecological systems: See basically all of austrailia (Cane Toads, European Rabbit, Feral Goats, etc).
  • bedobi 5y ago
    If you think getting rid of invasive species is good, then you should have no problem getting rid of this invasive mosquito species.
    • virtue3 5y ago
      I'm just pointing out we don't have a great track record of introducing a species to positively affect ecosystems. > Now, a team of independent researchers analyzing an early trial of Oxitec’s technology is raising alarm—and drawing fire from the firm—with a report that some offspring of the GM mosquitoes survived and produced offspring that also made it to sexual maturity. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/study-dna-spread-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-prompts-backlash https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/study-dna-spread-gen... Mosquitos lay a lot of eggs. > Typically, a female only needs to mate once, and after this is done, she can lay eggs for the remainder of her life. Most female mosquitoes can produce between 50 and 500 eggs in their first brood. Subsequent broods may have fewer eggs, but a single female mosquito may produce up to 10 broods throughout her life. I'm not convinced this is the best solution. Bring back the anti-mosquito lasers :/
• 0-_-0 5y ago
  "... somewhere in the region of 150 million to 300 million people have died from the effects of malaria during the past 100 years. If it is taken that around 6,000 million people have died during this period, malaria may be reckoned to have been a factor in between 2 and 5% of all deaths across the planet in the 20th century." [0] [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC126857/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC126857/
• DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  "> ... Of course there's justifiable skepticism and a long, sorry history of unintended consequences ..." "> ... that includes even the armchair criticism from cynical misanthropes ..." NN Taleb's Black Swan, Antifragile are must-reads for any engineer with an "opinion" about the "reliability" and "soundness" of science, that they really ought to read before doing the "well-ack-shu-ally": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_...
  • bedobi 5y ago
    Well, akshully... this species is invasive everywhere outside Africa, constitutes only a tiny fraction of the mosquito population where they exist, and doesn't fill any meaningful ecological role anywhere. Also, Taleb is to finance what Graham Hancock is to archeology. He's a quack and an author, not a legitimate anything.