Tychoxii
In places where bat populations crashed, farmers sprayed more insecticides, and baby mortality spiked - 05 SEP 2024 - Erik Stokstad
https://www.science.org/content/article/my-jaw-dropped-bat-loss-linked-death-human-infants
In 2006, bats throughout New England began dying en masse from a mysterious and incurable fungal disease called white nose syndrome. Over the next decade, their populations plummeted—and humans living nearby suffered, according to a new study.
With fewer predators around, insect numbers increased, leading to farmers spraying about 31% more pesticides, researchers report this week in Science. At the same time, infant mortality in counties increased by 8%. The authors link those deaths to the rise in the use of insecticides, which are known to be dangerous, especially for fetuses and infants.
That link is a “pretty dramatic claim that’s going to get a lot of attention,” says Paul Ferraro, a sustainability scientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the new work. The study, he says, is the “most convincing evidence to date” linking economic and health impacts with dramatic losses of a wild species.
Bats are good to have around a farm. They provide free pest control, with some species consuming 40% of their body weight each night in insects. The value of this service has been estimated at between $4 billion and $53 billion per year. So, it’s logical to assume farmers might compensate for a loss of bats by spraying more insecticides, says Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International. Making a watertight case for that assumption, however, isn’t easy.
Eyal Frank, an economist at the University of Chicago, realized that the decline of bat populations due to white nose syndrome presented a kind of natural experiment. Because the disease appeared suddenly and spread rapidly, Frank could compare outcomes in counties where bat populations plummeted with those in similar counties that had not yet been struck.
In the first year after an area was hit by the disease, farmers tended to spray an extra kilogram of insecticide per square kilometer, Frank found. After 5 years, they were spraying 2 kilograms more than before—a 31% increase on average. At the same time, fungicide and herbicide rates did not increase, suggesting the need for more intensive insect control drove the insecticide change.
Frank also looked at infant mortality in all the counties. In places where the bat populations had crashed, deaths due to accident or homicides stayed the same. But other deaths, such as those caused by disease or birth defects, rose 8%. In counties with healthy bat populations, the numbers didn’t shift one way or another. “My jaw dropped,” Frick says.
Several lines of evidence connect pesticides and other agrochemicals to human health risks. Although government regulators assess the potential dangers of these compounds before approving them—and set safety guidelines for their use—farm workers and bystanders can still get exposed when these compounds drift away from a farm or end up in groundwater. Epidemiological studies have linked certain compounds to developmental problems in infants and children, for example. Insecticides, which are often neurotoxic, are often of particular concern.
The increase in deaths is “huge,” says Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California San Francisco. The connection is plausible and concerning, she says. In an earlier study, she found an increase in infant mortality of similar magnitude due to worsening air pollution. But a puzzling fact about the new study is that other aspects of infant health, such as birth weight, did not correlate with the bat declines.
Still, other confounding factors might have contributed to the rise in mortality, Ferraro notes. “I wouldn’t change public policy based on this one study.”
Frick says there are signs that some populations of bats are beginning to recover, but it could take decades to return to their previous abundance. Her organization is trying to help by setting up lights to attract more insects to winter hibernation sites to make sure bats are eating their fill. Other conservationists are experimenting with changing ventilation of abandoned mines to make their temperature more favorable to roosting bats.
Meanwhile, the fungus that causes white nose Syndrome continues to spread into the western United States, including California, a major agricultural region.
doi: 10.1126/science.zu56w28
https://www.ft.com/content/78a699f2-1f72-4796-9211-6aad2c75e747
Nvidia’s earnings “have become as important for US markets as key economic data,” writes MainFT. For some, they’d become another excuse to get drunk on a Wednesday afternoon.
On a swelteringly hot New York summer’s day, four dozen or so sweaty Nvidia enthusiasts gather at a StoreHouse sports bar on Sixth Avenue. Together, they count down to the chipmaker’s second-quarter results, eyes fixed on the seven large screens blasting CNBC’s Fast Money rather than round two of the US Open.
The mastermind behind this gathering is Lauren Balik, an equities analyst who earlier in the day had invited “longs, shorts, and anyone else” to come grab a beer in honour of Wall Street’s hottest stock. So — sandwiched between an off-duty exotic derivatives trader and a young man in tech who swears he’ll sell his Nvidia holdings “in a heartbeat” if it hit $140 — FTAV had happily obliged.
Balik tells FTAV she’s “mostly very bearish on things”. The three light-up bubble-blowing pistols she distributed to the predominantly male crowd attested to this playful scepticism. “I love a good bubble more than anything,” she continues. “Figuring out when it’s going to burst is such a fun little game”.
“I thought why not, let’s host this event,” she shouts over the hubbub.
We’re at a sports bar. All sports lead to gambling, and Wall Street has always been about gambling, too. So I thought, why not combine the two? If you’re watching football or baseball and you’ve got money riding on it, it’s the same thing with stocks. People get attached to these things for better or worse. It’s the way our times work.
Balik has “bubbles embedded in me,” she adds. “I remember growing up in Virginia, I had loads of friends whose parents worked at the big internet companies [ahead of the dotcom crash]. Mark Lynch, Microstrategy’s chief financial officer, taught me business studies at high school. I was his star student! It’s very funny.”
The exotic derivatives trader weighs in gloomily: “The fact there’s a dedicated countdown on CNBC to these results, watched at a bar by a bunch of lemmings like me . . . it’s over, man. It’s over.”
The countdown itself begins before we find out what, exactly, “it” might be. Juiced up on expensive craft beer, the crowd booms FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE and lets out a collective “HELL YEAH” as the share price initially ticks higher. A man in a baseball cap thrusts his arms into the air in delight. Another promptly downs a pint of Bud Light. A disgruntled sports fan at the far end of the bar looks on, confused.
But the good times don’t last. Though no one in the room seems to care much by now, revenue in the three months through July comes in at $30bn, — up 122 per cent from a year ago but barely ahead of the $28.7bn analysts had expected. Plus, Nvidia is expecting $32.5bn in revenue for the current quarter, plus or minus 2 per cent, which is only narrowly ahead of expectations. In Nvidia earnings world, this qualifies as a blip, and the share price swings lower to a chorus of boos.
Still smiling from ear to ear, Balik tells us the owner of the bar had a baby earlier in the day. “Maybe Nvidia would make for quite a nice middle name. . . See you here next quarter?”