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Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

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Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#351

Post by _AllisonMobley »

kchoudhu wrote: post #294
ommunist wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at this problem from different angle. These two species are only abundant in areas where humans live. The malaria annual death toll is about 440000 lives. Maybe it is more worth of an effort to move humans out of there? Since no one is going to eradicate cars worldwide just because the annual human death toll in car accidents is 1.25 million!

Let me know when you find a place that will accept and support 180MM Bangladeshis and 1B Africans. Kill the mosquitos. It's cheaper in the long run.

>It's cheaper in the long run.

Is it? A human that survives to reproduce that would have otherwise died from malaria uses more non-renewable resources than a human that dies from malaria over the course of their lifetime, and continues to do so after their death by way of their progeny.

In terms of how much time we have as a species before running out of non-renewables on earth, killing the mosquitos might cost more than our blue marble can afford.

Perhaps certain natural population controls ought not be tampered with.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#352

Post by zamalek »

sametmax wrote: post #347

Mosquitoes is not just about the macro-ecosystem. Blood sucking animals actually help micro-organism maintain their biodiversity by allowing DNA from very different environment to mixup. Killing mosquitos would be like killing bees (which we are). Also you may think that most organism causing diseases are bad, but they can be actually useful in your own organism most of the time, and only trigger a disease once their…

Why haven't we talked about possibly engineering Aedes that cannot carry the virus and release those into the wild to spread their resistant genes to other Aedes? I don't know if this is practical, or even possible - I just have yet to see any solution other than the typical human "kill the threat" response.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#353

Post by jcoffland »

jessaustin wrote: post #141
nickff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "bureaucrats are not being evil or heartless when they don't allocate funds for necessary work that falls outside of their mandate: they could go to jail for misallocation of taxpayer funds. " Which bureaucrat has gone to jail for making any decision of this sort? The BLM sold ~1700 protected wild horses to a slaughterhouse a few years ago, and I don't think anyone was even reprimanded.[1] EPA allowed 11 million li…

Clearly the EPA screwed up, but the BLM should have promoted rather than jailed the bureaucrat who sold the feral horses. That program should be ramped up: it would be better for the horses and for the arid environment that they inhabit if the absolutely necessary regular culling resulted in nutrition rather than thousands of horses penned up to no purpose for the rest of their lives. It's not as though we're going t…

Do you have any hard evidence to back up these claims about wild mustangs?

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#354

Post by _AllisonMobley »

sametmax wrote: post #347

Mosquitoes is not just about the macro-ecosystem. Blood sucking animals actually help micro-organism maintain their biodiversity by allowing DNA from very different environment to mixup. Killing mosquitos would be like killing bees (which we are). Also you may think that most organism causing diseases are bad, but they can be actually useful in your own organism most of the time, and only trigger a disease once their…

I agree with you.

"Let's get rid of all these natural population controls!"

Sounds like the beginning of a bad post-apocalypse movie.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#355

Post by _AllisonMobley »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #58
llamaimperative wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but that isn't even the million dollar question because the answer will never be "yes." The real question is how certain do we have to be about their role before we decide the gamble is worth it? In this thread you see wealthy westerners complaining that mosquitos are a nuisance. In many parts of the world they are holocaust-scale killers. It gets to an age old question re: the precautionary principle, and a lot…

Even more on point: Which is likely to cause more ecological damgage: 1) Wipe out two (of over 3,500) species of mosquito 2) Spray poisons indiscriminately, wiping out many different species of insect, both mosquitos and non-mosquitos?

3)Half a million humans that would have died from Malaria, but did not.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#357

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

funkyy wrote: post #263
bduerst wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. To be clear, eradication of invasive mosquito species where they aren't native is a great idea. Thinking that removing mosquitoes from the ecosystems everywhere won't have a negative impact on the environment is less so.

There will be obviously an impact. Question is how big.

I don't really understand why we're arguing about this. How many species have we lost as a result of human activity? What's one more.

Here's a list[1].

Fuck the mosquito.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_extinct_animals 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#358

Post by _AllisonMobley »

krylon wrote: post #167
jonahrd wrote: post #22

I remember reading some old tale about all the animals gathering to decide what to do about humanity. Every animal hated humans, so they all voted to destroy us. Except the mosquito, which was the only one to stand up for us because they needed food. The moral of the story was that in return for looking out for us, we should let mosquitoes drink what they need from us. (not my story, I read it in a history book about…

The problem is not mosquitos drinking small amounts of our blood. The problem is that in doing so they infect people with diseases like Malaria, effectively killing thousands of people every year. I like the story, though.

Those people, if they survived, would have gone on to cause far more ecological damage to the planet than they otherwise did. Until we figure out how to colonize other solar systems, endeavors to spare every human life from such naturally occurring population controls seems foolishly good-hearted.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#359

Post by _AllisonMobley »

roywiggins wrote: post #120
bbarn wrote: post #53

Serious question: In areas where Malaria is killing many people, access to health care is a big part of why, right? So I'm assuming if you just removed the mosquitos, those people that died would be alive, and putting greater strain on already famine-like food economies. Wouldn't that be equally as bad?

All the people chronically sickened by malaria (but not killed) could be more productive. Probably the strain from chronic malaria is worse for an economy than any theoretical strain due to feeding a few million more people.

>>Probably the strain from chronic malaria is worse for an economy than any theoretical strain due to feeding a few million more people.

How about the strain on the planet's non-renewable resources? One would think that the million more people would cause said resources to run out sooner than they otherwise would.

Perhaps we should focus on how to deal with the consequences of eliminating certain natural human population controls before we go through with it.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#360

Post by _AllisonMobley »

vtlynch wrote: post #51
gsmethells wrote: post #25

Perhaps mosquitos are here to manage the human population in the ecosystem.

Okay. Then lets let some disease carrying mosquitoes into all countries - including Western Europe and the US. We wouldnt want those ecosystems to be imbalanced.

>>lets let some disease carrying mosquitoes into all countries

Why bother when you can count on tourism to do it for you?

http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united-states.html

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