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Don’t Waste Time Or Money On ‘Silent Earth’
Townhall.com ^ | October 2, 2021 | Paul Driessen

Posted on 10/02/2021 3:53:32 AM PDT by Kaslin

Book reviews usually tell people, buy this new hardback. This article advises, don’t bother reading "Silent Earth," much less purchasing a copy; it’s mostly a junk-science, anti-technology screed.

Dave Goulson’s book expands on "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson’s polemic against pesticides that helped rid Europe and the USA of deadly malaria, and now protect crops that require so much land, water, work, fertilizer and energy to grow and harvest that we dare not sacrifice them to hordes of hungry insects.

Carson falsely blamed DDT for her cancer – and launched the practice of using conjecture, poetic prose, hyperbole and even fraud, instead of evidence-based science, to advance environmentalist agendas. The Environmental Defense Fund used her book to drive its campaign to ban DDT and give environmentalists “a level of authority they never had before.”

The EPA ban led to the deaths of millions of Africans and Asians from malaria, which could have been reduced dramatically by using this powerful spatial repellant in conjunction with modern insecticides and anti-malarial drugs.

Relying mostly on inventive speculation, Goulson claims a silent spring devoid of chirping birds could soon become a silent planet devoid of insects that pollinate flowers and crops, and feed birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and (if former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has his way) billions of us humans.

It would take another book to address all the new book’s errors and problems, but here are a few.

Goulson transforms the supposed “bee-pocalypse” of a few years ago into a global apocalypse for all insects, and potentially all life on Earth. He blames modern agriculture, “greedy corporations,” free-market/personal-choice capitalism, too many humans who eat too much and live too well, urban light pollution and o course manmade climate change. Above all, he blames modern synthetic pesticides, though he does recognize that many “natural” “organic” chemicals are toxic to insects, wildlife and even humans.

Honeybee populations have been on a happy rebound for several years now, after being hit hard by Varroa destructor mites, Nosema, and other bee parasites and diseases. They were also harmed by beekeepers who tried to address these problems, but sometimes misused or overused mitacides. US Department of Agriculture surveys now show there are now over 150,000 more beehives than in 1995.

Studies in actual farmers’ fields have consistently shown no adverse effects on honeybees at the colony level from realistic exposures to neonicotinoid insecticides, one of Goulson’s primary scapegoats. In fact, bees thrive in and around neonic-treated canola, corn and other crops in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. As to wild bees,98% don’t even pollinate agricultural crops – and the species that do are thriving, even though they have the greatest contact with neonics. That shouldn’t be surprising.

Neonicotinoids are used primarily to coat seeds. They are systemic pesticides that become part of the plant tissue and target only pests that actually feed on the crops, particularly during early growth stages. Sulfloxaflor is similar in that regard. Both are far safer for general insect populations than older pesticides or organic farming chemicals that are applied by air, hand or truck across entire fields – and often beyond.

Goulson ignores all this and advances his central claim that populations of all insects are in precipitous decline globally. He bases that largely on a 2017 study by him and several colleagues. They assert that insect populations plummeted by over 75% during a 25-year period in several German nature reserves – then extrapolate that and a few other studies to the entire planet.

But their study didn’t track the same areas from year to year and employed traps that capture insects only while they’re flying. That misses non-flying insects and is heavily dependent on rainfall and other weather.

There’s simply no reliable evidence of a general insect decline. Indeed, some 900,000 insect species have been identified around the world, though total estimates range from 2 million to 30 million species. That and extremely limited monitoring programs make it impossible to calculate global insect population trends. Moreover, an extensive insect population study published in 2020 found no overall decline in North America, with declines in some US areas offset by increases elsewhere. The verdict is still out.

Goulson also claims modern pesticides are vastly more toxic than their predecessors. However, an Agriculture Department analysis concluded that, between 1968 and 2008, overall US pesticide toxicity plunged by 98%– while the amount of pesticides (insecticides and herbicides) applied per acre declined by 60% and pesticide persistence in soils and waters was cut in half, as farmers used different, better, more-targeted pesticides more carefully and judiciously, and employed other measures to control pests.

He pillories glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, claiming the chemical is harmful to bees, has been linked to other insect and even bird declines, and causes cancer in humans. For evidence he cites the International Agency on Research and Cancer.

But as I explain in a medical journal paper, IARC has strong ties to American trial lawyers who have filed multiple lawsuits over glyphosate – and the agency’s claims have been roundly contradicted by a decades-long US National Cancer Institute Agricultural Health Study – and by more than 3,300 studies around the world that support glyphosate safety. Reliance on IARC puts Goulson on very thin ice.

He’s against synthetic fertilizers that help us grow far more food from much less land – because they can allegedly reduce floral diversity, make other plants less palatable for insects, pollute aquatic systems and contribute to climate change. He wants children to learn more about ecology and nature in school (presumably only his lesson plans) – and applauds the UK’s Extinction Rebellion lunatics.

These errors, omissions, exaggerations, falsifications and biases shouldn’t be surprising. A widely published biology professor, Goulson is also a trustee for Pesticide Action Network, an ideologically driven anti-pesticide organization.

Goulson’s proffered solutions to his imagined insect Armageddon are equally fanciful. While acknowledging that organic farming uses nasty chemicals and produces 80-90% lower yields than conventional modern agriculture, he wants still more organic farms – even though plowing billions more acres for the same overall crop yields would have horrific impacts on insects and wildlife.

With millions of jobs disappearing, he says the newly unemployed could work on organic farms, in backyard plots and in urban community gardens (doing stoop labor, pulling weeds and picking bugs off vegetables). Ruling elites wouldn’t do such work, of course, but we commoners should.

Amid his concerns about climate change, the author likewise ignores how industrial-scale wind turbines would splatter birds and insects, solar panels would obliterate habitats, and converting forests into wood pellets for “biofuel” electricity generation would destroy still more habitats.Mining and processing for Green New Deal metals and minerals would drastically harm people, insects and planet.

Ultimately, Goulson concludes, we need fewer people, who eat less and “switch to a predominantly vegetable diet, supplemented by small amounts of sustainably-harvested fish and grass-fed meat” (and bugs). Ruling elites once again likely exempted.

It all looks lie part of the Green warriors’ mission to stamp out prosperity as we know it.

"Silent Earth" will undoubtedly get rave reviews from environmentalists, leftist journalists, Big Tech, teachers unions, and the rest of the Cancel Culture. The insanity will get foisted on our children. Parents and policymakers should be wary.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: bookreview; environment
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1 posted on 10/02/2021 3:53:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
Life is self replicating , self adjusting Information. As time went on this information has become more complex. A breakthrough was brains. Information could now be updated on a timely basis but it usually died with that animal afterwards. Men came along. They could pass information into the next generation. This lead to a new level of evolution independent of genes.

I mention this because the left treats people as if people were some kind of foriegn disease or curse upon the Earth. It's the opposite of that. Of all the forms of life this grand information processing machine called Earth has produced we are its most advanced result . People are the Masters of information.

2 posted on 10/02/2021 4:09:08 AM PDT by Nateman (If the Left is not screaming , you are doing it wrong.)
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To: Kaslin

When I was young driving in rural areas my windshield and lights would get covered in bugs. I would have to scrub every day to see a damn thing.

Several times a year my car would get covered in various bugs seeking shelter from the cold. I’m talking every square inch covered.

When I ate outside, bees would swarm and fly into my snacks and drinks. Sometimes into my mouth.

Now in all these same places I see nearly no bugs and haven’t scrubbed my windshield in years. Except for mosquitos of course.

When I drove into rural Canada a few years ago, I almost immediately once again saw the same amount of bugs as in my youth. Windshield covered in bugs and a bee even bit my tongue drinking my first soda in Canada.

I wonder what caused such a dramatic difference in bugs these last few decades?


3 posted on 10/02/2021 5:52:30 AM PDT by varyouga
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To: Nateman

People have great physical ability but often lack the vision for future sustainability of their actions beyond their own lifespan.

Humans are the most successful toolmakers and hunters but have a history of depleting resources and polluting water sources until we can’t survive and are forced to move on. Even when manhattan was settled, people were dumping garbage into the water sources until all were too toxic to drink. They assumed the water was infinite until it started making them sick.

The Earth seems large to each of us but far from infinite when you consider billions of us acting the same way.

We can’t have a massive civilization for long that is extracting from and dumping on the earth without determining what the physical limits of the planet are and sticking to them.


4 posted on 10/02/2021 6:20:35 AM PDT by varyouga
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To: varyouga
I wonder what caused such a dramatic difference in bugs these last few decades?

There's more bugs in rural Virginia than ever.

5 posted on 10/02/2021 6:53:59 AM PDT by palmer (Democracy Dies Six Ways from Sunday)
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To: Kaslin

SSpring was a typical emotional line of crappola — as is all treehugger junk science.
I’d like to see this countered by the numbers of those killed by malaria — which was almost wiped out by DDT . Of course, those were primarily black people who would have been saved, so why should a Democratic party liberal care about them — except as slaves.


6 posted on 10/02/2021 6:55:09 AM PDT by bobbo666 (Baizuo, wokies)
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To: palmer

In the Northeast almost nada. Poconos, upstate NY, New England. This entire summer I had maybe 3 large bug strikes and didn’t have to scrub once.


7 posted on 10/02/2021 7:04:33 AM PDT by varyouga
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To: bobbo666

Being one of those people who contracted and still living with malaria despite precautions I can say taking a piss on Rachel Carson’s grave is on my bucket list


8 posted on 10/02/2021 7:06:54 AM PDT by Manuel OKelley
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To: varyouga
Too dry. Try a wet summer, and drive after dark.
9 posted on 10/02/2021 7:13:07 AM PDT by palmer (Democracy Dies Six Ways from Sunday)
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To: Nateman
As time went on this information has become more complex.

Oh?


Ecclesiastes 12:1
 
Remember your Creator
    in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
    and the years approach when you will say,
    “I find no pleasure in them”—

Sounds as though you believe in no Creator.

10 posted on 10/03/2021 4:33:25 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
 that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
 that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--


Remember - without a Creator, none of the other words that follow the above are worth a damn.

11 posted on 10/03/2021 4:36:10 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

Sorry; but without a Creator we don’t get any damning; either.


12 posted on 10/03/2021 4:37:02 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie
...Sounds as though you believe in no Creator.

I use to be that way. Then I realized evolution itself was a Divine creation.

13 posted on 10/03/2021 8:08:25 AM PDT by Nateman (If the Left is not screaming , you are doing it wrong.)
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To: Nateman
Then I realized evolution itself was a Divine creation.

I did too, until I could not get an answer to which evolved first: the penis or the vagina.

14 posted on 10/04/2021 3:25:06 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie
That question requires multiple levels for a complete answer.

Level 1. The Direct Answer.

Level 2 . Your question is an example of the Argument of Irreducible Complexity . Puzzles like your example do not prove Evolution is not true. It only shows someone was not clever enough to figure out how Evolution did it.

Level 3. Arguments for and against Evolution use to be all the rage here at Free Republic. The posts would go on and on while convincing nobody to change their mind. You can’t reason somebody out of something they were not reasoned into.

Level 4. Evolution is as much a part of my own personal Religion as Jesus is to Christians. Unlike Christianity I don’t have any requirement to recruit anybody. If you are curious as to what my Religion entails you can check it out right here.

15 posted on 10/04/2021 7:19:09 AM PDT by Nateman (If the Left is not screaming , you are doing it wrong.)
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To: Nateman
Puzzles like your example do not prove Evolution is not true.

Likewise, stories about how things POSSIBLY could have evolved do not prove Evolution IS true.


Biologists today state that cheetahs are likely to become extinct due to lack of DNA diversity; yet Evolutionists say that the animals (and plants) we see today were created evolved by individual small changes accumulated over vast amounts of time.

16 posted on 10/05/2021 4:27:38 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Nateman
You can’t reason somebody out of something they were not reasoned into.

Yet a person CAN be 'reasoned' into something that is not true.


Have you ever met any Mormons who were NOT born into it?


'It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.'
--Mark Twain


I would change the word 'convince' to 'admit'.

17 posted on 10/05/2021 4:34:57 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Nateman
It only shows someone was not clever enough to figure out how Evolution did it.

Likewise;

...arguments against Creationism only shows someone was not given enough faith to believe GOD did it.

18 posted on 10/05/2021 4:38:33 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie
From link: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/theory-evolution/
 
 
 
Evolution: Changing Species Over Time

Evolution is the process by which species adapt over time in response to their changing environment. Use these ideas to teach about the water cycle in your classroom.

Then why all the fuss over CLIMATE CHANGE?

19 posted on 10/05/2021 4:40:54 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

I’d say a True Believer would not use medicines to try to avoid the Natural Selection - Survival of the Fittest theory.


20 posted on 10/05/2021 4:43:55 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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