
Posted by Cockney Robin |
Before I get started, let me just say that this article raises an alarming question about the effects of global warming which it answers almost immediately by explaining that probably we don't need to be too fussed.
But I prefer to worry. If I have enough different things to worry about it all at the same time, all my individual worries seem comparatively less urgent. Perhaps the human mind is so constituted that it can only panic about one threat---or for the multi-taskers, at most three---at a time. Or maybe it's just me. If you look at all the things threatening your/our/humankind's dominance hold on life and dominance over nature, you start developing a certain detachment or at least a certain tolerance for different sorts and kinds of threat. One day, terrorists; another day, avian flu; now, ancient microbes released from deep in the ice by global warming.
Speaking of which, according to this story, scientists have unfrozen some extremely old and nasty ice from glaciers.
Ancient microbes 'revived' in lab (BBC News). The ice ranged in age from 100,000 years to 8 milliion years. It contained microbes, some evidently new to science. And when the ice melted (under laboratory conditions), some of the microbes came back to life (BBC News). Showing that if climate change occurs, and the ice caps melt, "ancient bugs, long frozen in ice, will return to life as
climate change causes the glaciers to melt, flushing their genetic
material into the oceans."(BBC News).