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talkpoliticsWorms Frozen for 42,000 Years in Siberian Permafrost Wriggle to Life
Climate change sometimes makes itself felt in unexpected ways, doesn't it? And it's already happening. For example, rising temperatures on Russia's Arctic coast are not only causing the ice to melt, but also releasing dangerous bacteria, like anthrax, into the atmosphere that have long been lying dormant in the Siberian permafrost. A 2017 outbreak on the Yamal Peninsula spread from reindeer to humans.
Permafrost covers about 25 percent of all ice-free land in the Northern Hemisphere. For millennia, much of this ground has been a cemented mass of soil, rock and ice, along with bits of organisms preserved from decay in a deep freeze. But this is now changing.
And the worst is yet to come. Organic matter trapped in permafrost — everything from mammoth carcasses to ancient fruit — contains massive stores of carbon, an estimated 1,500 billion tons, or nearly twice the carbon currently in the atmosphere. As the ground warms, the long-frozen material will decay and release the carbon as greenhouse gases. It's a runaway effect that we're talking about here.
And then of course, there are the ancient germs that could make Covid-19 seem like a mere sneeze.
Climate change sometimes makes itself felt in unexpected ways, doesn't it? And it's already happening. For example, rising temperatures on Russia's Arctic coast are not only causing the ice to melt, but also releasing dangerous bacteria, like anthrax, into the atmosphere that have long been lying dormant in the Siberian permafrost. A 2017 outbreak on the Yamal Peninsula spread from reindeer to humans.
Permafrost covers about 25 percent of all ice-free land in the Northern Hemisphere. For millennia, much of this ground has been a cemented mass of soil, rock and ice, along with bits of organisms preserved from decay in a deep freeze. But this is now changing.
And the worst is yet to come. Organic matter trapped in permafrost — everything from mammoth carcasses to ancient fruit — contains massive stores of carbon, an estimated 1,500 billion tons, or nearly twice the carbon currently in the atmosphere. As the ground warms, the long-frozen material will decay and release the carbon as greenhouse gases. It's a runaway effect that we're talking about here.
And then of course, there are the ancient germs that could make Covid-19 seem like a mere sneeze.
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Date: 6/6/20 22:18 (UTC)