Is This How They Get Us To Eat Insects?
An article appeared in euronews last year that is so ridiculous it’s laughable. It was entitled ‘How are caterpillars and their poo making climate change worse?’
Caterpillars are an unrecognised driver of carbon emissions, according to a new study.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge focused on mass outbreaks of leaf-guzzling caterpillars and discovered that they were having a harmful effect on the environment.
The little creatures are known for being ‘hungry’ (as the popular children’s book says) and it turns out this is very accurate. They can eat an enormous amount during a life cycle stage that typically lasts several weeks. Some consume 27,000 times their body weight during their lifetime.
But the problem is caterpillars eat so many leaves that they reduce the amount of plants there are to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
And that’s not all. As well as their leaf-munching habits, their poo emits carbon dioxide-releasing bacteria once the leaves come out the other end – so it’s a double whammy.
Many caterpillars live by lakes and when their poo or “frass” (the technical term for caterpillar excrement) washes into the water, it acts as a fertiliser for certain microbes which release carbon dioxide into the air.
“These insects are basically little machines that convert carbon-rich leaves into nitrogen-rich poo. The poo drops into lakes instead of the leaves, and this significantly changes the water chemistry” says senior author of the paper, Professor Andrew Tanentzap, at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences.
“We think it will increase the extent to which lakes are sources of ‘greenhouse gases’.”
‘From a climate perspective, they’re pretty bad’
The study, published in Nature, found that in years with insect outbreaks, the leaf area of forests was reduced by an average of 22 per cent. At the same time, nearby lakes contained 112 per cent more dissolved nitrogen.
To get their results, researchers combined 32 years of government data from insect outbreak surveys and lake water chemistry in 12 lake catchments across Ontario, Canada. This is believed to be the most extensive study ever undertaken into how insect outbreaks impact freshwater carbon and nitrogen dynamics.
“It’s just amazing that these insects can have such a pronounced effect on water quality,” says Sam Woodman, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and first author of the report.
“From a climate perspective, they’re pretty bad – yet they’ve been completely overlooked in climate models.”
See more here: euronews.com
Bold emphasis added
Header image: Canva
Editor’s note: is this how they get us to eat insects, by claiming it will help save the planet?
Thanks to Joseph Patrick Annett
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
itsme
| #
The world has gone mad
Reply
Charles Higley
| #
Imagine a world in which CO2 is a fertilizer which promotes photosynthesis that produces the oxygen that allows higher life forms and intelligent life on a planet. It is also incapable of warming or cooling the climate.
Now, imagine that people on that planet decide that CO2 is bad and must be eradicated. Anything emitting CO2 is bad, including humans and caterpillars. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
It is amazing what researchers can come up with in order to satisfy those that fund their research. I think the 22% figure from caterpillar damage is very exaggerated. Other than army worms which sometimes are a problem on grasslands there is usually not much evidence of caterpillar damage overall. Nature is designed so that everything balances out in the natural ecosystem. Of all the problems we face this threat to the non existent “climate change” is way at the bottom. As for consuming insects, that will no doubt be incorporated into Gates vertical farming operation along with the soy for feeding the plantation livestock.
Reply
NicaLeon
| #
We must depopulate these useless eaters.
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
Hello Leon:
The funny thing about it is that when Fabian Socialist elite insider Bernard Shaw made that statement, it is not likely he ever imagined that the livestock would voluntarily line up to be culled. But what can be said of the masses when all that need be done (as they just did in France) is put two puppet actors up, as is always done in the two fake parties, both run by the same Zionists syndicate and let the voters pretend they are affecting some substantial change, when in truth the core policy remains the same?
Reply