21 hours ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c133r4gyx1no

By Marco Silva, @BBCMarcoSilva, Climate disinformation reporterShare

Climate change deniers have found a new champion in Kenyan farmer Jusper Machogu. On social media, he has become known as a flagbearer for fossil fuels in Africa, but there is more to his campaign than meets the eye.

At first glance, the 29-year-old Mr Machogu is just a young farmer with a knack for social media.

On X, formerly Twitter, he regularly posts videos of himself weeding his land, planting garlic, or picking avocados – offering viewers a window into life in rural Kisii, south-west Kenya.

While farming content may get him clicks, likes, and retweets, it is Mr Machogu’s denial of man-made climate change that has helped supercharge his online profile.

Since he began posting debunked theories about climate change, he has received thousands of dollars in donations – some of which came from individuals in Western countries linked to fossil-fuel interests.

Mr Machogu insists this has not influenced his views, saying they are genuinely held.

Scientists have proven that the Earth is heating up because of greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels – like oil, gas, or coal.

But Mr Machogu disagrees.

“Climate change is mostly natural. A warmer climate is good for life,” Mr Machogu wrongly claimed in a tweet posted in February, along with the hashtag #ClimateScam (which he has used hundreds of times).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says Africa is “one of the lowest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change”.

However, it is also “one of the most vulnerable continents” to climate change and its effects – including more intense and frequent heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and devastating floods.

Despite all this, Mr Machogu continues to insist “there is no climate crisis”.

On social media, he has repeatedly posted unfounded claims that man-made climate change is not only a “scam” or a “hoax”, but also a ploy by Western nations to “keep Africa poor”.

“[His views] are definitely coming up from a place of lack of understanding,” says Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist from Kenya who has contributed to IPCC reports.

ADVERTISEMENT

“This is not religion, this is not just belief. It’s about analysing the data and seeing changes in the data.

“Saying that climate [change] is a hoax is just really not true,” Dr Kimutai added.

Mr Machogu began tweeting false and misleading claims about climate change in late 2021, after carrying out his “own research” into the topic.

Since then, he has launched his own campaign – which he dubbed “Fossil Fuels for Africa” – arguing that the continent should be tapping into its vast reserves of oil, gas, and coal.

“We need fossil fuels to develop our Africa,” Mr Machogu tweeted last year.

This view appears to be shared by some African governments, who have given their go-ahead to new oil and gas projects despite pledging to “transition away” from fossil fuels.

Leaders like Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni have argued that it is hypocritical for Western nations to impose restrictions on African states, when they have become rich from fossil fuels.

But climate activists like 24-year-old Nicholas Omonuk, from Uganda, point out that fossil fuel exploration has not always been a synonym for growth and development in Africa.

“In [Nigeria’s] Niger Delta, there’s been oil extraction since the 1900s, but people there are still poor and are still suffering from health risks and from pollution,” he said.

And yet, Mr Machogu believes he has found a willing audience for his message – he has more than 25,000 followers on X.

“I think Africans are really embracing the fact that I’m saying: ‘Fossil fuels for Africa’,” he told the BBC.

But by tracking conversations involving Mr Machogu’s X handle, BBC Verify found that most users engaging with his account are actually based in the US, the UK, and Canada.

Many of those users also promote conspiracy theories online – not just about climate change, but also about vaccines, Covid-19, or the war in Ukraine.

However niche its views may be, this online community has thrown its support behind Mr Machogu and helped him fund his campaign.

“Through saying whatever I say, I have seen my follower count going up and I’ve got people reaching out to me saying: how can we help you?,” he said.

ADVERTISEMENT

BBC Verify looked at fundraising pages set up by Mr Machogu and found that, in the last two years, he has raised more than $9,000 (£7,000) from donations.

Mr Machogu has posted online about using some of these funds to furnish his new home.

But he also claims to have used donations to help dozens of local families by building a borehole for water, distributing gas bottles for cooking, or connecting their homes to the electricity grid.

Among his donors were individuals with links to the fossil fuel industry and to groups known for promoting climate change denial.

But Mr Machogu rejects suggestions that those donations have had any impact on his opinions on climate change.

“Nobody has told me to change my views,” Mr Machogu insists.

“I don’t have a problem with making money while saying what I believe I should say or doing what’s good for my community.”

Podcast: The Kenyan influencer championing climate denial

https://ae6710accad6bc43695301c0599d9a71.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

By sharing his views online, he has undoubtedly caught the eye of many in the West who share his stance on fossil-fuel exploration and climate change.

Canadian author Jordan Peterson retweeted one of his posts about fossil fuels, describing him as an “actual African”, in contrast with what Mr Peterson called the “poor, oppressed, useless African” supposedly imagined by “globalist utopians”.

A US fossil fuel advocate paid for Mr Machogu to travel to South Africa for a conference promoting African oil and gas late last year.

And, just months before, a film crew from the UK travelled to Kisii to interview him for a new documentary that described climate change as an “eccentric environmental scare”.

To some, Mr Machogu’s new-found popularity has not come as a surprise.

“There’s been a real explosion in fossil fuel development projects in Africa,” says Amy Westervelt, a US investigative climate reporter who covers attempts to obstruct climate policy.

“And because a lot of countries are passing policies that are limiting fossil fuels, Africa is also seen as a big market.

“So, it’s very helpful to have people in Africa saying: ‘We want these projects’.”

That is certainly a point Mr Machogu has made – again and again – on social media.

But Dr Kimutai says his promotion of fossil fuels, along with his denial of man-made climate change, could have consequences.

“Because we still have low climate literacy levels in Africa and in Kenya, and if that conspiracy theory spreads to communities or to people, it could just really undermine climate action.

“That is really, really dangerous.”

22 hours ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv223z15mpmo

By Pallab Ghosh, @BBCPallab, Science CorrespondentShare

Charles Darwin enjoys a near god-like status among scientists for his theory of evolution. But his ideas that animals are conscious in the same way humans are have long been shunned. Until now.

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery,” Darwin wrote.

But his suggestion that animals think and feel was seen as scientific heresy among many, if not most animal behaviour experts.

Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds.

But if new evidence emerges of animals’ abilities to feel and process what is going on around them, could that mean they are, in fact, conscious?

We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools.

Prof Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London has worked on many of the major studies of bee intelligence.

“If bees are that intelligent, maybe they can think and feel something, which are the building blocks of consciousness,” he says.

Prof Chittka’s experiments showed that bees would modify their behaviour following a traumatic incident and seemed to be able to play, rolling small wooden balls, which he says they appeared to enjoy as an activity.

These results have persuaded one of the most influential and respected scientists in animal research to make this strong, stark and contentious statement:

“Given all the evidence that is on the table, it is quite likely that bees are conscious,” he said.

It isn’t just bees. Many say that it is now time to think again, with the emergence of new evidence they say marks a “sea change” in thinking on the science of animal consciousness.

They include Prof Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics.

“We have researchers from different fields starting to dare to ask questions about animal consciousness and explicitly think about how their research might be relevant to those questions,” says Prof Birch.

Anyone looking for a eureka moment will be disappointed.

Instead, a steady growth of evidence for a rethink has led to murmurings among the researchers involved. Now, many want a change in scientific thinking in the field.

What has been discovered may not amount to conclusive proof of animal consciousness, but taken together, it is enough to suggest that there is “a realistic possibility” that animals are capable of consciousness, according to Prof Birch.

This applies not only to what are known as higher animals such as apes and dolphins who have reached a more advanced stage of development than other animals. It also applies to simpler creatures, such as snakes, octopuses, crabs, bees and possibly even fruit flies, according to the group, who want funding for more research to determine whether animals are conscious, and if so, to what extent.

But if you’re wondering what we even mean by consciousness, you’re not alone. It’s something scientists can’t even agree on.

An early effort came in the 17th century, by the French philosopher René Descartes who said: “I think therefore I am.”

He added that “language is the only certain sign of thought hidden in a body”.

But those statements have muddied the waters for far too long, according to Prof Anil Seth of Sussex University, who has been wrestling with the definition of consciousness for much of his professional career.

“This unholy trinity, of language, intelligence and consciousness goes back all the way to Descartes,” he told BBC News, with a degree of annoyance at the lack of questioning of this approach until recently.

The “unholy trinity” is at the core of a movement called behaviourism, which emerged in the early 20th Century. It says that thoughts and feelings cannot be measured by scientific methods and so should be ignored when analysing behaviour.

Many animal behaviour experts were schooled in this view, but it is beginning to make way for a less human-centred approach, according to Prof Seth.

“Because we see things through a human lens, we tend to associate consciousness with language and intelligence. Just because they go together in us, it doesn’t mean they go together in general.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Some are very critical of some uses of the word consciousness.

“The field is replete with weasel words and unfortunately one of those is consciousness,” says Prof Stevan Harnad of Quebec University.

“It is a word that is confidently used by a lot of people, but they all mean something different, and so it is not clear at all what it means.”

He says that a better, less weasley, word is “sentience”, which is more tightly defined as the capacity to feel. “To feel everything, a pinch, to see the colour red, to feel tired and hungry, those are all things you feel,” says Prof Harnad.

Others who have been instinctively sceptical of the idea of animals being conscious say that the new broader interpretation of what it means to be conscious makes a difference.

Dr Monique Udell, from Oregon State University, says she comes from a behaviourist background.

“If we look at distinct behaviours, for example what species can recognise themselves in a mirror, how many can plan ahead or are able to remember things that happened in the past, we are able to test these questions with experimentation and observation and draw more accurate conclusions based on data,” she says.

“And if we are going to define consciousness as a sum of measurable behaviours, then animals that have succeeded in these particular tasks can be said to have something that we choose to call consciousness.”

This is a much narrower definition of consciousness than the new group is promoting, but a respectful clash of ideas is what science is all about, according to Dr Udell.

“Having people who take ideas with a grain of salt and cast a critical eye is important because if we don’t come at these questions in different ways, then it is going to be harder to progress.”

But what next? Some say far more animals need to be studied for the possibility of consciousness than is currently the case.

“Right now, most of the science is done on humans and monkeys and we are making the job much harder than it needs to be because we are not learning about consciousness in its most basic form,” says Kristin Andrews, a professor of philosophy specialising in animal minds at York university in Toronto.

Prof Andrews and many others believe that research on humans and monkeys is the study of higher level consciousness – exhibited in the ability to communicate and feel complex emotions – whereas an octopus or snake may also have a more basic level of consciousness that we are ignoring by not investigating it.

Prof Andrews was among the prime movers of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness signed earlier this year, which has so far been signed by 286 researchers.

The short four paragraph declaration states that it is “irresponsible” to ignore the possibility of animal consciousness.

“We should consider welfare risks and use the evidence to inform our responses to these risks,” it says.

Chris Magee is from Understanding Animal Research, a UK body backed by research organisations and companies that undertake animal experiments.

He says animals already are assumed to be conscious when it comes to whether to conduct experiments on them and says UK regulations require that experiments should be conducted only if the benefits to medical research outweigh the suffering caused.

“There is enough evidence for us to have a precautionary approach,” he says.

But there is also a lot we don’t know, including about decapod crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, and shrimp.

“We don’t know very much about their lived experience, or even basic things like the point at which they die.

“And this is important because we need to set rules to protect them either in the lab or in the wild.”

A government review led by Prof Birch in 2021 assessed 300 scientific studies on the sentience of decapods and Cephalopods, which include octopus, squid, and cuttlefish.

Prof Birch’s team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient in that they could experience feelings of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. The conclusions led to the government including these creatures into its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act in 2022.

“Issues related to octopus and crab welfare have been neglected,” says Prof Birch.

“The emerging science should encourage society to take these issues a bit more seriously.”

There are millions of different types of animals and precious little research has been carried out on how they experience the world. We know a bit about bees and other researchers have shown indications of conscious behaviour in cockroaches and even fruit flies but there are so many other experiments to be done involving so many other animals.

It is a field of study that the modern-day heretics who have signed the New York Declaration claim has been neglected, even ridiculed. Their approach, to say the unsayable and risk sanction is nothing new.

Around the same time that Rene Descartes was saying “I think therefore I am”, the Catholic church found the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei “vehemently suspect of heresy” for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.

It was a shift in thinking that opened our eyes to a truer, richer picture of the Universe and our place in it.

Shifting ourselves from the centre of the Universe a second time may well do the same for our understanding of ourselves as well as the other living things with whom we share the planet.

White House Issues Nuclear Weapons Update

News

By Paul Sutter

 published 10 hours ago

Is there a center of the cosmos, and if so, where is it?

• https://www.space.com/where-is-the-center-of-the-universe

 Comments (4)

The James Webb Space Telescope deep field image showing some of the earliest and most distant galaxies ever seen. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)

The universe is undeniably vast, and from our perspective, it may seem like Earth is in the middle of everything. But is there a center of the cosmos, and if so, where is it? If the Big Bang started the universe, then where did it all come from, and where is it going?

To start tackling these questions, let’s go back about 100 years. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble made two amazing back-to-back discoveries: Early in the decade, he found that “island universes,” now known as galaxies, sit very far away from us; later that decade, he discovered that, on average, all galaxies are receding away from us.

Thankfully, there was already a handy theoretical explanation for all of this. Einstein‘s theory of general relativity had predicted that the universe was dynamic — either expanding or contracting. That contrasted with the prevailing view at the time: that the cosmos was perfectly static. And so it was up to a quartet of scientists working semi-independently to take Einstein’s equations at their word, developing what is now known as the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric, the foundation of modern cosmology.

Sponsored Links

Amazon’s Worst Nightmare: Thousands Canceling Prime for This Clever HackOnline Shopping ToolsLearn More

Click here for more Space.com videos…

This solution to Einstein’s equation, together with Hubble’s startling observations, tells us that we live in an expanding universe. On average, all galaxies are getting farther away from all other galaxies, and long ago, all the matter in the cosmos was compressed into an infinitely tiny point known as the singularity — the Big Bang. 

 Related: How was the universe created? 

There is no center

So where is the Big Bang? Surely, that would be the true center of the universe. Unfortunately, the reality that we have uncovered about the universe through modern science does not lend itself to an easy explanation, or even the ability to imagine it. That’s because there is no center of the universe. There is no edge, either. The cosmos is not expanding from anywhere, and it’s not expanding into anything.

First, let’s tackle the edge. The universe is, by definition, all of the things that there ever could be. Edges are things that divide one region from another. But if the universe consists of all regions, there can’t be an edge. This means the universe might be infinitely big, and it’s impossible to point to the center of an infinite space.

Breaking space news direct to your inbox

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Another possibility is that the universe is indeed finite. But this would mean that at very vast scales — far larger than what we can observe — the cosmos curves back on itself. This also means it doesn’t have a center.

As an analogy, look at Earth. You can point to the center of the three-dimensional planet — it’s the molten bit in the core. But try to point to the center of Earth’s surface, like on a map. It could be at 0-0 latitude and longitude; it could be at the poles; it could be at your grandma’s house. Any point is just as good as any other.

This means the Big Bang happened everywhere throughout the universe simultaneously; it happened in the room you’re sitting in, and it happened in the most distant galaxy we can see. The Big Bang was not a point in space; it was a location in time. It belongs in the finite past of every entity in the universe. 

Everywhere is a center 

RELATED STORIES:

—How big is the universe?

—What is the big rip, and can we stop it?

—The history of the universe: Big Bang to now in 10 easy steps 

But there is an interesting twist to this story. The universe does have an age; it’s about 13.77 billion years old. And because the speed of light is only so fast, only a small portion of the cosmos is illuminated for us. There’s a limit to what we can see, and that edge is about 45 billion light-years away. (This is possible because the universe expands faster than light.)

The vast majority of the universe is hidden from us, like the beam of a flashlight in a far forest; we can see only to the limits of the light. And from our perspective, all other galaxies are racing away from the Milky Way.

It appears as if we were at the center of the entire universe. Of course, the same could be said of any galaxy within the cosmos. From their perspective, they are at the center of their observable bubble, and all galaxies are racing away from them.

That’s the curse and the blessing of an expanding universe. There is no center, and yet at the same time, all observers, including us, can rightfully claim to be in the middle of it all.

June 16, 2024

Play Ted Nugenton Amazon Music Unlimited (ad)

Rock musician and hunting enthusiast Ted Nugent, who recently lost his beloved family dog Happy, spoke out in support of hunting rights during an appearance on the latest episode of The Chuck Shute Podcast. Referencing the fact that he cried for days after Happy died, Ted said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I eat venison. I don’t eat dogs. [Former U.S. president] Barack Obama eats dogs, but I don’t eat dogs. And I have some friends in Vietnam and China that eat dogs, and it’s meat. If that’s what you wanna eat, but we don’t have that relationship with our dogs. Even though if you go to a Chinese restaurant, I promise you you’re gonna eat dogs at some point and cats. The point is, is that I’m a hunter, a fisherman and trapper. I harvest the surplus to maintain a healthy environment. Anybody who’s got a problem with that is like brain dead. You’ve gotta be the dumbest motherfucker on the planet to think you can stop hunting for one season. I donate tons of venison, which is the purest, most healthy, nutritious, delicious protein in the world. [My wife] Shemane and I, and my son, my family, we donate tons of venison to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Do you really know somebody that has a problem with that? Can you realize how soulless, how nasty a person would have to be to go, ‘Well, you shouldn’t feed the homeless venison.’ [Laughs] Fuck you. “

Regarding the fact that hunting is often criticized for being inhumane and cruel to animals, Ted said: “As a hunter, fisherman and trapper, I provide the most humane, conscientious, moral, quick death of anything that dies in nature. When you don’t hunt, disease runs in, distemper and rabies.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.646.1_en.html#goog_1506099971

191.7K

Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page On Making The Led Zeppelin Remasters – Part 1 | Louder

“When I drove to Detroit yesterday to jam with a bunch of guys, and even going 100 miles an hour in my Hellcat, I counted, just visible, 111 dead deer. I couldn’t keep up with the raccoons and the possums and the skunks and the other dead [animals]. I mean, there’s death every 50 feet. So if you stop hunting for one year, can you imagine the terror, the harm, the painful, agonizing death from cars and disease and overpopulation?

“To be against hunting is to literally have no soul,” he continued. “You have no soul. And quite honestly, my son Rocco is a vegan and his new fiancée, they’re vegans. They have dietary considerations. I have no problem with that. I’ve never said, ‘You have to eat meat,’ but some of these nutcases go, ‘You’re cruel for eating deer.’ No, you’re cruel for being against a meaningful science-based harvest of the deer, because they’re having fawns now, and if I didn’t kill a bunch of deer on my swamp, there’d be no room for those fawns and they would eat all the prime vegetation and they would end up…

“I’m a hunter and I couldn’t be more proud,” Ted added. “In fact, there’s a gay pride month. Is that what that is? Well, I’m having a hunter pride month. I’m celebrating that I’m a hunter and I’m proud to be an American hunter. And anybody that’s got a problem with that, shut the fuck up.”

Nugent went on to criticize animal rights activists, saying: “The animal rights thing is a scam. The humane society in the United States has never saved an animal. All they do is they try to take advantage of people’s ignorance and emotion and get [a lot of] people to make gargantuan donations. And then they don’t do anything except pay them big salaries and fly across the country. It’s a scam. If you really wanna do the right thing for an animal… if you wanna find someone that is kind, loving and supportive and humane to animals, I give you the ranchers and farmers, the family ranchers and farmers, the hunting families, the fishing families, the trapping families. If you don’t harvest the surplus, the new production will have nowhere to live. It’s so simple, even guitar players can figure it out.

“You’ve gotta reduce the fish population in any body of water because they’re going to reproduce and the body of water is only so large,” he explained. “It’ll only support so much life. Do I have to say this in 2024? How embarrassing that I have to explain the simplicity of sustained yield science.

“Hunting, fishing, and trapping is the ultimate beneficial environmentalism available to man. If you want clean air, soil and water — it’s insane I have to say this; it is not taught in schools, thanks to the teacher’s union — if you want clean air, soil and water, and I think everybody wants clean air, soil and water, the best thing you can do is to buy a hunting license, a fishing license and a trapping license because all of our money goes to safeguard habitat, determine the sustained yield science of the annual harvest so that they don’t deplete that wildlife habitat, which is the only source of producing clean air, soil and water. So if you want clean air, soil and water, thank a hunter, thank a fisherman, thank a trapper, ’cause that’s what we do.”

Back in 2018, Nugent defended trophy hunting, calling it “the ultimate discipline and test and sport on Earth.” However, he stressed that it is most important that nothing is wasted and that the hunter uses every part of the animal. He also said that hunters get a bad rap thanks to the media. “Trophy hunters don’t cut off the head and leave the body there [like] the media and the fake-news punks have perpetuated,” Nugent told podcaster Mitch Lafon.

In 2015, Nugent drew the ire of animal rights activists after he posted a photo of fellow rocker Kid Rock posing with a cougar he’d presumably killed.

Nugent, a longtime board member of the National Rifle Association, fanned the flames with a comment that both insulted animal welfare supporters (“braindead squawkers”) and boasted about their “trophy.”

That same year, Ted defended the killing of Cecil the lion by American trophy hunter Walter Palmer, saying people were “stupid” for being outraged about the animal’s death. He called lions “a renewable resource.”

On Facebook, he commented: “All animals reproduce every year & would run out of room/food to live [without] hunting. The animals have more animals EVERY year!! Where would liars propose they live!!”

The 75-year-old Nugent has in the past referred to Barack Obama as a “subhuman mongrel.” The musician later apologized for using “street-fighter terminology” and said he wished he used “more understandable language,” such as “violator of his oath to the Constitution.”

https://blabbermouth.net/news/ted-nugent-to-be-against-hunting-is-to-literally-have-no-soul

Bird flu has already spread to wild birds, chickens and mammals, including a polar bear and an alpaca. The more widespread it becomes, the more officials worry it could spread among people.

Dinah Voyles Pulver

USA TODAY

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/16/bird-flu-spreading-concerns-grow/74090745007/

0:26

1:47

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.646.1_en.html#goog_1760165027

More than three years into a worldwide outbreak of bird flu, the virus continues to expand in the U.S., with growing impacts to food production and animals. Over 80 million chickens, thousands of wild birds and dozens of mammal species, including a polar bear, have been infected. 

Now it’s running rampant among dairy cows, turning up in 94 herds across 12 states since March. The latest animal to test positive was an alpaca on an Idaho farm.

“It’s gigantic, the scope and scale of the presence of the disease,” said Julianna Lenoch, national coordinator for the Department of Agriculture’s wildlife disease program.

This scale ‒ and related concerns ‒ are reflected in the price of eggs, renewed warnings to cook ground beef and eggs thoroughly, and in extraordinary measures dairy and poultry farmers are being asked to take to prevent its spread. 

As the outbreak lingers and expands, it’s prompting growing concerns about the risks to humans and the influence of warmer temperatures and more extreme weather events in making this and future pandemics worse.

How widespread is this bird flu outbreak?

The highly contagious H5N1 virus has spread to six continents since the first detections in Europe and Asia in 2020. It has been reported across North and Central America and most of South America and has been found on every continent except Australia. It also turned up in Antarctica last fall raising alarm about potential consequences for some of the world’s most beloved birds: penguins.

https://371f305592ba4a4c9321e04573688f9b.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

Timeline:From chickens to foxes, here’s how bird flu is spreading across the US

The U.S. has experienced avian influenza outbreaks in the past, but this one is lasting longer and is more widespread. Domestic poultry flocks, either in commercial operations or backyard flocks and farms, have been infected in every state except Louisiana and Hawaii, including more than 5.9 million birds just since May 1.

Get the Daily Briefing newsletter in your inbox.

The day’s top stories, from sports to movies to politics to world events.

Delivery: DailyYour Email

Since 2022, infections have been reported in 14 million turkeys and 80 million chickens, including 71 million egg layers. Farmers must kill chickens and turkeys when a poultry flock tests positive, and experts say the slaughter to prevent human infection has helped drive up the cost of eggs.

Infected mammals have been found in 31 states, with the greatest number of infections found in foxes, mice, striped skunks, mountain lions, cats and harbor seals.

Research studies find the prolonged presence and spread of the virus increases the risk of genetic mutations that could allow it to pass more easily from animals to people and among people. 

“The longer we have virus out there, the more possibility there is for changes,” said Lenoch, who oversees the federal program responsible for tracking the virus in wild birds. 

Can humans get bird flu? 

Yes, but the risk in the U.S. is still very low, federal officials reiterated in a Thursday briefing. They say the public should be “alert but not alarmed.” 

Since it arrived during the winter of 2021-2022, four people have tested positive in the U.S. All were exposed to the virus on farms. In the first case, in 2022, the worker was helping to cull infected poultry on a farm. All three patients this year had exposure to dairy cows. Two only reported conjunctivitis, or pink eye, while the third also experienced upper respiratory symptoms. No one in the U.S. has died from the virus, according to federal officials, but deaths have been reported internationally.

So far, for the general public, everything but raw milk is considered safe, federal officials say, as long as you’re cooking ground beef and eggs all the way through. Cooking takes care of any remnants of the virus that could be in egg yolks or in ground beef after once-infected dairy cows are shipped to market to be butchered. 

In milk, pasteurization kills the active virus so it can’t be transmitted, federal research shows. However, harmless traces of the virus remain, and are found in an estimated 20% of the nation’s milk supply. 

The Food and Drug Administration said it does not know if the virus can be transmitted in raw milk, but has asked states that allow the sale of raw milk to restrict it as a precautionary measure.

“The fact that it’s in 20% of our milk supply should be disturbing to everyone because that means it’s gone around already,” said Xavier Becerra, U.S. Health and Humans Services secretary, during a speech to the Western Governors Association last week. “If it starts to jump, that’s when we really have to worry.”

Why are officials concerned about human exposure to bird flu?

The great concern among federal agencies and researchers is that the virus will evolve and become more contagious among humans. For now, it’s hard for humans to contract the virus and it hasn’t been passed from person to person.

Without stringent measures to avoid repeated viral transmission between wild and domestic animals, experts say the risks to people could grow. 

The Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging farmers to step up efforts to prevent the spread by cleaning and disinfecting equipment, especially when the same equipment is used to handle manure and feed and to better protect farm employees.

Preventing farm to farm spread is “really critical,” agency officials said Thursday. 

How is this outbreak of avian flu different from previous ones? 

The outbreak is “unique in global expansion” and in the number of bird and mammal species that it’s infecting, concluded a study published earlier this year by Tufts University researchers Jonathan Runstadler and Wendy Puryear.  “Though the risk to humans remains low, this unexpected outbreak well illustrates the continued need for vigilance and further study,” the study stated.

Avian influenza is spread globally among birds, particularly migratory waterfowl such as ducks. They’re natural reservoirs and migrate over long distances, traversing hemispheres in some cases. As they travel, infected birds shed the virus in mucus, saliva, and feces.

In previous outbreaks, wild birds would often get exposed and just carry the virus around with no symptoms, Lenoch said. With the current strain that has evolved, wild birds have been getting sick and dying in large groups. 

The virus raises many concerns, not only because of its impacts on human health and agriculture, but also because it’s killing wildlife, such as seabirds, raptors and marine mammals, said Diann Prosser, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Eastern Ecological Science Center.

The spillover into dairy cows is rare and officials aren’t certain how it started. One study released by federal officials this week said it likely started with wild birds infecting a cow in the Texas Panhandle. Cows from that herd, which weren’t showing any symptoms at the time, the report stated, were shipped to Michigan, where the virus quickly spread to other states. Investigations continue.

Typically, outbreaks eventually burn themselves out as wild birds build immunity and stop spreading the virus. That’s expected to occur this time, as well, but it’s taking longer than usual.

How is bird flu spreading?

Scientists don’t fully understand all the methods of transmission, but most involve bird poop. 

Wild waterfowl are the main carriers, said Maurice Pitesky, an associate professor in cooperative extension, poultry health and food safety epidemiology at the University of California Davis.

The first four U.S. birds discovered with it were wild ducks taken by hunters in the Carolinas. Lenoch said the nation’s duck hunters, who have their own suggested safety guidelines, have been invaluable at working with officials to get wild waterfowl tested.

Pitesky listed these examples of ways the bird flu virus may be transmitted:

• Virus spreads from wild bird poop in farm ponds or inside buildings.
• It can become aerosolized and passed in the air.
• A group of free-roaming cats died after contracting the virus from drinking rawmilk and showing neurological symptoms.
• Animals eat infected birds.
• Farm employees can track in shavings or dirt that may carry the virus from wetlands and farm fields. 
• Farm tractors and other equipment can carry infected materials between farms.

A visual guide:The bird flu outbreak

Could climate change play a role in this bird flu outbreak?

A key difference between this outbreak and previous ones is an increase in global average temperatures, especially since this outbreak started. Last year was the hottest year on record, and this year appears to be charting a similar course. 

The potential for warmer temperatures to alter the transmission of viruses and contribute to global pandemics has long been a concern to scientists studying potential links between climate change and the spread of viral outbreaks and pandemics. 

Prosser was a co-author on a study last fall that pointed out changing climate patterns and extreme weather events closely parallel this “unprecedented global spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza.”

There’s no single answer to the link between climate change and the bird flu outbreak in the U.S. and further studies are needed, she said. On one hand, flu particles could degrade more quickly in warmer conditions which would decrease its ability to spread. However if heat waves cause changes in food resources or immune stress in humans or animals, the virus might be able to spread more easily, she said.

Is shrinking space for birds playing a role?

The warming climate isn’t the only thing altering the environment, Pitesky said. Human encroachment on agriculture and wild landscapes may be an even bigger potential factor.

Farms now increasingly are found near wild areas, especially wetlands, as agricultural areas expand and droughts dry up existing wetlands.

“We’re producing more poultry than ever before and the more poultry we’ve produced, the less room for wild waterfowl, and less habitat for animals to roost and feed,” Pitesky said. If these wild areas overlap with domestic poultry and cattle farms, it increases the potential for more disease transmission.

“In California we’ve lost 95% of our natural wetlands, primarily to agriculture,” he said. “There’s obviously benefits to that when it comes to feeding 8 billion (people).” But an unintended consequence is “waterfowl are using suboptimal habitats.”

From chickens to foxes, here’s how bird flu is spreading across the US

Man Shot Dead by Brother-In-Law in Gajapati Forest During Hunting

Man Shot Dead By Brother-In-Law In Gajapati Forest During Hunting

By Yajati Keshari Rout On Jun 16, 2024

 ShareFacebookTwitterTelegramWhatsapp

Bhubaneswar: A man died after being shot at allegedly by his brother-in-law while both had gone to poach wild animals in the forest near Bhaliagani village within Mohana police station limits of Gajapati district.

The deceased man has been identified as Kailash Nayak.

According to sources, the incident took place Saturday, while Kailash and his brother-in-law were hunting wild animals and a bullet hit Kailash killing him on the spot.

Reportedly, police have seized the body and sent it for post-mortem. Also, the police have detained the deceased’s brother-in-law, suspected of opening fire on Kailash.

Police have started investigating the incident to ascertain whether it is a case of murder or an accident, sources added.

Utah DWR recommends no change to controversial unlimited, year-round cougar hunting law

Grizzly bear mistakenly shot and killed by a hunter in Unit 6