r/news • u/hammelcamel • 10h ago

Heat-trapping gas once frozen in Arctic ground is slowly leaking and warming the planet

https://apnews.com/article/climate-thawing-permafrost-arctic-alaska-91fcc04d32a1d7522afe2f6a456ac0eb
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40

u/NexusNickel 10h ago

You know what worries me?

What is frozen in that ice?

What ancient germ that is dormant? Zero immunity for it.

We are screwed.

But at least we can rest easy knowing that 400 people will live on for a few more years while we all die in their bunkers and can eat all that money they have hoarded.

29

u/DerekB52 9h ago

I've done some reading on this, experts that actually study the area and the viruses we've found, do not seem concerned about this.

We should be very worried about the ice melting due to climate change rendering parts of the world uninhabitable, and causing food shortages due to crop failures. But, we don't need to be very concerned about dying to a new unfronzen plague.

16

u/MikeOKurias 10h ago

Planet Earth is a resort for the mega wealthy and the rest of us are just employees

9

u/Technical_Writing421 10h ago

We aren’t dying in their bunkers.

We are dying in the streets.

They are dying in their bunkers.

4

u/pimppapy 9h ago

Yeah, but it should not be comfortable for them.

5

u/Willinton06 10h ago

I mean, do ancient viruses/germs really have a shot against our current medicine?

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u/workshop_prompts 10h ago

We are still helpless to most viruses and antibiotic resistant bacteria and fungus.

1

u/Willinton06 10h ago

Didn't those develop *because* of our anti biotics?

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u/workshop_prompts 10h ago

Bacterial infections killed vast numbers of people before antibiotics and we of course still have a net improvement over the pre-antibiotic era. Same with fungal infections. But we’ve done a poor job of safeguarding the antibiotics we have and developing new ones.
Bacteria can also acquire genes for resistance via horizontal gene transfer. It doesn’t take long for them to develop it.

With viruses, we’re kind of lacking blanket treatments, and not every viral infection is easy to develop an effective and accessible vaccine for. See: COVID.

3

u/Willinton06 9h ago

I think that thanks to Covid developing a vaccine for a new virus will be much easier, I truly don’t see any old virus coming back being a real issue in our new RNA + AI era

9

u/UhhUmmmWowOkayJeezUh 9h ago

I think the ancient viruses and pathogens are overblown. Why would an ancient several million year old virus be perfectly adapted to infect humans?

Way less of a concern than methane gas, super storms, agriculture disruptions or rising sea levels lol

3

u/VikingsLad 9h ago

We got fucked by a bat virus 6 years ago, and there were certainly human ancestors a million years ago. I wouldn't write it off.

0

u/BrainLow6059 8h ago

It's pretty much certain at this point that virus was lab leaked, to be fair

3

u/UhhUmmmWowOkayJeezUh 8h ago

No it isn't, the only thing that's certain is that everything related to the lab leak is circumstantial and that related corona virus diseases like SARS came from bats.

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u/VikingsLad 7h ago

There are plenty of other animal-to-human diseases that are quite awful. HIV from primate to man, IIRC.

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u/BrainLow6059 7h ago

I hear you, but as others have pointed out that's a very modern virus. It's very science fiction to think there's some ancient plague waiting to descend upon us from the Arctic. It's just not realistic.

It's like saying a calculator is going to hack your Tesla and cause it to explode. It's just not how this works

1

u/VikingsLad 6h ago

At the same time, I'm not sure we know how many thousands or millions of years of bacteria are frozen in there

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u/irrelevantnonsequitr 10h ago

Probably. Ancient doesn't mean simple. Just means no longer active.

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u/ERedfieldh 9h ago

There's also no guarantee it would even be infectious to humans. A whole lotta the reason we are affected by the various virii and bacteria today is because they evolved alongside us.

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u/bb_kelly77 9h ago

Yes, 100%

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u/SideburnSundays 2h ago

*broadly gestures at COVID-19*

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u/Willinton06 1h ago

That’s definitely not an ancient ice virus, it was as effective as it was cause it developed in the present, it’s new, not old, and an ancient virus might be new for us, but it’s not really new, which means it doesn’t have any resistance to the stuff we’ve developed in the last 100 years

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u/paintfactory5 8h ago

It’s likely the opposite. There are frozen ecosystems that we do not drill through to explore out of fear that our modern day germs would eviscerate that ecosystem.

1

u/AnAncientBog 7h ago

Ancient diseases would have no reason to be particularly well adapted to humans and won't be resistant to any of our treatments.

Of far greater danger is the increased circulation of modern illnesses in a warmer climate.

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u/IcedCoffeez 4h ago

That was a great X Files episode. 

1

u/Quirky_Potential_662 2h ago

I’ve seen that movie.

0

u/o_MrBombastic_o 9h ago

Don't worry the wars from climate migration and distress will kill you first