While it's long been known that the Earth's climate has always changed and always will change, it's also long been known that the creatures that live on the planet change along with it. A slightly warming climate, like the northern hemisphere's current interglacial period, is good for most plants and animals, making for easier winters and more food. This is known.
A slightly warming climate is also good for people. It's good for our crops, and it's good for us; as a species, we are generally better suited to a warm climate than a cold one. For examples, compare conditions in the Little Ice Age and the Roman Warm Period.
So, when the Los Angeles Times Entertainment and Arts columnist Mary McNamara (yes, that's right — Entertainment and Arts) launches a little panic-mongering about the increase in human-animal interactions and blames it on the bugaboo of human-caused climate change, well, at the very least, her claims deserve a serious second look — because they just plain don't stand up to scrutiny.
We don’t need to create monsters, accidentally or specifically, in a lab, these films argued. If we keep dumping toxins, nature will eventually fight back.
Which is precisely what’s happening now.
Myriad factors contribute to rabies deaths, mosquito-borne illness, animal attacks and hiking accidents — diminished awareness of danger, development of previously wild areas, increased popularity of amateur nature tourism — but they all share a common denominator.
Climate change.
There's just one problem with Ms. McNamara's claims: They're utter horse squeeze. Climate Realism's Anthony Watts has a cogent observation:
California’s population and developed areas have expanded enormously over the past century. Houses, roads, businesses, recreation areas, and suburbs increasingly occupy what was once wildlife habitat. More people also hike, camp, mountain bike, walk dogs, and otherwise recreate in areas inhabited by bears, bats, coyotes, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and other wildlife. More overlap naturally creates more opportunities for encounters.
California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife says precisely this. The agency states that “as our human population expands into wildlife habitat, human-wildlife interactions have increased.” It also says encounters with black bears resulting in human injury remain rare.
That is a direct observation, with no further “climate change” explanation required.
And there you have it. The problem is related to people, but it's not because people are using air conditioning or driving SUVs and pickup trucks. It's because people in places like California are increasingly moving out into the environment — we used to call it "the country" - and into wildlife habitat. This cannot help but to increase the numbers of human-wildlife interactions. Animals like black bears, in California and elsewhere, are finding living near human habitations to be downright agreeable; our gardens and our garbage make for good ursine foraging. Even white-tailed deer, in the eastern United States, are getting to be an issue, as their numbers increase and they lose their historic caution of humans. Why? Because, in increasingly large areas of their range, nobody is hunting them anymore.
But Ms. McNamara seems particularly worried about bats. And, again, the panic-mongering is overblown. Mr. Watts points out:
Consider the article’s most dramatic example, rabid bats. Los Angeles County really has experienced an unusual increase, with 69 rabid bats reported by late September. But the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health says something the LAT neglected to mention: although rabies in bats has increased in recent years, “the reason behind this increase remains unknown.” Public Health also estimates that fewer than 1 percent of healthy bats carry rabies.
If the public health agency actually monitoring rabies says the cause of the increase is unknown, on what scientific basis does the Times declare climate change the common denominator?
While rabies detections in bats have generally increased in recent years, mostly because of increased capture and testing, the percentage remains only about one percent; and in the last 10 years, there has been precisely one human death from bat-transmitted rabies, in November of 2024. One. That's no reason to suddenly shut off our air conditioners, shutter our natural gas-fired power plants and start sticking solar panels up on every available surface.
This seems to every be the way with the legacy media. In service to an agenda, it talk freely about topics they know little about, like the vast, complex, chaotic systems that make up the global climate. Also in service to that agenda, they overlook obvious explanations to an issue, like an increase in human-animal interactions, namely that more humans are living in closer proximity to wildlife. And we know what that agenda is; the abandonment of much of our modern, comfortable, energy-hungry lifestyle. Our needs for energy, for high-density, reliable, constant, and affordable energy are only going to increase, no matter what bats, mosquitoes or climate scolds have to say about it. And our technology is already adapting to meet the need, most notably with new nuclear power plant designs, nuclear being the energy source that the scolds should approve of, but never seem to want to discuss.
But most of all, it's amazing how suddenly so many people read a few blog posts or watch a "documentary" on climate change, and suddenly they are experts. Even "Entertainment and Arts" columnists.
Mary McNamara should stick with Entertainment and Arts, because clearly science is beyond her ken.
