The scientists said this corresponds to an increase in the local number of bat-bat coronaviruses in the order of nearly 100 viruses, as each bat species carries around 2.67 CoV on average.
“Given the potential built on by our analysis that global greenhouse gas emissions may have contributed to the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 revolutions, we are recalling calls for climate change mitigation, including as part of Covid-19 economic recovery programs, “they wrote in the study.
However, the scientists clarified that future research using other models of vegetation change and species rotation is needed to confirm the pattern suggested in the study.
Commenting on the findings, Paul Valdes, Professor of Physical Geography at Bristol University in the UK, said “habitat loss may have played a much bigger role in biodiversity change than any small impact. from climate change and this is not included in their model. “
Valdes, who was not involved in the study, believes it is premature to conclude from the available data that climate change influenced the emergence of the novel coronavirus.
Kate Jones, Professor of Ecology & Biodiversity at University College London in the UK, has agreed.
According to Jones, the risk of new viruses leaking from animals is a complex interplay of not only ecological threat but human exposure and vulnerability.
“It may turn out that an increase in human numbers, human movement and pollution of natural environments through agricultural expansion play a more important role in understanding the SARS-CoV-2 spill process,” she said.
Another scientist, Matthew Struebig, who was also not involved in the study, said in a statement that while the approach used in the analysis is “interesting”, the data on the distribution of bat species used in the “inconsistent at best” and “highly inappropriate” analysis.
Struebig, who is affiliated to the University of Kent in the UK, said in a statement that “further evidence should be returned to the evidence.”
He believes the study has “too many assumptions” to conclude that climate change was increasing the likelihood of the two pandemic viruses appearing.