primitives avoiding discussing elections; discuss deforestation instead

[franksolich]

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/10025705826

Oh my.

Omaha Steve (43,377 posts)    Thu Oct 23, 2014, 07:15 PM

Takepart: Did Deforestation Cause Ebola?

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/10/22/did-deforestation-cause-ebola?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-10-22

after which a picture of.....the big guy

Scientists debate whether exploiting resources in the rainforest helps diseases leap from animals to humans.

While Ebola continues to ravage Liberia and Sierra Leone, an old debate has returned over how best to discourage future transmissions in areas like the one from which the virus emerged.
 
A report by the National Institutes of Health last week confirmed that the outbreak began with a single case of transmission from an animal to a human. That likely raised the hackles of activists who've been insisting that human incursion into forests might increase the incidence of disease transmission. Mining and logging means roads and camps and workers who need food, often leading to increased consumption of, and new trade in, wild animals, known as bushmeat.
 
That's the thinking anyway. But it’s not clear that human activity in forests where diseases like Ebola are present increases the odds of outbreaks. The two positions—Ebola creates itself in the forest, or Ebola moves with animal populations that industry decimates—are opposite sides of a long-running, arguably life-and-death debate among scientists studying the disease.
 
“Ebola hasn’t been associated with natural resource exploitation,” said Peter Walsh, who studies primate ecology at Cambridge University. “The original outbreak on the Ebola River wasn’t, and the ones in southern in 1995 and 1997 were also not. It’s just not happening.”
 
FULL story at link.

NYC_SKP (62,345 posts)    Thu Oct 23, 2014, 08:45 PM

1. It didn't help.

It's not nice to fool mother nature.

Coral reefs dying off, natural systems of checks and balances ruined forever.

There's a price to pay for all of this damage we seem to do at increasingly destructive rates.

Warren DeMontague (57,785 posts)    Thu Oct 23, 2014, 08:47 PM

2. No, evolution did.

Combine that with increased travel and large cities in Africa, and this was bound to happen eventually.

[GOBUCKS]

Deforestation?

They've claimed Ebola originated from African savages eating monkey meat.

What are the monkeys swinging from, weeds?

(I bought a loaf of monkey bread this morning. Should I be worried?)

[BlueStateSaint]

Deforestation?

They've claimed Ebola originated from African savages eating monkey meat.

What are the monkeys swinging from, weeds?

(I bought a loaf of monkey bread this morning. Should I be worried?)

I thought that the 'bush meat' was from bats.

[Carl]

Skippy is just being a suck up now,he no more worries about the environment any more then a shark worries about a dolphin.

[franksolich]

Skippy is just being a suck up now,he no more worries about the environment any more then a shark worries about a dolphin.

Well, it seems to me he can at least partially redress the natural systems of checks-and-balances by moving away from the overpopulated California coast, to the interior, where there's fewer people to overburden nature.

The real-estate's probably cheaper there, too, and he wouldn't have a $500,000 mortgage on a 328-square-foot shoreside home.

[thundley4]

Skippy is just being a suck up now,he no more worries about the environment any more then a shark worries about a dolphin.

I dunno about that. There have been many cases of dolphins attacking sharks and driving them off.

[GOBUCKS]

I thought that the 'bush meat' was from bats.

That, too.

But whenever PBS or National Geographic whines about the natives eating gorillas or monkeys, they call it "bush meat".

I think it means any critter they scrounge out of the jungle.

[Chris_]

Political correctness.  We'll call it "bush meat" instead of the Ebola-infected flying rodents that they are.

[GOBUCKS]

Bush meat? I got yer bush meat.

[Chris_]

I don't remember where I saw it (PBS or YouTube), but some film crew visited a market in some African country.  Those lazy bastards don't even bother skinning and gutting the animal before cooking it.

[Dori]

I think it means any critter they scrounge out of the jungle.

That's exactly what it means. 

Bushmeat


The term bushmeat, also called wildmeat and game meat, refers to meat from non-domesticated mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds hunted for food in tropical forests.

[Chris_]

The term bushmeat, also called wildmeat and game meat, refers to meat from non-domesticated mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds hunted for food in tropical forests.

Ebola, Ebola, Ebola with a side of Ebola, and more Ebola. 

[GOBUCKS]

I don't remember where I saw it (PBS or YouTube), but some film crew visited a market in some African country.  Those lazy bastards don't even bother skinning and gutting the animal before cooking it.

I saw that in a documentary on some wild indians in Brazil.

They chased a monkey over half the Amazon jungle, shooting at it with poison blowgun darts, until they finally killed it.

So these half-dozen guys carried a fifteen-pound monkey for miles, back to their half-dozen women and a dozen kids, and just tossed it hair, hide, guts and all onto their campfire to cook.

I guess with that many people and one scrawny monkey they couldn't afford to waste anything.

After the cameras left they probably dragged out a case of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.