Climate Change Ravaging Bug Population
Climate change is ravaging bug population. If you think climate change isn’t real, you just haven’t stepped outside in the past few months. Global warming is on track to cause a significant wipeout of insects. This, compounding already severe losses according to a new analysis.
Insects are vital to most ecosystems. A widespread collapse would cause extremely far-reaching disruption to life on Earth, the scientists warn. Their research shows that, even with all the carbon cuts already pledged by nations so far, climate change would make almost half of the insect habitat unsuitable. That’s just by the end of the century, with pollinators like bees particularly affected.
However, if climate change could be limited to a temperature rise of 1.5C – the very ambitious goal included in the global Paris agreement – the losses of insects are far lower.
The new research is the most comprehensive to date. It analyzes the impact of different levels of global warming on the ranges of 115,000 species. It found plants are also heavily affected but that mammals and birds, which can more easily migrate as climate changes, suffered less.
“We showed insects are the most sensitive group,” said Prof Rachel Warren, at the University of East Anglia, who led the new work. “They are important because ecosystems cannot function without insects. They play an absolutely critical role in the food chain.”
