Guest essay by Eric Worrall
At least I think that is what author Greg Asner is saying.
My question – why not simply exterminate the bats, if they are such a threat to human health?
Protecting half of the planet is the best way to fight climate change and biodiversity loss – we’ve mapped the key places to do it
September 8, 2020 10.16pm AEST
Greg Asner
Director, Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science and Professor, Arizona State University…
My research focuses on ecosystems and climate change from regional to global scales. In 2019, I worked with conservation biologist and strategist Eric Dinerstein and 17 colleagues to develop a road map for simultaneously averting a sixth mass extinction and reducing climate change by protecting half of Earth’s terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms by 2030. We called this plan “A Global Deal for Nature.”
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By setting aside half of Earth’s lands for nature, nations can save our planet’s rich biodiversity, prevent future pandemics and meet the Paris climate target of keeping warming in this century below less than 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C). To meet these goals, 20 countries must contribute disproportionately. Much of the responsibility falls to Russia, the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Canada, Australia and China. Why? Because these countries contain massive tracts of land needed to reach the dual goals of reducing climate change and saving biodiversity.
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But as climate change accelerates, it may scramble those priorities. Staying ahead of the game will require a satellite-driven monitoring system with the capability of tracking real-time land use changes on a global scale. These continuously updated maps would enable dynamic analyses to help sharpen conservation planning and help decision-making.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/protecting-half-of-the-planet-is-the-best-way-to-fight-climate-change-and-biodiversity-loss-weve-mapped-the-key-places-to-do-it-144908
I doubt anything we do can completely prevent humans coming into contact with dangerous zoonotic diseases and I don’t really want to exterminate all the bats, but human health first.
Creating and maintaining sterile buffer zones in areas of known risk, and controlling or if absolutely necessary eradicating known disease vector species would do a a lot to help mitigate the problem of humans coming into contact with dangerous new diseases.
As for reducing CO2 emissions, we’d get more value spending billions of dollars on medical research, rather than building new wind farms. Health research would certainly consume a lot less bat habitat, than paving over millions of acres of precious wilderness to build new renewable energy installations.
CO2- the only thing it can’t do to us is help us lose weight….
It can’t fix stupid. In fact if one is unfortunate enough be indoctrinated in the woke 21st century Post-Modernist education system then it spreads ignorance like a virus. Darn that CO2.
But Building new Wind Farms is a way to Kill Two Bats with One Blade
+1
Human stupidity has been increasing exponentially since the mid 1970s. That is clearly in “lock step” correlation with anthropogenic CO2 emissions. QED.
As far as preventing bat and other animal coronaviruses mutating to jump the species barrier and attack humans, that’s simple: STOP ALL “gain of function” virology experiments world wide.
The reason we have ncov-2 is because Shi Zheng Li and her team at WIV created such a chimera coronavirus to attack human respiratory track cells in vitro. This is documented in an OPENLY PUBLISHED peer reviewed scientific paper in Nature Medicine. There was a leak of something from this group in December and a lab tech was taken ill.
Despite their risible reassurances that “we checked all our samples and it’s not one of our viruses” Shi Zheng Li has disappeared as surely as the Skripals did and the whole of WIV was put under the control of a military commander.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
From the paper:
human airway cells? ACE2 ? Sound familiar?
Of course the whole of the virology research communities have circled their wagons and are frantically denying that all these previously very rare instances of species jumping virus strains is anything to do with them. Promoting literally incredible stories of multiple species hopping pathways in the baskets of a nearby “wet market”.
No need to turn half the planet into a no-go nature reserve where only “conservationists” like Greg Aswip are allowed to go. Just stop screwing around playing bioengineered russian roulette with the rest of the planet.
“This is documented in an OPENLY PUBLISHED peer reviewed scientific paper in Nature Medicine.”
What is documented there is a series of experiments carried out in N Carolina, with NIH funding and approval. The authors were
Vineet D Menachery, Boyd L Yount Jr, Kari Debbink, Sudhakar Agnihothram, Lisa E Gralinski, Jessica A Plante, Rachel L Graham, Trevor Scobey, Xing-Yi Ge, Eric F Donaldson, Scott H Randell, Antonio Lanzavecchia, Wayne A Marasco, Zhengli-Li Shi & Ralph S Baric
And of course the amount of B.S. in any peer reviewed paper is directly proportional to the quantity of authors listed.
Thanks for the correction, Nick. I don’t see any direct statement of where it was done but Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the lead author’s affiliation so that seems most likely. It seems the WIV connection on this paper was funded via a USAID grant to Shi Zheng-Li’s lab which they originally forgot to declare in the paper.
So not only are they playing around with bat CV but also civet. That is why they keep bringing up this animal in the wet market confabulations. All this improbable species jumping is not natural or accidental, it is being forced in gain of function experiments in the biolabs.
Yea, the more I think about it the more I support cauterizing sites such as this, even in CONUS. People f**king around with things they have very shaky grasp of and with little to no authoritative control over what they are doing or where it is going.
Ummm, seems to over-look the presence of the ‘furin linkage’ and 4 Human HIV gene segments (V1, V4, V5 & V-Gag protein segments) found in SARS-CoV-2 spike-head ,not present in SARS-CoV -1, the original SARS 2008 virus….Dr Luc Montagne, discoverer of Human HIV states that this Covid virus must have been synthesised…..made in Wuhan BSL4……Go figure….
“Why not just eliminate the bats if they are such a threat to humans?” What are you thinking? That is so speciist! Bat lives matter!
Every species that exists now has a sacred right to not go extinct. Even Covid19 viruses, I guess.
They sent up the ‘Bats–t Signal’ and that’s what responded. . .
This is a forward-looking apology built on an em-pathic appeal in order to socially justify expanding Green gauntlets.
…… em-pathetic !
I believe they are already having a very good try at exterminating bats, and many birds, by building wind turbines.
Think big is not enough, it seems 😀 😀
“By setting aside half of Earth’s lands for nature, nations can save our planet’s rich biodiversity”
The UN’s Agenda 21 would put 90% of the planet off limits to humans. That’s thinking big, with a small population to boot. They would have some areas of human habitation at such low population and inability to mix with other populations that they would be effectively at risk populations.
They want to force all humans into massive cities, so that they will be easier to control.
That option is suddenly looking a lot less attractive than it did last year.
And doing that is just bat sh*t crazy.
Yes the ‘progressive’ eco loons really are conflicted –
on the one hand they frame humans as a virus that gaia should eradicate, whilst on the other hand they continually propose all manner of ‘progressive’ measures to save humanity from itself.
Do they even recognize that they are conflicted? (or maybe just confused?)
WITH A 99% DECLINE IN PENNSYLVANIA BAT POPULATION THE WINDMILLS AND SOLAR PANELS HAVE ALREADY DONE A NUMBER, WHITE NOSE FUNGUS HAS DONE THE REST.
https://thompson.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/99-decline-pa-bat-populations-local-nursery-working-enhance-conservation
Synopsis: 19 morons got together and wrote up some bullshit world domination plan disguised as “Save the Planet” tripe. All the needed to add to the plan to make it feasible is Dr Evil.
Joel,
And he’ll have plenty of space to hide his secret lair in if this stupid policy ever gets instituted!
If only the author(s) had to take some of millions of refugees this would create into their homes! But no, I’m sure they expect all the peons to just huddle a little closer together; that’ll save on heating costs in the winter but it might be a problem in the summer! Especially in Calizuela!
No, they want most of the peons to die and get out of the way of their dreams.
Their plan is something between a Paul Ehrlich wet-dream fantasy and Agent Smith’s “revelation” to Morpheus in the Matrix.
https://youtu.be/mgS1Lwr8gq8
Agent Smith:
“Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And ‘we’ are the cure.”
No doubt Greg Asner sees his plan as the cure.
They already have Mini Me Mann
Batshit
They have a random gibberish generator that isn’t quite perfect, so their task is to sanitize it a bit and make it less random gibberish-ish.
Their Moms must be so proud.
Gee, I wonder who is offering to be the funded center for the satellite-driven monitoring system with the capability of tracking real-time land use changes on a global scale.
I don’t think he knows much about Australia. An awful lot, perhaps already 50%, is desert and already in a State of Nature.
Mr Asner said:
“Staying ahead of the game will require a satellite-driven monitoring system with the capability of tracking real-time land use changes on a global scale.”
Has he forgotten that we already have such a satellite system – it belongs to NASA and has already shown a substantial increase in ‘greenery”.
According to the extreme “environmentalists”, it’s only natural when man is not permitted in, ever.
We see the effect of “locking the gates” in the massive wild-fire in Australia last year.
Not much biodiversity left in some of those areas.
A deep ecologist told me a number of years back that if an asteroid wiped out all life on this planet, that would just be nature in action. However if man causes a single species to go extinct that is an unforgivable crime against nature.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just monitor the Chinese wet markets and nearby virus research centers? I guess not since the CCP is expelling U.S., Australian, and other journalists.
“My question – why not simply exterminate the bats, if they are such a threat to human health?”
Surely Gaia is better appeased by exterminating the humans? That is actually the stated ideal of many environmentalists.
However, should we wish to simply separate the species and allow half the Earth for ‘nature’, I suggest that we concrete over half the planet and sterilise it. There would be loads of room to live in modern conurbations built on such a foundation….
Oh no, the bats help pollenate plants.
We know we need all those beneficial bats.
we need to keep urban rats safe too.
Dodgy, sorry I posted my comment above to Charles Higley before I saw yours.
Keen observers of idiotic eco loons, aren’t we both ?
The Conversation
Written by loonies for loonies.
Does anybody take it seriously?
If I was ever permitted to submit an article to The Conversation, it would be the briefest piece ever received, viz –
“Do you lot ever get tired of writing & reading the bullshit you publish?”
The End.
If the article linked by Carbon Bigfoot is at all accurate we are already well on our way to exterminating bats in the US!
Good Lord! I thought I couldn’t despise those eagle slaughtering monstrosities and the crooks that foist them off on the public any more than I already do! I was wrong! The anger at this ignorance and insanity grows and grows; I don’t know where it will end but a reckoning is due!
Probably stop eating them would be a good place to start.
Let’s convince the loonies that they can subsist on only air. It’s worked on some people.
It sounds like a grand version of a selective global shutdown.
We know how well that has worked based on the past six months.,,
Know little about bats,, but I’m bored and have been around such researchers and bat habitats for decades so[my comments] GDN= Global Deal for Nature [boy do I have a deal for you.]
From the abstract
“The GDN targets 30% of Earth [currently uninhabitable?] to be formally protected and an additional 20% [does this include oceans?] designated as climate stabilization areas, by 2030, to stay below 1.5°C” [When we can stabilize the climate in a store, then let them move on.]…We highlight the 67% of terrestrial ecoregions that can meet 30% protection, thereby reducing extinction threats and carbon emissions from natural reservoirs [plug the volcanoes?].
From the paper, some samples–
“ The science of conservation biology underpins the GDN and is based on five fundamental goals [such science used to be wise use, hmmm!]….Range-restricted and area-sensitive species and conservation of beta-diversity…. [nowadays humans seem to be the most area-sensitive?]….For example, tiger sharks in seagrass beds in Australia create a “landscape of fear,” where sea turtles and dugongs preferentially forage in seagrass microhabitats that are low in predation risk. The majority of the habitat, with high predation risk, has greater carbon stocks [know a little bit about these, have to think about it]……Tallis and colleagues (3) demonstrated that with existing technologies and large-scale adoption of common conservation approaches (e.g., protected areas, renewable energy, sustainable fisheries management, and regenerative agriculture [protect, renew, sustain and regenerate is not new fellas so why are you saying it will now work?]), it would be possible to advance a desired future of multiple economic and environmental objectives….. ”
Ok, I’ve had it, still bored, what do you expect from Science Advances? Is there a science journal named the obverse? Science de-vances? Save us from those who want to save our carbon? When our students used to do things like this, we sent them out for a little field work in the marsh. Talk about diseases!!!
Climate change alarmists certainly have an over-abundance of current event “research” opportunists.
I’m still waiting for them to document the first case of a species that has been “wiped out” by climate change.
Heck, the total number of species that has gone extinct over the last 100 years or so is only a few dozen, and none of them were caused by climate change.
I think they found more new species or found some “again” than species that has gone extinct by climate change the last years.
The Conversation editors and contributors take themselves very seriously! Who else would censor opinions that disagree with the manifest editorial goal.
When a person loses (or never had) one sense, another becomes super-acure to compensate. Think acute hearing compensating for blindness or sense of self-importance compensating for lack of sense of humor.
This guy and his coauthors are clueless. Take the U.S. for example. Here is the land use distribution:
17% Cropland
29% Grassland pasture and range
28% Forest-use land
14% Special-use areas
3% Urban areas
9% Miscellaneous other land (such as marshes, open swamps, bare rock areas, deserts, rural residential)
So at least 83% of the U.S. is already rural, perhaps more. Are they suggesting that we forcibly take part of that and return it to untouched wilderness? These folks need to get out of the university and look around sometime. An even bigger point is that land doesn’t have to be set aside for single use/purpose. Aside from cities, most human endeavor/development takes place amidst nature, not instead of it.
Of course, the beginning of the article makes it clear that these folks have drunk the AGW kool-aid, perhaps worse than many. The federal agencies sending them research grants to turn out this baloney should cut off their funding.
Pflash,
The inability of these religious zealots to see the forests and fields all around them seems to have more to do with the dreaded rectal-cranial inversion than the solitude of Ivory Towers! It is a never ending source of wonder to me how so many supposedly well educated people can make so many stupid and inaccurate pronouncements! If only they could be forced to carry around all their baloney; at least until they retire!
The rhetoric and propaganda stream will go ever more in to the realm of the hysterical in the last ditch effort to maintain the narrative. Ever more absurd assertions will be released with ever more shrill calls that we must act NOW or the planet will be destroyed. Such absurdities occur as the narrative collapses-they need to induce us in to signing enduring contracts to cement their absurdity in to law.
To quote Voltaire-“those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
You can just hear the hysterical warmists soiling their nappies (diapers) as they blindly swallow every scrap of fresh, steaming bovine excrement served up to them as though they were dung beetles. The only difference is that dung beetles do not chase down their bovine excrement with Kool aid.
High Treason,
Your comparison to dung beetles for some reason brought to mind a Golden Retriever that a chap I worked with years ago owned. The dog was totally addicted to retrieving; constantly bringing a stick or a scrap of lumber to anyone who would indulge his predilection for chasing down and returning with the adored object. One day while framing a custom home on a hill up above Cupertino, the dog came into the room where I was working with another carpenter framing out the tub and shower areas of the master bath. We ignored him for a while but he kept getting in the way and begging for a fetch until the other carpenter got so exasperated that he threw the stick out the opening for a sliding glass door and off the second story deck to the hillside below. Without a moments hesitation the dog made a running leap off the deck to the ground two stories below! We heard a grunt and then nothing; the other looked at me with a shocked expression and said, “I didn’t think he’d jump, I thought he’d stop and look and take the stairs down to get it!” About five minutes later the dog was back, but we ignored him!
The whole point of that tale is that I think that dog was at least as bright as many climate alarmists, although they both make dangerous leaps without properly viewing the reality on the ground!
Sounds like they want us to go back to medieval times, when to survive, one had to sneak into the king’s forest to hunt some of the king’s wildlife.
That is what the “satellite driven monitoring system” will really be there to prevent.
That and for hunting down runaway serfs and slaves! They can’t allow peons to life freely without proper guidance from their betters!
My neighbor and I have bat houses out in our trees. In the evening the barn swallows fly in a circle, then one by one peel off and go down into the unused chimney on my neighbors garage. Then the little brown bats come out and take over the bug patrol duties. I love watching them and love how those birds and bats help keep our combined 5 acres relatively mosquito free. If someone comes around my place trying to exterminate bats they may be the ones that end up exterminated.
Windmills, solar farms, croplands devoted to biofuels, would be fairly high on the list of useless wastes of space.
Contemporary Green technology is a a blight on the environment and green spaces, and a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming a la predictable, renewable energy deficits that leave people, animals, and plants roasting under the sun.
No bats on Mars. Let’s go to Mars.
No bats on the oceans. Let’s do some ocean settlements.
We could could even abandon all land dwelling to the bats- beach living
for tens of billions of people.
Sky living is probably more suitable for Venus, but might able to make work
on Earth- I would guess we need more energy to make that work.
And that would be related to living on Mars. If you had a few million people living on Mars, it would lead to having Space Solar Power Satellite for Earth. And having SPS fits nicely ocean settlements.
So getting a lot energy from space and living on the ocean, will probably then lead to living in Earth’s sky.
Perhaps the bats could wash their hands and avoid black holes… whores h/t NAACP. If they’re desperate, if they need an em-pathetic boost, a viable placebo effect, they could even wear a mask at short intervals to influence, depending on transmission modes, sharing [is caring] of sub-micron particle. Oh, silence is violence, so don’t forget to screech. Also, don’t forget the goggles! The eyes are a window to contagion. That said, save a bat, whack a wind turbine.
Insectivorous bats aren’t the problem, it’s the fruit bats which apparently are essential pollinators for the eucalypts- so I’m told by environmentalists in Oz
How do I say “F**k Off” in a manner these moronic f**ks can understand? Do I have to burn down their home/business same as Black Lies Matter does? Drag them out of restaurants same as Black Lies Matter does? Smash the windows out of their cars same as Black Lies Matter does? Give me a clue. What do I have to do to shut these anti-human c**suckers the f**k up. Throw me a bone.
Green dingbats are the problem, worldwide plague been with us for a while now. The AFR and the ABC were the sites of some of the earliest outbreaks
“By setting aside half of Earth’s lands for nature, nations can save our planet’s rich biodiversity…”
Uninhabited area:
USA – 47%
Russia – 55%
Canada – 80%
Brazil – ?
Australia -90%
Indonesia – 87%
China – 67%
Looks like their goal is already pretty much met. How nice that EU countries don’t need to do anything to help.
Rick, I think your numbers are way too low. If you travel across the USA by auto you will see that most of the land is in a natural state or there are a few homes or businesses spread out along the highway. If there is a cabin on 100 acres of woods, is that 99% natural or because it is owned by an individual is that unnatural? What is the resolution used for the calculations? I’ll bet if you went through my subdivision and measured the weeds and other unwanted natural growth in yards and landscaping you would come up with at least 10% untouched, natural land.
Global warming is frying many people’s brains, especially scientists and eco-activists. As for bats, leave them alone and they will leave you alone. Capice?
If we can do anything CHEAPLY to let nature with its virus carriers alone, it’s probably in the direction of leaving the forest alone, by NOT encourage wood burning!
I have a better idea. Leave bats alone. They are hosts for Ebola, SARS, MERS, COVID-19…all the nasty viruses. Don’t catch them, play with them, make them pets, study them, eat them (seriously gross). Just don’t.
Not collecting the virus from the wild, growing it in a lab in the heart of a massive city, and then accidentally letting it escape is a far better way to protect man from bat viruses!
My question – why not simply exterminate the bats, if they are such a threat to human health?
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Blank disbelief. Multiple levels.
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It is the virus that is the danger, not the bats.
The bats are merely a vector.
and only one of many. and one that chooses not to interact with us anyway..
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What next?
Tigers and Lions?
Bears and Polar Bears?
Sharks?
Piranhas?
Mosquitoes?
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Oysters are a breeding habitat for viruses like Hep A , get rid of oysters?
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What is it about humans that makes them want to kill as the first and easiest solution anyway?
Bats eating mosquitoes MORE than compensates humans, healthwise, for any loss due to their existence as a disease vector.
Mosquitoes, the deadliest animal on the planet. Wake up, dumb asses.
first breed humans with bats
then exterminate the humans
easy peasy