"We can always keep some mosquitoes in a cage in the CDC in the unlikely event that they do turn out to be useful."
Say we kill all mosquitoes in the wild, and then discover that they were in fact protecting us from some Awful Thing. By the time we become aware of this, it may be too late to eliminate the problem by simply reintroducing caged mosquitoes to the wild, because some irreversible critical mass or adaptation may have happened in the meantime. (This is a Black Swan argument; it's a vaguely-defined scenario that seems very unlikely but potentially catastrophic.)
"The cost of these infections is immense, both economically and in terms of human suffering."
No doubt. But what we want is a cost-benefit analysis of removing mosquitoes from the ecosystem. Pointing to one large and obvious benefit does not help us calculate the costs.
Scientists did the cost-benefit analysis and came down hard on the side of mosquito extinction.
I have described the immense harm caused by mosquitos. I have looked equally hard for mosquito benefits and found none that can't be provided by other species. To stand on the side of keeping mosquitos, you must find a benefit that outweighs trillions of dollars of lost economic output, millions of man-months of suffering, and several million deaths per year.
And the less likely your proposed benefit of mosquitos is, the better it must be to win in the expected value calculation.
I think you overestimate how well we can predict the effects of a sudden extinction. From the Nature article:
"Views differ on what would happen if that biomass [of mosquitoes in the Arctic tundra] vanished. Bruce Harrison... estimates that the number of migratory birds that nest in the tundra could drop by more than 50% without mosquitoes to eat. Other researchers disagree...."
We're seeing disagreement on a hypothetical mosquito extinction's effect on the number of nesting birds in a certain area. If the experts are unsure of this, then it's fair to say that the total, detailed ecological impact is not precisely understood.
Also from the Nature article:
"Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend. 'If there was a benefit to having them around, we would have found a way to exploit them,' she says."
So if mosquitoes disappeared, thousands of plant species could be threatened. The researcher says that's probably okay, because if humans aren't directly using those plants, they're probably not important to us. But what about indirect benefits of those plants? Would the effects on those plant species have significant ripple effects on other species? I don't know. The Nature article doesn't talk about that.
Does this seem like the rigor necessary to justify a sudden ecological change in an extremely complex system on which billions of human lives depend? I don't think you can call this a sure thing.
Comments
"We can always keep some mosquitoes in a cage in the CDC in the unlikely event that they do turn out to be useful."
Say we kill all mosquitoes in the wild, and then discover that they were in fact protecting us from some Awful Thing. By the time we become aware of this, it may be too late to eliminate the problem by simply reintroducing caged mosquitoes to the wild, because some irreversible critical mass or adaptation may have happened in the meantime. (This is a Black Swan argument; it's a vaguely-defined scenario that seems very unlikely but potentially catastrophic.)
"The cost of these infections is immense, both economically and in terms of human suffering."
No doubt. But what we want is a cost-benefit analysis of removing mosquitoes from the ecosystem. Pointing to one large and obvious benefit does not help us calculate the costs.
Scientists did the cost-benefit analysis and came down hard on the side of mosquito extinction.
I have described the immense harm caused by mosquitos. I have looked equally hard for mosquito benefits and found none that can't be provided by other species. To stand on the side of keeping mosquitos, you must find a benefit that outweighs trillions of dollars of lost economic output, millions of man-months of suffering, and several million deaths per year.
And the less likely your proposed benefit of mosquitos is, the better it must be to win in the expected value calculation.
I think you overestimate how well we can predict the effects of a sudden extinction. From the Nature article:
"Views differ on what would happen if that biomass [of mosquitoes in the Arctic tundra] vanished. Bruce Harrison... estimates that the number of migratory birds that nest in the tundra could drop by more than 50% without mosquitoes to eat. Other researchers disagree...."
We're seeing disagreement on a hypothetical mosquito extinction's effect on the number of nesting birds in a certain area. If the experts are unsure of this, then it's fair to say that the total, detailed ecological impact is not precisely understood.
Also from the Nature article:
"Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend. 'If there was a benefit to having them around, we would have found a way to exploit them,' she says."
So if mosquitoes disappeared, thousands of plant species could be threatened. The researcher says that's probably okay, because if humans aren't directly using those plants, they're probably not important to us. But what about indirect benefits of those plants? Would the effects on those plant species have significant ripple effects on other species? I don't know. The Nature article doesn't talk about that.
Does this seem like the rigor necessary to justify a sudden ecological change in an extremely complex system on which billions of human lives depend? I don't think you can call this a sure thing.