What's the purpose of mosquitoes in the animal kingdom?
They filter and clean huge amounts of freshwater. Males pollinate plants. They are responsible of massive energy interchanges between vertebrates and invertebrates in all directions and nodes of the trophic chains. Thousands of species of animals depend on them directly or indirectly.
The counter-argument leans heavily on the vague feeling that we shouldn't do this, rather then much concrete-evidence this would really be a problem. And the communities blighted by mosquito-born pathogens (which covers a huge chunk of human civilization on the planet) I suspect are only restrained on account of the lack of money and technology to implement it themselves.
IMO the question is going to be answered for us at some point: a sufficiently virulent, mosquito born disease will emerge (or just be Zika, with mosquito carriers moving into 1st world areas on the back of climate change) and the answer will rapidly become yes.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK585176/
Inform yourself better. We have more than a vague feeling that they play a major role on many ecosystems.
Zoologists study this animals since XIX century at least and there is a pile of literature about them bigger than the Liberty statue. Mosquito life cycle in particular is middle-school grade knowledge.
Mao tried exactly the same. It didn't ended exactly according to plan.
But please, don't let your ignorance about biological ecosystems to stop you and try it. I need the laughs.
Enough time has passed to show that the direct biosphere effects of exterminating disease carrying mosquitos are basically undetectable. For that matter, history has even showed that the biosphere effects of the eradication process via drainage and mass DDT application were relatively minor in the long run.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...
I would say basically unreported
Near one third of the species of freshwater fishes extant in the whole planet face extinction currently.
Of those, all the freshwater species of megafishes (all species reaching 30Kg) reduced their population by 94% in the last 50 years. Some, like the Chinese Paddlefish (one of the biggest freshwater fishes known in the planet, 7m long) went extinct.
Rivers provide a 25% of the food that we humans, eat, and 200 millions of people rely directly on freshwater fishes as main source of proteins in the diet.
Before to start rolling this shitball of consequences downhill, we need to remind ourselves that the danger is not negligible, not at all, and that the outcome would be unpredictable and irreversible. There are "a million multiverses" in what such drastic and irresponsible actions could return and bite us hard in the gorge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
And between 15 and 55 million of people died by his "I'm smarter than science" arrogance
Reminder for what you said:
> One catch they also kill more than half a million people every year. A small price to pay you say? I say burn all of mosquitos every single one to ashes.
What Mao did:
> The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease:
> - the mosquitos responsible for malaria
> - the rodents that spread the plague
> - the pervasive airborne flies
> - the sparrows—specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow—which ate grain seed and fruit
I believe your position on mosquitos is directly equivalent to Mao's position, in every way. Don't tell other people they don't understand you when they clearly do, much better than yourself apparently.
As in (not a facetious example) the energy i spend each time i try to kill one?
LOL, good one.
just kidding. :D