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TechnoratiElectronic Smog 'Is Disrupting Nature On A Massive Scale'
New study blames mobile phone masts and power lines for collapse of bee colonies and decline in sparrows
Mobile phones, Wi-Fi systems, electric power lines and similar sources of "electrosmog" are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die, a conference will be told this week.
![[Bees are able to change the polarity of their antennae at will. It is believed that that it is this that enables them to navigate using the Earth's magnetic forces. (Source: Guardian)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/bee.jpg "bee.jpg")
Dr Ulrich Warnke - who has been researching the effects of man-made electrical fields on wildlife for more than 30 years - will tell the conference, organised by the Radiation Research Trust at the Royal Society in London, that "an unprecedented dense mesh of artificial magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic fields" has been generated, overwhelming the "natural system of information" on which the species rely.
He believes this could be responsible for the disappearance of bees in Europe and the US in what is known as colony collapse disorder, for the decline of the house sparrow, whose numbers have fallen by half in Britain over the past 30 years, and that it could also interfere with bird migration.
Dr Warnke, a lecturer at the University of Saarland, in Germany, adds that the world's natural electrical and magnetic fields have had a "decisive hand in the evolution of species". Over millions of years they learned to use them to work out where they were, the time of day, and the approach of bad weather.
Now, he says, "man-made technology has created transmitters which have fundamentally changed the natural electromagnetic energies and forces on the earth's surface. Animals that depend on natural electrical, magnetic and electromagnetic fields for their orientation and navigation are confused by the much stronger and constantly changing artificial fields."
His research has shown that bees exposed to the kinds of electrical fields generated by power lines killed each other and their young, while ones exposed to signals in the same range as mobile phones lost much of their homing ability. Studies at the University of Koblenz-Landau, reported in The Independent on Sunday last year, have found bees failed to return to their hives when digital cordless phones were placed in them, while an Austrian survey noted that two-thirds of beekeepers with mobile phone masts within 300 metres had suffered unexplained colony collapse.
Dr Warnke also cites Spanish and Belgian studies showing that the number of sparrows near mobile phone masts fell as radiation increased. And he says that migrating birds, flying in formation, had been seen to split up when approaching the masts.
But the Mobile Operators Association, representing the UK's five mobile phone companies, says a US research group has found collapsing bee colonies in areas with no mobile phone service, and Denis Summers-Smith, a leading expert on sparrows, has described the link as "nonsense".
17 Comments so far
Show Alli'm very surprised there has been no article regarding this rather disturbing re-creation...........i know it's off topic but wanted to see if anyone else has heard about it (or is even bothered by it....) bit late now anyway !!!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080627175348.htm
So one more little thing we can do... stop talking so much on cell phones. Have you noticed that the availability of cell phones and GPS means that people do not plan routes and rendezvous in advance. They wing it. And their inane chatter fills the air.
Also, leave the laptop at home or in the office. Finish up your work and go do some living. The culture of being on the grid 24 hours a day is bad for the individual and evidently for birds and the bees who cannot orient themselves to fly.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”
I think of this quote so often when I see how we richer people and nations behave.
Joe
Love the Gatsby quote. Thanks.
Considering that gravity of the impact that the disappearance of bees would have on the food supply, it seems like the presidential candidates might bring it up...
But, whoops, we're too concerned with who people's preachers are and whether or not their teenage kids are pregnant.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus
Who needs bees? Monosonto will introduce artificial pollenation by aircraft with proprietary engineered terminator pollen.
You will graciously pay for the research with your tax dollars and then you will hand over the license to Monosonto shareholders who will rake in the royalties.
Capitalist central planning will carefully adjust the commodities prices to accomodate the new rents. Then the righteous dominion of "free market capitalism" over nature will be celebrated with fireworks.
Save the bees, kill yourself.
It's......The Happening!!
Close enough...if all the pollinators die, there goes oh, at least a third of the food crops humans need to survive?
I thought that the problem was Bayer's bug spray, Cyclone Bee.
let's not forget the ubiquitous plastics pollution that is now measured in every molecule on the planet
the bush regime has been a disaster for so many people on the planet but they have been even worse for the animals - who are the most innocent
instead of taking care of the earth we have destroyed it
that's progress for ya
thanks bushco
tell you what - let's declare the animals enemy combatants - then we can rendition them to eastern fuckistan, a place we will all be living in soon enough
cheers, b
let's face it; there is so much pollution on earth, whether electro, chemical, radioactive etc. etc. something has got to give...............
While we certainly need to consider all possibilities for the current "colony collapse" honey bee disaster effecting up to 60% or more of our bees that pollinate 30% of our food, there seems to be more evidence for the Bayer pesticide Clothianidin, a neonicotinoid toxic to insects nervous systems, as being the more likely cause. It has been banned in France along with Imidacloprid, as well as in Germany, also experiencing the same crisis. I found this information by David Gutierrez sourced at www.guardian.co.uk (8/29/08?) reprinted in NaturalNews.com where there is more in depth discussion. This is now a serious man made worldwide problem that requires an immediate remedy, and not just idle speculation.
I'm sure there is an impact from radioactivity on bees, there is not one single factor causing collapse all factors must be considered and addressed, we depend on pollination for food.
Radioactivity is not electromagnetic radiation. I'm sure you meant the latter.
while alpha, beta and neutron radiation are not part of the EM spectrum, gamma radiation is. many radio decay reactions produce gamma radiation.
Gamma radiation has an extremely short wavelength (tenths of a nanometer) and does not propagate far. Drywall stops it. Further, gamma radiation needs a radioactive source, and is quite uncommon. You don't find many sources sitting next to beehives.
I am not surprised. I moved to a canyon in the New Mexico mountains at 7,500'. There is no cell-phone reception, no broadcast radio/TV. Even pagers do not work. I have only DC power (some appliances that are used irregularly use converted AC). I find that I am very much at peace (compared with when I lived in the DC area and San Diego). Many may say "D'oh!", but if I add that I am also very sensitive to people's (and animal's) emotions and aura, there may be some non-scientific evidence to suggest that it is not only the absence of people that contribute to my sense of peace, but also the absence of their "pollution".
I'm with you, What The F. My web is so full of holes from insensitive assholes flying through it that, at the best of times, I'm like a clothesline in a windstorm.