Locust Infestation and Climate Change
If you’re thinking what’s causing all of these locusts to go haywire and multiply in size and numbers, I am sorry to have to break it down for you folks but *drum rolls* it is: Climate Change.
According to Keith Cressman, Senior Locust Forecasting Officer, Food and Agricultural Organization, United Nations:
“Desert locusts live for about three months. After a generation matures, the adults lay their eggs which, under the right conditions, can hatch to form a new generation up to 20 times larger than the previous one. In this way, desert locusts can increase their population size exponentially over successive generations. Two 2018 cyclones enabled three generations of wildly successful locust breeding in just nine months, increasing the number of insects buzzing over the Arabian desert roughly 8,000-fold.
Then the locusts started to migrate. By the summer of 2019, swarms were leapfrogging over the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden into Ethiopia and Somalia, where they enjoyed another bout of successful breeding in subsequent months. This might have been as far as the locusts got were it not for the fact that last October, East Africa experienced unusually widespread and intense autumn rains, which were capped in December by a rare late season cyclone that made landfall in Somalia. These events triggered yet another reproductive spasm.”
Guess where did the last big cyclone event take place? India and Bangladesh but mostly India. Thus Locusts.
What’s making these cyclones even worse than before now?
Because, Climate Change.
Don’t believe me, read some science!
Also where my Duck army at? We need them to fight these insects. Also locusts are edible. So put on your munching hats! We might be needing your best locust recipes.
References:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/…/locust-plague-climate…/
Dipole Shift of the Indian Ocean:
https://bit.ly/3d5H4u9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03789-6/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58824-8
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/…/how-climate-chang…/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-DCyP1RBc
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52804981
Come to think of it the Mayans just got the last 3 letters of the “Twenty Twelve” prophecy wrong.
I am sure they meant “Twenty Twenty”
