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Climate change behind Africa's worst locust invasion in decades
Locusts by the millions are nibbling their way across a large part of Africa in the worst outbreak some places have seen in 70 years. Is this another effect of a changing climate? Yes, researchers say. An unprecedented food security crisis may be the result.
The locusts "reproduce rapidly and, if left unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June," the United Nations says.
[...] "A typical desert locust swarm can contain up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer," the East African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, has said. "Swarms migrate with the wind and can cover 62 to 93 miles in a day. An average swarm can destroy as much food crops in a day as is sufficient to feed 2,500 people."
[...] Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region's wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off Africa's eastern coast, which also spawned an unusual number of strong tropical cyclones off Africa last year.
Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are favorable conditions for locust breeding and in this case the conditions have become "exceptional," he said.
Even now rainfall continues in some parts of the vast region. The greenery that springs up keeps the locusts fuelled.
So already in the 2020s we have a massive viral pandemic with millions of people facing quarantine, gravity waves hurtling towards earth from the black hole at the center of the galaxy, massive forest fires so large they start their own thunderstorms and thereby "self-reproduce", Betelgeuse about to go supernova, Sol going quieter than it has been in 200 years (which is a harbinger of a little ice age) and now giant locust plagues that threaten to consume all the crops on an entire continent!
Can't wait to see what the rest of this century has up its sleeve!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:49PM (2 children)
Locusts happen from time to time, gee, all the way back to biblical times. There's no particular evidence that this swarm is any different from earlier ones, i.e., triggered by the right weather conditions.
As far as a food crisis, we need to keep in mind that the population of Africa is exploding. First, population has increased dramatically in past decades, with no corresponding increase in food production. Second, look at that population pyramid. Unique on the planet: Africa's population is set to continue exploding. Starvation and warfare, as well as massive migration pressure, will be the result.
The root of this evil are all the well-meaning people who have worked to reduce infant and child mortality, without making essential changes to reduce the birthrate. African women have no choice about bearing children, for a variety of reasons: birth control, education, and most importantly, culture. The kind of people who work for NGOs in Africa are the same ones who don't dare criticize other cultures. As a result, we're in for an interesting few decades.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:51PM
Somehow forgot the link. Here, you can see the African population and the population pyramid [populationpyramid.net]
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:31PM
Blind leading the blind. People saw a correlation between reduced child mortality and reduced fertility so assumed surely if African kids would stop dying, mothers would stop having a dozen kids. They just kind of hand-wave away the fact that this correlation didn't even exist until extremely recently, and has happened alongside a bazillion other changes in societies including skyrocketing mental disorders, skyrocketing obesity, skyrocketing suicides, plummeting testosterone, plummeting IQ.
Idiots.
When I was younger I was always reluctant to say such things. I'm well aware of Dunning Kruger, and surely there is some greater insight or explanation? But life experience tends to make you realize most people - at all levels of society are indeed just indeed extremely irrational creatures who will convince themselves that 2+2=5 if that's what's needed to argue in support of whatever behavior their biases predisposition them towards engaging in.