Eco Worldly – May 7th, 2009:
Scientists studying northeastern Greenland’s hairy, meat-eating wolf spiders have discovered every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.
It appears that as the Earth has been warming and summers have been getting longer, the 8-legged hunters have been steadily growing larger and more numerous. And it’s likely that other creepy-crawly species around the world could be growing larger too.
The precise cause of the trend is still a mystery, but the growth was strongly correlated with hotter, longer summers. For instance, in years when spring came 30 days earlier, many spiders grew exoskeletons which were 10% thicker than usual. Translated for the squeamish: that means the spiders were bigger, hairier and more difficult to squash.
And they aren’t just getting larger, they’re increasing their numbers too. The study also discovered that most of the species growth happened among females. Since larger females tend to produce more offspring, that means more spiders overall.
Whatever the cause, the news highlights how many of the effects of global warming could be unexpected, and it’s not yet clear how the larger, more numerous spiders could effect local ecosystems. Or human psychology, for that matter.
They had giant spiders back in 1958, pre-global warming days. Remember the 1958 documentary “Earth vs. the Spider”
Global warming B.S.
It’s because reckless toxic-nuclear-waste disposal. It’s well known this is what turns ordinary spiders into humongous monsters. There is a good 2002 documentary that shows this,
“Eight Legged Freaks” about this.
“But the study revealed that the average size of the spiders had grown by 2% over the last ten years”
That’s nothing; Americans have grown by 200% over the past ten years.
So…now it’s back to global warming instead of ‘climate change’. Perhaps because the Sun’s quiet period is about to change with the return of more sunspot activity?
I fucking hate meat eating spiders.
I’m all for global warming. I’m assuming of course that it exists. It’s just that the plants have “cached” the heat of the sun for millennia and burning coal and oil releases the energy. It’s perfectly natural. Plus, the idea of Washington DC and San Francisco under water grows more appealing by the day (no offence meant to John C- he should head for higher ground.)
If the earth is warming, then why is ocean heat levels down? This was supposed to be the metric for testing global warming models, and Hansen & Co used warming from 1993-2003 to say they were right.
# 6 MikeN
Because, as usual you again demonstrate you don’t know diddly squat about what you are talking about.
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# 6 MikeN
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080618143301.htm
Hey, Hollywood, I have a great idea for a movie: Eight Legged Freaks meets Idiocracy. It can star some of this boards wingnut posters. Alfred, are you ready to battle giant spiders for Jesus?
No one else has said it yet:
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
And another thing: anyone who believes in Global Warming, and is trying to stop it, is obviously a crzaed nature-hater, trying to kill the poor little spiders. Al Gore should be turning in his grave.
Virtually anything can be attributed to global warming, global cooling, and climate change, by simply manipulating the data. Bullshitters everywhere are hard at work turning over every rock to validate themselves.
I believe the underlying (serpentine) strategy for the IPCC is to stop our destruction of the necessities for life… namely water, food and air. Although the global/warming/climate change fiasco has brought this to our attention, it FAILS to address the real threat… NOT the over-consumption of energy, NOT the use of fossil fuels, NOT the manufacturing industry, and NOT the depletion of our food sources… The real threat is overpopulation. All the above happens whether we like it or not when there are too many of us.
Only by reversing population growth to more sustainable levels will the threats to our existence disappear. We don’t need to search back millions of years for scraps of dubious data to prove this. Current data is sufficient to calculate indisputable proof of how much food and water is needed to sustain “X” population for “Y” years… far more accurate and more relevant than the incredible waste of time trying to pin global warming/climate on human activity.
So what happens when birthrates fall in North America? We get complainers about birth control and top off the population through immigration. Not a bad idea if other countries, cultures and religions stopped trying to reign supreme through birthing new recruits. It would be so-o much better if the IPCC was the IPPC… International Panel on People Control.
I sometimes muse that the presence of human life on earth is more like many competing algal blooms. Once we’ve depleted the nutrient sources, well die off to a more balanced existence. You would think that collectively we would have the intelligence to avoid such a drastic fate… but just look around you… intelligence as a whole (as in the world population) is rather lacking… we aren’t as clever as we think we are. Despite having the required knowledge to engineer a better fate, we are hardly better at surviving that actual algal blooms. I’m not even sure if changing the course of our role in nature is even in the realm of possibility. From the perspective of space and time, we will probably just grow out of control and die off like the natural cycle of any other living organism.
I dunno… am I being too much of a pessimist.. or a realist?
I had Australian wolf spiders – horrible things, aggressive and ugly. Wasps, eventually cleaned them out. A Permethrin barrier spray around windows and door sills, and a can of WD40 in the wood shed.
Now why did you have to go use *that* picture? It’s going to take me a long time to get that tune (“Spider pig … spider pig … doing whatever a spider pig does …”) out of my head!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=714-Ioa4XQw
Insects are only limited in size by available oxygen in the air. If you grew them in oxygen enriched environments they could be much bigger.
Insects don’t have lungs like people, instead they breathe through their skin. That puts an upper limit on their growth, because the oxygen will only diffuse through so much bugskin before being depleted. Higher oxygen levels mean bigger bugs.
Once you put the plus size spiders back into regular air they would become sluggish and eventually die. Unless you could produce the bug version of epogen, a drug athletes take to increase oxygen capacity of blood.
If you grew extra large bugs in hyperbaric chambers and doped them with bug epo you could take over the world…… Muhahahahahahahahahahah!
When the spaceman came off the UFO in early Japanese sci-fi movies they even spoke English
Wonder what language the giant spiders will speak when they take off the earth
Apparently is all a load of bollocks…
http://tinyurl.com/p9wvjc
and spiders ARE NOT insects. They are unnatural hairy freaks (I don’t like em).
So instead of Robot Zombies We’ll have giant Robot Zombie Spiders destroying the world!
noname, they accounted for that.
http://tinyurl.com/oceanheat
No, it’s clear that Homer Simpson is to blame. He didn’t kill the pig to eat it, but rather stuck it on the ceiling, which confused spiders, thus causing a genetic mutation giving them super spider strength, which strangely goes against nature as mutations get weaker, not stronger, but don’t tell that to anyone that would listen.
Hey SN! — couldn’t you get a photo of some porn star dressed as Spiderman or something? C’mon, man, get on the ball — people might think you’re gay or something!