Posted on 01/23/2020 11:35:00 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
JOHANNESBURG -- 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.
Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region’s wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Bawanker. 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.
Major locust outbreaks can be devastating. One between 2003 and 2005 cost more than $500 million to control across 20 countries in northern Africa, the FAO has said. It caused more than $2.5 billion in harvest losses.
To help prevent and control outbreaks, authorities analyze satellite images, stockpile pesticides and conduct aerial spraying. In Ethiopia, officials have said they deployed four small planes to help fight the invasion.
The U.N. on Wednesday allocated $10 million for aerial spraying, with humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock saying families across the region “now face the prospect of watching as their crops are destroyed before their eyes.”
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
...worst outbreak some places have seen in 70 years...
This is a huge business opportunity for Africa!
https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Maniac-Edible-Insects-Locusts/dp/B07WF2DMG1
Yeah, never had locust before now.
Rommels tanks did not have catalytic converters.
Did weather conditions cause more than the usual amount of locusts to emerge? Did rain the area desperately needed, increase the numbers?
Has the vegetation bloomed due to some rain, causing there to be more food for the locusts?
They mentioned rain in the article, but then blame the count this year on warming. In Africa warming would seem to preclude rain.
In short, I don’t trust these “scientists” any more than I trust those 11,000 names on that global warming document.
The rumors that there would be global cooling.
[[Hmmm. I wonder what caused it 70 years ago.]]
Obviously a stabilized climate lol
“Is this another effect of a changing climate? Yes, researchers say.”
Show me a single instance where they asked “researchers” a question like this and got a “No”.
The scientist’s name is BaWANKER.
Somehow that seems an appropriate moniker.
Any climate change should have roughly 50/50 good and bad effects. Propagandists blow their cover when they claim 100% of the effects are bad. If the climate got colder then 60% bad might be believable but a warmer climate being 100% bad is not.
Locusts use to be like the totally unrelated cicadas, whenever they appear, other wildlife get a huge nutritional boost from eating them.
That guy should be netting them and drying them to send to Portland and Seattle as a delicacy
“The greenery that springs up keeps the locusts fuelled. “
Then just burn everything to the ground. The locusts will starve.
There used to be huge locust infestations on the American Great Plains, and even some smaller outbreaks in the east.
Some interesting images and maps:
https://tangledrootsandtrees.blogspot.com/2014/02/biblical-plague-or-locust-infestation.html
They tried fire in the Great Plains.... [I wonder if the 1870s outbreak was a result of having fewer bison to graze down the grass in preceding years]
Just found this, with eye witness comments:
I’m not so sure they’re really extinct, I suspect there are some -just not enough to get noticed - because conditions are no longer favorable to form such huge clouds of them....too much land in cultivation now.
Bring on the wild honey and put it on the locusts. Heard that it was fancy fare for an individual two thousand years ago.
This is a media narrative being created to justify MORE migrants to come to Europe as “climate refugees”
Eat the locusts
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