The Rapture is Real!

The other day, I read an article on CNN that was without a doubt the worst piece of supposed journalism I have ever seen. I wanted very much to put in a link to this piece, but I searched their site and the general web for over an hour and could not come up with the story again. Is that even possible?? I used every word I could think of for the search. The story was about honey bees, so you'd think that would have been a good place to start. Even better than that, it was about how the honey bee decline has impacted the economy. That should have been plenty to put that story right back on my screen. But no such luck.

So I guess I'll just have to summarize it for you. The gist of the story was that the decline of the honey bee population due to mysterious causes is not, in fact, impacting the economy. Is that what you call a non story? Essentially, the author was trying to tell us there's no reason for panic over the honey bee problem. Why, you ask? Well, because according to this author, two reasons. First, bee keepers have been able to keep the number of hives consistent. And second, because lots of crops are pollinated by wind and don't even need honey bees.

OK, I'm pausing here for just a moment so you can go back and reread those last two sentences. Go on, do it. I've seriously wondered if the story wasn't pulled by CNN. For what was a very minor story tucked away at the bottom of a lesser category heading at the bottom of their page, the responses to this story were many and incredulous. And many of them were from obviously far more learned people than the author of the article. Had this author submitted his/her article to me in my research class, I would have given them a failing grade. There were statements of "fact" that were completely unsubstantiated by any source. There was no way this was a well-researched article. It was pure and simple propaganda. But from whom? For the life of me, I couldn't figure out who would profit by trying to paint such a ridiculous coat of whitewash over what is a serious problem.

So have I given you enough time by now to have figured out the major flaws in each of the author's two main points? First, of course, the number of hives is not indicative of the number of bees. Bee colonists are maintaining approximately the same number of hives by breaking existing hives apart into two colonies. And while the number of bees within each of the two new and smaller colonies will increase, we can't say the number of bees is anywhere near what it used to be. And on the other point, PUH-LEASE. It is true that some crops pollinate by wind. But many others do not and absolutely must have bees in order to produce fruit. I don't know about you, but I'm not particularly willing to replace almonds in my morning cereal or the blueberries in my fruit crisp with corn.

Let's face it, people. This planet is in serious trouble. The honey bees are dying. Or at least we think they are. You see, one of the great problems in even figuring out what is going on with them is that there aren't dead bee bodies just bunching up in the hives for autopsy. Apparently, I ought not to have snickered at that whole Rapture idea. It seems to be quite true--just no humans have been found worthy. Big surprise there.

One of the reasons this particular article caught my attention in the first place was that it was the last in a triad of articles I had read in the past week. The first one was about bumble bees. In that article, a real live researcher had noted that we've lost more bumble bee species than anyone even knows. That's right. Not just bees, but entire species just gone off the face of the planet and not over great stretches of time, but in the past few years. The other article had been about the white-nose syndrome in bats and that there is great fear it will be far worse this year than ever before.

What, you haven't heard about that one? So bats aren't everyone's "thing." I get it. But I also recognize that they, like the honey bee, are an essential part of our environment. In fact, both bats and frogs are facing the same problem. Each has become prey to a fungal infection that is killing them in great numbers. You see, it used to be that while such fungal infections existed in the past, they were never able to get a sufficient grip on an organism to kill them because they, themselves, got killed off every winter. Cold weather would wipe them out and they'd have to start all over again the next Spring. Not so anymore. Two conditions have changed that mean these infections can continue to flourish year-round. First, the winters aren't as cold as they used to be. (Global warming, anyone?) And second, these fungi have become more cold tolerent.

The end result is that bat and frog populations are decreasing at an absolutely alarming rate. Bees, and bats, and frogs, oh my! Yeah, we're all going to be laughing when we're up to our butts in bugs. These animals aren't just isolated and unimportant things we consider more as fodder for horror flicks. They are bell weathers of our environment. What's affecting them now can and will affect us directly and indirectly in years to come. Declining polar bears is a problem. Drastically declining numbers of bees, bats, and frogs is a nightmare and one we'd better start figuring out how to prevent right now before its too late. These animals are facing plagues that threaten their very existence.

Its time we stop caring about just the cutsy animals and start caring about every living species. As of right now, we're losing this battle. And unfortunately, the species who is doing the most damage isn't the one being systematically removed from the equation. Its all those species that can't fight back. I know this is going to sound incredibly harsh and it is. But I very much wish the next plague to hit the planet would strike the creature most responsible for the earth's woes. A massive decline in the human population that would make the Black Death results trivial by comparison is, in my opinion, the only chance this poor old earth has of surviving maybe even just the next 100 years. 'Tain't funny, is it?