Canadian experts recommend 3 bat species be listed as endangered

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada is recommending the three species of bat be listed as endangered: hoary, silver-haired and eastern red bats. 

The Globe and Mail reports:

“There’s lots of indication that all three have been precipitously declining,” said Stephen Petersen, director of conservation and research at Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo, who co-chairs the committee’s work on terrestrial mammals.

Among the causes that the committee identified as contributors to the bats’ decreasing numbers, “the mortality at wind farms seems to be the top threat,” he said.

One of these three species was cited when the Ontario government led by Premier Doug Ford attempted to cancel the Nation Rise Wind Farm - along with little and bit brown bats. Judges, far from batty, overturned the government. It seems only a matter of time until the brown bats will follow the others into endangered status.

Nuclear bros and environmentalists

I'm Scott. 

You may know me as a nuclear bro' as I'm male and staunchly support nuclear energy. I need to preface the following as I'm publishing it now, slightly edited with some extra paragraphs to compensate for me not having written down the terrific conclusion I had in mind last summer. The motivation to put it out in the wild now comes from things that impacted me in the past couple of days. On a positive note the federal government has shifted to include nuclear in programs aimed at eliminating emissions - perhaps it needs a push to reconstruct the Ministry of the Environment to align it with the new government position and this will provide it. 

Ignobly the greater motivation really comes from reading this interesting Twitter thread from the Patrick Brown associated with the Breakthrough Institute, and the invasion of my Twitter thread with formerly curious and interesting climate commentators/academics who stagnated intellectually a decade ago and now come out mainly to bless the words of other old stale 'environmentalist'.

__________

One benefit I’ve gotten from social media is learning I am hated by some people I’ve never met - or even heard of. It comes when I enter arcane discussions on obscure topics and some viciousness enters from the periphery. I recognize the emotion in the irrational histrionics as I’m not immune to behaving similarly when losing my composure. I empathize with my haters. After viewing profiles to learn something about them I realize they have reason for animosity as they draw income from some pursuit I’ve attacked, repeatedly, in the past. This has worried me - I do know and like some people in fields I am not keen on (such as solar and efficiency), and I think in recent years I’ve worked at remaining civil. Unfortunately, this is now problematic. The same institutions, and people, I railed against over a decade ago in fighting the assault on the Ontario electricity consumers launched by the Green Energy Act, and related feed-in tariffs, are being manipulated in the same way by many of the same people with the same playbook as they perceive a political environment receptive to their same manipulation. If there’s hating to be done, I’m damn well going to be doing it!

What is an environmentalist?

I suggest an environmentalist is somebody considered an environmentalist by others marketed as environmentalists. There’s some requirements for that group to emerge: money, influence/access to media, communication and social skills… cinematographers.

What there hasn’t been is any requirement for accomplishment.