Saturday, March 8, 2008

And Now The Bats Are Dying


Oh my goodness. And now the bats are dying. I know because someone just posted the following comment on my other blog in response to a posting I just posted about "The Bees Are Dying". And it must be true because I just looked at all of those news articles on the Internet and there they were: "Why Are Thousands of Bats Dying in NY?", "What's Killing The Bats Of The Northeast?", "Strange Malady Wreaks Havoc on Bat Population", "Bat deaths linked to climate change", "Bats in Northeast Are Mysteriously Dying", "White nose ailment threatens Northeast bats", and the list of articles goes on and on... And that comment on my other blog has me completely tripped out now. And those religious fanaticism, end of the world, beginning of the end, technology suffering planet mother earth, global warming, climate change, prophetic, apocalypse, eco apocalyptic, Armageddon, 2012, anti Christ, Nostradamus, the canary in the coal mine, are the scorpions on their way now thoughts start going through my mind again. And what about that Albert Einstein bee barometer quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man," Does Wikipedia have an answer for this? And what about the birds, the bees, the flowers, the fish, the wildlife, Antarctica, the polar bears,the polar axis, the magnetic field, the whole ecological system. What does this all mean? Peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind.

Chris from Philly wrote:

Though I am personally damaged by exposure to cell phones and other sources of EMF, you should know that the connection between bees and cell phones was based on a mistaken reading of a paper that actually had to do with the base stations of home cordless phones. It was also a lousy study, and no one is seriously researching that angle currently.

One theory about the bees says that this die-off is due to the combined stress of everything wrong commercial beekeepers do to maximize profit.

On the other hand, if something specific is responsible for the collapse of the bees immune systems, we can look either to new pesticides (neonicitinoids like imidacloprid), or the toxins engineered into GMO crops, or the genetic engineering process itself (which may nightmarishly leave so-called "naked dna" open to recombination with the dna of other organisms at random).

Also, check out the "White Nose Syndrome" which is killing off bats in Vermont and New York State. As with the bees, something has harmed their immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to what may be a very common and usually harmless fungus/mold. I think these two problems are related, as these bats will eat half their weight in bugs every night, so you can see how rapidly they would bioaccumulate any toxin present in the bugs (or bees).

Hold on tight, we're in for a bumpy ride.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

npsg - I have no answer for the bats and I seriously don't believe bees are being treated any differently than they have been for decades - that would be counter productive to the beekeepers livelihood.
I'll check into bat thing and get back to you if I find anything of import.
While that's going on, you might want to check out this report on Global Warming - here 'tis:
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/13681217.html