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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>The CCD problem is being interpreted as a signal issue
in the environment. Here is an example:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/05/09/notes050907.DTL<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'>Apocalypse
Of The Honeybees<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h2><b><font size=5 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:18.0pt'>How
poetically appropriate that the End of Humanity should come from such a tiny,
sweet source<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h2>
<p class=byline><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><a href="mailto:mmorford@sfgate.com">By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=date><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Wednesday,
May 9, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><a
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2007/05/09/notes050907.DTL&o=0&type=printable"><span
style='text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=64 height=64 id="_x0000_i1025"
src="cid:image001.gif@01C79226.D1FFC000" vspace=1
alt="What, you thought our happy downfall would be from someth..."></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><span class=dropcap><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><span id=articlebody>F</span></font></span>rom outta
nowhere the tiny ones came, while humanity was busy trembling and sweating in
the face of major global cataclysm, of global warming and nuclear war and
rainforest devastation and melting ice caps and E. coli outbreaks and Ashlee
Simpson and lethal hurricanes and the Apocalypse-hungry Christian right and a
simply stupendously vile Bush juggernaut that has threatened all intelligent
life everywhere. Onward they came, buzzy and calm and happy to be our very own
adorable, unexpected harbinger of doom. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Yes, now
we can see it clearly. Now we can be appropriately alarmed and now maybe we can
even say, Oh holy hell, maybe we should have seen it coming all along: <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>Of course</span></i> the end of mankind should come
from something as sweet and commonplace and unforeseen as the honeybees. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Have you
not heard? Have you not read of the <a
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/05/02/national/a134259D66.DTL"
target="_blank">dire honeybee apocalypse</a> and what it might mean for the
majority of the delectable food crops in America, how we might soon face a very
serious food crisis and might be eating little more than bread and pine cones
in the near future, thus inducing widespread panic as we engage in violent
bloody wars not for oil or land or God but over asparagus and avocados and those
incredible Buddha's Hand fruits they use to infuse <a
href="http://www.hangarone.com/fruit3.html" target="_blank">Hangar One Citron</a>?
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It's
true. It's all because of the honeybees, those minuscule, <a
href="http://blog.targethealth.com/?p=58" target="_blank">absolutely essential</a>,
beautifully pollinating creatures that play such a vital role in our food
supply, help nearly all flowering crops grow and therefore provide a simply
enormous portion of the global diet including all citrus and many vegetables
but excluding that goopy liquefied toxic meat crap they inject into McNuggets,
these incredibly designed workhorse creatures that also make the world's
sweetest stickiest natural substance next to Jessica Alba and maybe Shiva's own
bubble bath, these lovely honeybees might, just might be a sign of our ultimate
downfall. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It makes
perfect poetic sense, don't you think? After all, are we not long overdue for
such a fatal environmental karmic bitch-slap? Has Mother Nature not had just
about enough of our arrogant invasiveness? Don't you already know the answer? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>These are
(some) of the facts: It appears the honeybee hives are collapsing. And the wild
honeybee population is down a staggering 90 percent. In the past few months
alone, U.S. beekeepers have lost one quarter of their 2.4 million colonies
(five times the normal rate) to what's been deemed Colony Collapse Disorder
(also the perfect nickname for Bush's America, n'est-ce pas?), and this very
serious, inexplicable problem has already spread to 27 states and parts of
Brazil, Canada and Europe. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
stories are as alarming and mysterious as they are easy to brush aside as Just
Another Essential Natural System We Screwed Up and Now Have to Scramble to Fix.
But it might not be so easy. And if the trend continues, if more hives collapse
at such a shocking and unprecedented rate and if science can't figure out a
solution rather quickly, well, get used to your wheat toast and clams. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>What's
killing all the bees? Is it some sort of new, ultra-resilient parasite? Is it
pesticides? Overbreeding? Stress? Pollution and genetic diddering and cell
phone towers? Is it Ashlee Simpson? No one has a clue. Check that: A few smart
people have a clue or two (it's <a
href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/26/MNGK7PFOMS1.DTL"
target="_blank">a newfangled parasite</a>! says the guy who helped find the
cause of SARS), but at this point they're basically just guessing. Most say
it's likely some complicated tangle of causes, some mishmash problem that won't
be so easy to decipher. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I know
what you're thinking. And yes, chances are very good we'll figure it all out
before the Great Pomegranate Wars of 2010. Surely we'll manage to finagle and
wend and sneak our way out of yet another calamitous man-made (or at the very
least, man-assisted) natural catastrophe because, well, this is what we do.
We're a scrappy species. We have science and money and brains that deduce.
Surely we'll find a way to seduce the bees back to life and it's entirely
possible you've already read about and then forgotten this disturbing story
entirely because, well, what the hell can you really do about it? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I know
the feeling. This is, after all, one of those slightly disquieting science
tales that you read about and then feel utterly powerless to respond to, and
hence all you can really do is hope the PTB are savvy enough to find a solution
and essentially save the world and then you take one look at the Bush
administration and you get that sickly sinking feeling that surely we are
doomed doomed doomed. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>No
matter. Because here's the bottom line: Regardless of whether or not we figure
it out, Colony Collapse Disorder is merely one more of those charming warning
signs, one of those increasingly frequent messages from the gods writ large
across the sky of humanity's arrogance and merciless abuse of nature's
integrity. Hell, it's an abuse we've engaged in for so long we don't even
really think about it anymore. And therein lies our likely demise. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It won't
be from global warming. It won't be from nuclear war or massive earthquakes or <a
href="http://www.transformersmovie.com/" target="_blank">giant angry robots
from outer space</a> or an enormous asteroid striking Australia and wreaking
atmospheric chaos and it probably won't be from Jesus returning to this bloody
little sandbox and looking around at all the pseudo-Christian hate and
proselytizing and warmongering and saying, Oh holy hell, that's not what I
meant at all, and wiping the slate clean. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>No, odds
are just incredibly good that our ultimate downfall will come from a much more
innocuous, unspectacular source, some from seemingly tiny but absolutely
critical natural system that we finally manipulated one too many times and
nature just went, OK, enough of this, I'm done with you gawky, ridiculous bipeds.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Maybe it
will be from the disappearance of, say, some sort of rare, beautiful tree bark
that contained an enzyme that was more vital to our genetic health than we ever
imagined. Maybe it will be from the mushrooms, those crazy massive underground
organisms that serve the life cycle in ways we don't even fully understand. Or
maybe we will find out, just a tad too late, that some odd species of sea grass
that our pollution just wiped out actually held the cure to a new, globally
lethal disease. Whoops. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>See, the
sweet, sticky ontological truth is nature doesn't really give a damn whether
our species lives or dies. It is very possible that we are not nearly as
essential or significant as we like to believe. Though I imagine if nature had
her druthers, she might very well choose to eliminate us like a bad dream and
let the honeybees and the ants and the trees and the whales take over. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But hey,
maybe that's just the sardonic fatalism talking. I'm sure we'll all be just
fine for eons to come. Right? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>
</span></font></div>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Thoughts
for the author? <a href="mailto:mmorford@sfgate.com">E-mail him</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/a/"><span
style='text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=80 height=120 id="_x0000_i1027"
src="cid:image002.jpg@01C79226.D1FFC000" alt="Mark Morford" class=imgleft></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin-left:70.5pt'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every
Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco
Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please <a
href="http://sfgate.com/newsletters" target="_blank">click here</a> and remove
one article of clothing. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin-left:70.5pt'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Mark's column also has an <a
href="http://sfgate.com/rss" target="_blank">RSS feed</a> and an <a
href="http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/a" target="_blank">archive of past
columns</a>, which includes another tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient
for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p id=url><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'></span>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/05/09/notes050907.DTL<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#004000" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#004000'>Jennifer Tsang<br>
<a href="http://coevolution.org">Coevolution Institute</a><br>
<st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">423 Washington St.</st1:address></st1:Street>
5th Fl.<br>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City>, <st1:State
w:st="on">CA</st1:State> <st1:PostalCode w:st="on">94111-2339</st1:PostalCode></st1:place><br>
T: 415.362.1137</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#004000" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#004000'>F: 415.362.3070</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#004000" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#004000'><a
href="http://www.nappc.org">www.nappc.org</a></span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#004000" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#004000'><a
href="http://www.pollinator.org">www.pollinator.org</a></span></font><font
color="#004000"><span style='color:#004000'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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