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Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#41

Post by sorokod »

irrational wrote: post #20
ggambetta wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(

The fact that people can be literally dying from COVID in a hospital yet still deny its existence has almost totally destroyed any faith I have in humanity.

Place your faith in natural selection.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#42

Post by trhway »

randycupertino wrote: post #4
Method-X wrote: post #3

Would be a fitting end to 2020; super COVID released from ancient arctic ice.

Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...

>lessons from COVID

what in our response to COVID was better and more effective than our response to Black Death and Spanish flu? I don't see any improvement despite 700 and 100 years of accumulated knowledge and technology development since then. There has so far been no indication that the only things we were able to muster - archaic lockdown and masks - can prevent it from reaching the 20-30% spread, basically the level of unmitigated spread.

I mean, for example, 700 years ago people couldn't know that that ship coming into the port of Venice brings the infection. A year ago we knew that this plane from Wuhan most probably does.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#43

Post by cronix »

randycupertino wrote: post #4
Method-X wrote: post #3

Would be a fitting end to 2020; super COVID released from ancient arctic ice.

Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...

Why do you think that? They said the same thing after "swine flu" during Obama. Basically, we just got lucky.

“It is purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass casualty events in American history,” Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff at the time, said of H1N1 in 2019. “It had nothing to do with us doing anything right. It just had to do with luck. If anyone thinks that this can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918, they just have to go back to 2009, 2010 and imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math on that.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/04/joe-biden-contain-h...

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#44

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

randycupertino wrote: post #15
somurzakov wrote: post #12

wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.

Is there an estimated timeframe on approximately when this will happen?

I think the largest deposits would take thousands of years to be affected, but there are shallow deposits that could be released, especially those near glaciers, where the glacier melting allows the nearby seabed to rise.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#45

Post by clydethefrog »

sp332 wrote: post #18
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of quantity of newly released methane are we talking about, compared to the methane produced by trees and other plants?[1] 1. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=515109...

Yeah, it's a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions

See also

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#46

Post by kleer001 »

nosmokewhereiam wrote: post #34

"Mycoremediation is the bioremediation technique which employ fungi in the removal of toxic compounds; it could be carried out in the presence of both filamentous fungi (moulds) and macrofungi (mushrooms). Both classes possess enzymes for the degradation of a large variety of pollutants" Maybe Paul Stammets, Michael Pollan, and the entire next generation of mycology experts can find a way to sporolate these areas in…

Might be time for some Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind style remediation

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#47

Post by randmeerkat »

irrational wrote: post #20
ggambetta wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(

The fact that people can be literally dying from COVID in a hospital yet still deny its existence has almost totally destroyed any faith I have in humanity.

What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining being alive during Galileo‘s time. How suffocating it must have been for him to find everyone everywhere rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of people now that don’t believe in masks, vaccines, etc.., but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science. Progress is being made, just sometimes it requires a step back to see it.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#48

Post by voqv »

bearburger wrote: post #25
franklampard wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only in the U.S.

Unfortunately I see these peoples around in Russia. My estimation of anti-maskers is about 10-15% of population here. Mostly 35-55 males who thinks that wearing a mask is the sign of weakness and/or keeps saying that COVID is "just a flu" and those who died would have been dead anyway in 2-3 month if not from COVID then from something like common cold. Even recent death of 28 y/o school teacher and 23 y/o political a…

Pictures of the September Moscow marathon make me think even the government are some kind of anti-maskers

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#49

Post by Kye »

saiya-jin wrote: post #37
x87678r wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is one person who is one person who thinks the restrictions are too strict. So maybe it is sensible for younger people to keep working and living near to normal.

Musk is a brilliant guy in many things, but psychotic weirdo in many others. Glad we have him, but no way he should be a model role to young folks who often can't cherry-pick the good aspects of character from flawed and dangerous ones, and rather think in absolutes.

Elon Musk is on track to become the Martian John McAfee.
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