Sign of the Apocalypse #44: Messing with the bees
By Michael J.W. Stickings
"Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?" asks The Independent. Perhaps so -- and there could be disaster on the way:
It's called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it is now a serious problem in the U.S. and Europe: "The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, 'man would have only four years of life left'."
Are cell phones to blame? More research needs to be done, but it looks like a distinct (and rather troubling) possibility.
And it would serve us right. As stewards of the natural world, we suck. And in our efforts to conquer that world, as opposed to living in harmony with it, we are destroying ourselves.
"Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?" asks The Independent. Perhaps so -- and there could be disaster on the way:
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world -- the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon -- which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe -- was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
It's called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it is now a serious problem in the U.S. and Europe: "The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, 'man would have only four years of life left'."
Are cell phones to blame? More research needs to be done, but it looks like a distinct (and rather troubling) possibility.
And it would serve us right. As stewards of the natural world, we suck. And in our efforts to conquer that world, as opposed to living in harmony with it, we are destroying ourselves.
Labels: animals, food, Sign of the Apocalypse, technology
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
10:33 AM
7 Comments:
Maybe it's true, but it's hardly a theory unless there is a lot of data that nobody is publishing and without that, I have to suspect it's just more of the vast amount of baseless folk-science conjecture out there about everything from vaccination to aluminum pots to silicone implants, the mercury in Tuna that's supposed to be killing us all but so far hasn't made anyone sick.
What bothers me is that the total spectrum of radio frequency emissions is so large and power levels of other sources so high that assuming the apparent decline of bees is due to the very low fraction contributed by cell phones, is a suspicious assumption - as is the assumption that bees are declining because of RF energy in the first place. Public service radio uses the 800 MHz spectrum at much higher power levels than do telephones and so do a host of other sources of emissions from UHF to microwave. Is there any data at all about what frequencies affect bees and at what levels and in which way? I think not.
It's far more likely to me that scapegoating phones is simply the course of least resistance for luddite impulses because they're as ubiquitous as the lack of knowledge about how they work.
Living in complete harmony with nature ceased being an option when we took ourselves largely out of the food chain some thousands of years ago. In fact outside of an Edward Hicks painting, I don't think any creature ever lives in peaceful harmony with nature since nature is about survival through the constant destruction of other life.
We survive by manipulating nature to our own ends and the only reason we're messing it up more than before is that there are more of us than ever. Our survival depends on smart management of nature and of ourselves and that all depends on science and technology not upon the fear of it.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 11:57 AM
Capt. Fogg, one need not have data to have a theory, though one needs data to test a theory. In fact, data is quite useless without theory. As the linked story notes, there are competing theories. That's how we learn.
Also, we haven't exactly taken ourselves "largely out of the food chain." I am rather uncertain as to how we might do such a thing. We can certainly increase our harmony with nature--in fact, given that, as you note, we indeed depend on a certain level of destruction to live, it is essential that we be more careful of just what we are destroying and why.
I make these points entirely independently of whether this particular problem with bees is related to the particular technology of cell phones. To advocate greater harmony with nature is not to be Luddite. It is to be a sensible master of the world God has lent us to till and tend.
Around my farm, there is no question that bees are in shorter supply this year than normal, for whatever reason. However, early signs this spring are that fruit set (and thus pollination) is quite good. But then we have spotty cell phone coverage!
By
Anonymous, at 2:59 PM
Sure, and that's all it is right now -- a theory. As the article in The Independent indicates, this CCD has been happening all over the U.S. and Europe, and researchers are looking for an explanation. There has been "a limited study" on the possible relationship between CCD and cell phones at a German university, and a U.S. experts thinks "the possibility is real".
That's it. Obviously more research is needed.
By
Michael J.W. Stickings, at 3:29 PM
It takes much more than a study to constitute science. You're both confusing theory with hypothesis and perhaps hypothesis with conjecture. A theory explains the data and not just the selected data. That's why we call General relativity a scientific theory and new age crystal power, conjecture (if we're being kind.)
One failure of this conjecture is that the history of bee decline didn't begin with the advent of cell phones, nor is the conjecture concerned with maps of UHF field strength. If we are looking, for some suspicious reason, only at RF emissions, why are we looking exclusively at one of the lowest power levels of all the uncountable sources?
Feral bee populations have been declining for a long time and are now are essentially zero. In the last 30 years two pests, the varroa and tracheal mites, have been killing off domestic bee populations all over the United States, forcing beekeepers to go out of business because there is no government money being spent in support of apiculture.
Known relationships between certain pesticides and disorientation in bees shouldn't be ignored either.
Anyone can do a study and because we've become conditioned to hysteria in the presence of any dubious, inconclusive or deliberately misleading study, we often ignore the obvious alternatives.
Once again, a bee will get orders of magnitude less energy exposure from a cell phone tower than from a thousand other sources. I would want to see some research into Specific Absorbtion rates for different cellphone wavelengths in domestic bees versus other parts of the spectrum and some maps showing radiation density Vs bee mortality - otherwise there is no reason whatever to suspect only telephones rather than broadcast or satellite radio or HDTV or police radar or garage door openers and ignore the countless other more plausible possibilities, like climate change, pesticides, fertilizers, genetic engineering of flowering crops, viruses, parasites, bacteria, etc.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 10:19 AM
MSS,
And by the way, what I meant by being out of the food chain is that we are hardly ever eaten by the predators these days and we have unbalanced or bypassed nature to the point where the food chain winds up at the grocery store.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 10:24 AM
Ah, then we are at the top of the food chain. Not quite the same as being out of it.
And, yes, I do know something about the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. I have not read the original study, so I do not know if its authors have developed a theory. But, technically, one can't have a hypothesis without a theory, or at least a proto-theory. I am giving the researchers the benefit of the doubt here.
Regarding "conjecture," back in my grad school days my PhD adviser (originally trained as a physicist) said that "hypothesis" is nothing by a fancy word for "hunch." Hunches, informed by an understanding of the bigger picture (i.e. a theoretical perspective) can form the building blocks of new theories. Science is always a mix of induction and deduction, with the former often following the data, and the latter telling us what patterns to look for in our data (including data not yet collected).
By
Anonymous, at 5:36 PM
This article is quotes Einstien. The quote about Bees and mankind is not attributable Einstien. The author did not research very well. The "study" referred to is observational and would lead to the null hypothises, "There is no relationship between cell phones and bee poulation depletion." Now we design a study to disprove the null statement. This would involve mixing bees and cell phone technology in a controlled environment. Is it just me or are smart people getting lazy. Maybe its the internet. Just a theory:)
By
Anonymous, at 11:17 AM
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