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Bats migrate. Migration brings species into contact with one another. (Even indirect contact such as sharing the same water source). With species in contact, vi

by natch 7y ago

Bats migrate. Migration brings species into contact with one another. (Even indirect contact such as sharing the same water source). With species in contact, viruses can spread. All this is perfectly normal. What’s new here is that climate is changing, causing migration patterns to change, causing new interactions between species that previously did not interact. Some of which are eventually brought into contact with humans. Again none of this is new either, except for the climate change part. All of this could and did happen already without climate change, but climate change can turn things up a few notches by making migration pattern changes much more wide ranging than before. So essentially what I am saying is it seems plausible that Covid-19 and its hit on the economy is one of the first “gifts” of global climate change. This seems to be right in front of our noses, but unnoticed by the whole world.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
I have seen a number of climate activists rushing to claim that the present crisis is a result of the same anthropogenic activities behind climate change. However, I feel that it is still too early to make such a claim. If Covid-19 did escape from a Wuhan lab (which remains a reasonable hypothesis, see [0] and feel free to follow up on its citations yourself), then it is not a case of human activists encroaching on a species and causing bats to migrate, but rather the result of human beings intentionally going out to catch bats in order to study them. I think that we can advocate for ways to reduce carbon output and habitat loss, while still holding off on claiming that this virus ties into that concern until its origin is better understood. [0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...
- KirinDave 7y ago
  The argument posted in your link seems best summarized as: "China had virologists and biologists studying coronaviruses and that is suspicious." It even admits in the first paragraph it has no evidence of a causal relationship. We'd expect a country that is appropriately prioritizing domestic viral threats to be profiling things like coronaviruses in animals, so it seems odd to count this as evidence. Unless I missed some key evidence in the text, it seems like the entire animus of this argument was that the Chinese government would be inclined to lie if the virus did escape from a lab, and since they said it didn't happen, that must be true. Doesn't that make it a simple conspiracy theory? I get that Americans are inclined to believe governments lie about these things, (after all, the US covered up its H1N1 strain outbreak by calling it "Spanish") but if we're trying to evaluate things in terms of evidence and probability, this argument seems contrived.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    The claim last month was that the virus was created in a Chinese lab, not merely that it was accidentally released from one, so I guess this counts as some kind of improvement, at least.
    - makomk 7y ago
      The theory about the virus being accidentally released from a Chinese lab was actually the original, dating back to January - the claim that it was created in a Chinese lab seems to have sort of metamorphised out of that as it spread.
  - paul7986 7y ago
    While I'm on the fence re: China's potential Nefarious actions ..there's no doubt China's economy which now has a head start will benefit from Corona.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      If China does have any benefits from coming out of their disasterous outbreak, it's miniscule compared to the squandered benefits of European and American governments that willfully ignored and minimized the risk.
      - paul7986 7y ago
        Ummm the liberal media is now publishing reports that itd not from a wet market but from a laboratory. Oops a highly and deadly infectious disease mistakenly is released hmmmm... Freaking China we are talking about..a society closed up all even its people ...
- throwanem 7y ago
  It's no vast surprise to see the National Review pushing a conspiracy theory; that's been the primary play for neoconservatives since the Iraq war started with one. Maybe don't be so uncritical about what you take seriously, especially when it's based on a Youtube rando's misunderstanding of how biological research works.
- borgatronics 7y ago
  First sentence of the linked article: "There’s no proof the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a laboratory" Enough said.
  - khuey 7y ago
    I think the "escaped from a lab" hypothesis is unlikely but there's little proof of anything related to its origins at this point, other than a general geographic area where it first entered the human population.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      It doesn't even pass the sniff test. Why assume that a virus originating in wild animals which interact with humans reached humans by escaping BSL-3 containment, rather than by wild animals interacting with humans? Especially given the prior form of this conspiracy theory having held that the virus didn't merely escape from a lab but was created in one, I'm suspicious that what we're seeing here is an attempt to sneak that original, stronger claim in on the back of this weaker version.
    - presumably 7y ago
      SARS had escaped no less than 4 times from Chinese labs[1]. It’s not implausible at all that coronaviruses have a history of escaping Chinese labs. Meanwhile, this[2] is a terrible source but some of the info can easily be verified. We know that China was researching exactly this type of virus and gain of function in Wuhan after the U.S. stopped due to “biosafety and biosecurity risks” exceeding benefits. [3]. The US explicitly ended that line of research due to the risks; China continued it. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-could-escape-from-laboratories.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-c... [2] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/exclusive-dr-shi-zhengli-wuhan-institute-virology-connected-coronavirus-experimented-live-animals-proof/ https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/exclusive-dr-shi-zh... [3] https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/documents/gain-of-function.pdf https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/documents/gain-of-function.pd...
      - 7y ago
- natch 7y ago
  >I have seen a number of climate activists rushing to claim.. Can you link to even just one article where there was a strong claim of causality, not merely a claim of plausibility? I would like to see this for myself.
- natch 7y ago
  >still holding off on claiming that this virus ties into that concern... But that claim is not being made here. >then it is not a case of human activists encroaching... ...nor is that claim being made. Did you really mean to say activists? Even if it’s a typo and you meant activities, that still is not at all what’s being said. The idea is more about climate patterns and the plausibility that changes in them (regardless of cause) could change migration ranges. BTW when it comes to China, National Review is a pretty biased source.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    > BTW when it comes to China, National Review is a pretty biased source. What I find disgusting is this is a global emergency and those guys are busy pushing their usual propaganda.
seibelj 7y ago
Climate change is one of those issues where you can draw a line between any problem and it. Maybe someone just ate an infected bat? Or got bit by a live infected bat? Seems way more probable.
- briandear 7y ago
  But suggesting such a thing spoils the “opportunity” this crisis is brings. If people can connect climate change to everything then they can use that to advance their agendas regardless of actual causality. The Catholic Church did that for centuries. Other religious groups have done the same thing — even going back to the Greeks and Romans where pissed-off Gods led to plagues and famines. You angered Zeus? Well here is a volcano to teach you a lesson and here is some fancy words to convince people of the truth of it.
- natch 7y ago
  True, to your first part. Question is, how did the bat come to be where it was. The flip side of being able to draw lines to climate change is that there’s a reason you can draw lines to it, namely the underlying reality that it touches just about everything, meaning it could in fact be playing a role. Obviously it’s not conclusive though. This may turn out to be one of the recurring themes of climate change linked problems: they are linkable in theory, but in practice it’s hard to be conclusive. With this theme continuing on for the next few centuries of human history as more problems emerge.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
throw3727 7y ago
Climate change is not new, just three hundreds years ago there was little ice age. Global travel is new. As for source of the virus: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU
briandear 7y ago
> none of this is new either, except for the climate change part Are you saying climate changes haven’t led to changes in the past? That’s ridiculous. The fossil record is full of changes due to the climate changing. Humans didn’t invent climate change. This arrogance that climate change hasn’t always happened is just nonsense. It’s like suggesting plate tectonics didn’t start until humans came around. Trying to make some implicit connection between bat Coronaviruses and too much CO2 is getting into religious territory. There are some religious people that blame the Coronavirus pandemic on “God’s will” and now we are hearing climate change alarmists using similar language to explain literally everything bad that happens.
- triceratops 7y ago
  > Humans didn’t invent climate change. But they are currently causing it. > This arrogance that climate change hasn’t always happened is just nonsense. That's a strawman. No one's saying that. It just happens that this time, we're mostly responsible. Not geological processes[1], or astronomical cycles[2], or the action of algae[3]. Btw, if algae can change the composition of the atmosphere, we certainly are capable. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles 2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-oxygen-...

by natch 7y ago

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

I have seen a number of climate activists rushing to claim that the present crisis is a result of the same anthropogenic activities behind climate change. However, I feel that it is still too early to make such a claim. If Covid-19 did escape from a Wuhan lab (which remains a reasonable hypothesis, see [0] and feel free to follow up on its citations yourself), then it is not a case of human activists encroaching on a species and causing bats to migrate, but rather the result of human beings intentionally going out to catch bats in order to study them. I think that we can advocate for ways to reduce carbon output and habitat loss, while still holding off on claiming that this virus ties into that concern until its origin is better understood. [0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...

KirinDave 7y ago
The argument posted in your link seems best summarized as: "China had virologists and biologists studying coronaviruses and that is suspicious." It even admits in the first paragraph it has no evidence of a causal relationship. We'd expect a country that is appropriately prioritizing domestic viral threats to be profiling things like coronaviruses in animals, so it seems odd to count this as evidence. Unless I missed some key evidence in the text, it seems like the entire animus of this argument was that the Chinese government would be inclined to lie if the virus did escape from a lab, and since they said it didn't happen, that must be true. Doesn't that make it a simple conspiracy theory? I get that Americans are inclined to believe governments lie about these things, (after all, the US covered up its H1N1 strain outbreak by calling it "Spanish") but if we're trying to evaluate things in terms of evidence and probability, this argument seems contrived.
- throwanem 7y ago
  The claim last month was that the virus was created in a Chinese lab, not merely that it was accidentally released from one, so I guess this counts as some kind of improvement, at least.
  - makomk 7y ago
    The theory about the virus being accidentally released from a Chinese lab was actually the original, dating back to January - the claim that it was created in a Chinese lab seems to have sort of metamorphised out of that as it spread.
- paul7986 7y ago
  While I'm on the fence re: China's potential Nefarious actions ..there's no doubt China's economy which now has a head start will benefit from Corona.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    If China does have any benefits from coming out of their disasterous outbreak, it's miniscule compared to the squandered benefits of European and American governments that willfully ignored and minimized the risk.
    - paul7986 7y ago
      Ummm the liberal media is now publishing reports that itd not from a wet market but from a laboratory. Oops a highly and deadly infectious disease mistakenly is released hmmmm... Freaking China we are talking about..a society closed up all even its people ...
throwanem 7y ago
It's no vast surprise to see the National Review pushing a conspiracy theory; that's been the primary play for neoconservatives since the Iraq war started with one. Maybe don't be so uncritical about what you take seriously, especially when it's based on a Youtube rando's misunderstanding of how biological research works.
borgatronics 7y ago
First sentence of the linked article: "There’s no proof the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a laboratory" Enough said.
- khuey 7y ago
  I think the "escaped from a lab" hypothesis is unlikely but there's little proof of anything related to its origins at this point, other than a general geographic area where it first entered the human population.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    It doesn't even pass the sniff test. Why assume that a virus originating in wild animals which interact with humans reached humans by escaping BSL-3 containment, rather than by wild animals interacting with humans? Especially given the prior form of this conspiracy theory having held that the virus didn't merely escape from a lab but was created in one, I'm suspicious that what we're seeing here is an attempt to sneak that original, stronger claim in on the back of this weaker version.
  - presumably 7y ago
    SARS had escaped no less than 4 times from Chinese labs[1]. It’s not implausible at all that coronaviruses have a history of escaping Chinese labs. Meanwhile, this[2] is a terrible source but some of the info can easily be verified. We know that China was researching exactly this type of virus and gain of function in Wuhan after the U.S. stopped due to “biosafety and biosecurity risks” exceeding benefits. [3]. The US explicitly ended that line of research due to the risks; China continued it. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-could-escape-from-laboratories.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-c... [2] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/exclusive-dr-shi-zhengli-wuhan-institute-virology-connected-coronavirus-experimented-live-animals-proof/ https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/exclusive-dr-shi-zh... [3] https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/documents/gain-of-function.pdf https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/documents/gain-of-function.pd...
    - 7y ago
natch 7y ago
>I have seen a number of climate activists rushing to claim.. Can you link to even just one article where there was a strong claim of causality, not merely a claim of plausibility? I would like to see this for myself.
natch 7y ago
>still holding off on claiming that this virus ties into that concern... But that claim is not being made here. >then it is not a case of human activists encroaching... ...nor is that claim being made. Did you really mean to say activists? Even if it’s a typo and you meant activities, that still is not at all what’s being said. The idea is more about climate patterns and the plausibility that changes in them (regardless of cause) could change migration ranges. BTW when it comes to China, National Review is a pretty biased source.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  > BTW when it comes to China, National Review is a pretty biased source. What I find disgusting is this is a global emergency and those guys are busy pushing their usual propaganda.

seibelj 7y ago

Climate change is one of those issues where you can draw a line between any problem and it. Maybe someone just ate an infected bat? Or got bit by a live infected bat? Seems way more probable.

briandear 7y ago
But suggesting such a thing spoils the “opportunity” this crisis is brings. If people can connect climate change to everything then they can use that to advance their agendas regardless of actual causality. The Catholic Church did that for centuries. Other religious groups have done the same thing — even going back to the Greeks and Romans where pissed-off Gods led to plagues and famines. You angered Zeus? Well here is a volcano to teach you a lesson and here is some fancy words to convince people of the truth of it.
natch 7y ago
True, to your first part. Question is, how did the bat come to be where it was. The flip side of being able to draw lines to climate change is that there’s a reason you can draw lines to it, namely the underlying reality that it touches just about everything, meaning it could in fact be playing a role. Obviously it’s not conclusive though. This may turn out to be one of the recurring themes of climate change linked problems: they are linkable in theory, but in practice it’s hard to be conclusive. With this theme continuing on for the next few centuries of human history as more problems emerge.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

throw3727 7y ago

Climate change is not new, just three hundreds years ago there was little ice age. Global travel is new. As for source of the virus: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

briandear 7y ago

> none of this is new either, except for the climate change part Are you saying climate changes haven’t led to changes in the past? That’s ridiculous. The fossil record is full of changes due to the climate changing. Humans didn’t invent climate change. This arrogance that climate change hasn’t always happened is just nonsense. It’s like suggesting plate tectonics didn’t start until humans came around. Trying to make some implicit connection between bat Coronaviruses and too much CO2 is getting into religious territory. There are some religious people that blame the Coronavirus pandemic on “God’s will” and now we are hearing climate change alarmists using similar language to explain literally everything bad that happens.

triceratops 7y ago
> Humans didn’t invent climate change. But they are currently causing it. > This arrogance that climate change hasn’t always happened is just nonsense. That's a strawman. No one's saying that. It just happens that this time, we're mostly responsible. Not geological processes[1], or astronomical cycles[2], or the action of algae[3]. Btw, if algae can change the composition of the atmosphere, we certainly are capable. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles 2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-oxygen-...