There is nothing that a BBC 'journalist' will not try to turn into a story about climate change. Last week, it was the story of rats – Ratmageddon, according to BBC News Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, is upon us. In Britain and the USA, rat populations have increased. And since global warming has destroyed the rat’s main enemy – cold – it is very obviously anthropogenic climate change that is responsible for the rodent’s population explosion.
I, erm, smell a rat though. Isn’t it odd that we hear so much about mankind’s impact on the natural world, and especially on animal populations, yet the urban rat is thriving? The Living Planet Index – a fictional metric of the world’s wildlife population – for example claims that 70% of wildlife has disappeared since 1970. What a pity that the humble sewer rat is not on such a path to extinction, it being one of so few creatures to have developed the capacity to adapt to very slightly different weather and urban expansion.
“Researchers say,” says Rowlatt, “[rat] numbers are particularly prone to increase in cities.” “That's because their heat-trapping tarmac and buildings tend to warm more quickly than rural areas.” One such “researcher” is a self-styled “urban rodentologist” Dr Bobby Corrigan – a former exterminator in New York. "Land is disappearing like crazy, and we're putting up buildings so we reduce their [rats] habitat in the wild," claims Corrigan, whose 'research' also finds that “cities experiencing greater temperature increases over time saw larger increases in
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But, surely, rats must feature in the BBC supported re-wilding programme? Come now!
Well at least these are the brown or Norwegian rats – not the black or ship rats that carried the plague and arrived in Britain as illegal migrants…
And the plague happened during the Little Ice Age.
Rowlatt is a feeble toady to the WEF agenda, gets fired up about every aspect of the narrative.
Rowland Rat would be more convincing.
How does anyone know if every rat filled in the ratcensus form last time… and this time? Maybe they’re just more obvious
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the primary way of controlling urban rat populations was found to be replacing refuse bags with proper bins and increasing the frequency of rubbish collections? Providing more litter bins, plus making littering a much more serious offence?
It would, of course, increase costs and therefore taxes but how much does ‘Ratmageddon’ cost?
Much like the increase in fly-tipping goes hand in hand with the increased difficulty of throwing stuff away.
There are many immigrant districts around my local town of Rotherham. One such is Eastwood. You would not believe the amount of rubbish and junk these people leave outside their houses in their front gardens. It’s a rat’s paradise.
Same where I used to live in London.
I’m far more concerned by the rodents running the government.
Does climate change also make the council not collect you bin regularly anymore?
“Researchers say,” says Rowlatt, “[rat] numbers are particularly prone to increase in cities.” “That’s because their heat-trapping tarmac and buildings tend to warm more quickly than rural areas.”
Wow, they admit that it gets warmer in towns and cities where there is tarmac and concrete. Maybe that has something to do with higher temperatures they’re recording? Numbskulls. They can’t work out that a temperature recording device on an airport runway might give a high recording?
I smell a rat. Like a religious climate zealot.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if someone did a study to determine the correlation between the opening of fast food premises and the effect on the local rat population.
If you put out food, you attract rats. As anyone who feeds “the birds” … or hedgehogs come to that … should know.
Back in my London days, our borough sponsored an initiative to reduce litter. They were looking for useful low cost suggestions – I guess usual stuff along the lines of “get kids to paint nice pictures with ‘please don’t litter'” written on them. I said they should shut down some of the fried chicken shops. It didn’t seem to get taken up.
Would chuck into the mix food recycling bins, most mornings on bin day there is one opened up with food on the street.
And don’t forget about utility firms, in particular the water companies that own common sewers, like Thames Water. No shortage of rats in those, as many know.
Another factor that might be relevant is resistance to rodenticides.
And the banning of effective ones or introducing a licencing regime so onerous it becomes uneconomic to make it.