If I were worried about viruses, I would be worried about the viruses we are producing when we mess around with the DNA of viruses.
Edit:
Assuming that the viruses that have been laying around in the permafrost for all of that period of time are still viable, they were viable for attacking the species that were around at the time the permafrost formed. Now while it is true that populations lose some of the immunities that they previously had, we can also assume that evolution is taking place for viruses as well. This would inherently mean that all of the viruses in the permafrost are pretty far behind in terms of evolution. My guess is that the immune system of the current animals alive could readily dispense with those ancient viruses.
Antarctice,
You are correct about how quickly viruses can spread and kill us. One thing I will note is that the evolution of viruses is based upon random mutations coupled with survival of the fittest. Anyone familiar with computer programming knows how much easier it is to thoughtfully code something, then to randomly peck at the keyboard. This is why genetic engineering of viruses scares me a whole lot more than viruses evolving. Mankind and indeed all animals alive have staved off newly-evolved viruses by evolving ourselves. But evolution takes a tremendous amount of time. Bioengineering a virus could literally make millions of years of evolution take days.
It won't sway any deniers but it might kill a few.
As the articles say, the researchers feel the emerging virus's would be of lesser significance than the other effects of global warming.
Apparently the risk is low, says the article:
"Every time we swim in the sea, we swallow about a billion viruses and inhale many thousands every day. It is true that viruses will be archived in permafrost and glacial ice, but the probability that viral pathogens of humans are abundant enough, and would circulate extensively enough to affect human health, stretches scientific rationality to the breaking point."
For once JimZ is not full of abiotic hot air.
Edit: As to your second question re would the unfreezing of a harmful virus "sway any AGW deniers to change their, "It's not a problem" type of AGW view?":
Some might change, and others might pretend to change, just as each new transitional fossil that is unearthed shows up the demythologizes a few more of the mythologizing and of the non-intelligent "intelligent designers," and each new statistical advance showing who died when and how in the Holocaust further marginalizes the crackpot anti-semitic deniers of that reality. But denial is per se stubbornly defiant of facts and hypocritical to the core. Compare, for example, how ready JimZ is to come to a definitive view here on a little-studied tangent, and based on just one single news article, whereas his incurably lame claim re a century of massive science on climate change amounts to "I don't understand how CO2 influences climate therefore no one else possibly can."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
The anti-science denier shell game machine ihttp://www.skepticalscience.com/argument... is, in essence, pre-programmed to befog any new fact that might emerge. It is not difficult to imagine the response of anti-science kooks were such a long-frozen harmful virus to be released from permafrost and do serious damage. The liar-denier fake questions on YA are almost predictable in advance:
- "Micheal Mann should be behind bars, therefore how can we be sure that this virus is really new / is really unfrozen from long ago / isn't actually a CIA / Rothsch*ld / eco-terrorist plot?"
- "Do the warmonist-diseasophobics also want us to believe that the 14th century plague was caused by SUVs?"
- "Why do the alarmunist r*edn*ck pinko Greens never talk about how new viruses kill off pests too?"
- "Al Gore is overweight and buzzes his Learjet all around his beach mansion, therefore all this mind control science is a hoax" and ignores "true science" (link once in a blue moon to Wattsup or Fox or Limbaugh and other "top scientists").
It is high time for climate realists and science-acceptors to stop hoping that some great new disaster will rescue them from hard work in the face of vicious and arrogantly ignorant attacks. We simply have to roll up the shirt sleeves and do a better job at educating the Twitter-dumbed, politically-correctness-ossified, intellectually lazy general public about the realities of a century of massive scientific advance on understanding climate change, and of a quarter century of massive and deliberate lying about that science. There are no easy cop outs.
If you can't trust The X-Files, who can you trust?
Note they only say non-zero probability, which just means not impossible. Just like an asteroid impact next month is not impossible.
As usual jim is talking nonsense, a virus is a very hardy life form and can survive very harsh environments.
From time to time questions similar to this are asked here and deniers usually go off on some tangent about yet another sad conspiracy theory. There are in deed millions of virus and bacteria all around us and they have always been there most of them longer than us we are immune to them thanks to that long exposure.
There are easy examples of what a fairly benign virus (for us) can do released into an environment where the population has no immunity, much is made of how the conquistadors wiped out native South Americans. But the fact is they didn't the virus they brought with them did quite simple illnesses for us like measles killed native Americans by the millions.
Not that long ago a new strain of flu did much the same to us, Spanish flu is thought to have killed as much as 5% of the world population, my grand mother remembered as a small child the panic people would not leave their houses everyone knew someone who had died.
Virus's can and do survive in frozen ground for very long time, that there could be something which we have no immunity ti released is not "nonzero" (if that where actually a word Moe) our close relatives Neanderthals lived on such regions in past inter-glacial they would have had virus similar to those that affect us now but if there were other that died out before we appeared we would have no immunity to those something more virulent than Spanish flu could easily have wiped out a tribe before they had contact with anyone else, there are also animals borne viruses we still see new virus appearing from animals like monkeys that are deadly to us.
If there a top ten of things that may affect us in the future the emergence of a new virus would be near the top, we have many examples of of past out breaks that have affect us even at a global level, we like to think our technology will save us bu the fact is it takes weeks to get a work up on a new virus and month to mass produce a vaccine, that is not much help if the virus has a cycle measured in days and is airborne, and unlike periods in the past where it took months to cross Europe, with modern travel you can be anywhere in the world in less than a day, people could spread such a virus before they even know they are sick.
Do I think this will or could happen, no, I think the odds are quite low but it is certainly a possibility, whatever the source, it is only a matter of time before we get another pandemic. Deniers often quote death statistics on such things, like the flu, indeed more are killed by ordinary flu than say SAR's. but the devil is in the detail deniers leave out, ordinary flu (although the virus changes on an almost yearly basis) is global and those dying are those who have existing illnesses especially respiratory ones or are very old, where things like SAR's affect the young and healthy, people for who ordinary flu would be little more than an inconvenience.
"We are inundated by millions of viruses as we move through our everyday life," said Curtis Suttle, a marine virologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, who was not involved in the study. "Every time we swim in the sea, we swallow about a billion viruses and inhale many thousands every day. It is true that viruses will be archived in permafrost and glacial ice, but the probability that viral pathogens of humans are abundant enough, and would circulate extensively enough to affect human health, stretches scientific rationality to the breaking point."
It seems the virologist wasn't too concerned. It seems more like a 1950s return of the Blob than a real significant threat. It was entertaining however.
Yes it is going to release the dormant virus of fascism. It is going to release the virus of genocide. It is going to release the virus of world poverty.
Your article is just more fear tactics by the liberal media. When your in fear you reach out for support to suppress your fear. Fear is what drives mind control. As long as your in fear your in the hands of the Illuminati bloodlines and you will obey and listen as long as that fear does not come true. Unlock your mind, get out of your mental prison and start waking up to the tyranny.
Here is why AGW is a fraud. These real scientists have the answer but they were shut down and were paid millions to work for Google so they would shut up. Google is a CIA front and is also an Illuminati
Company
http://www.washington.edu/news/2009/09/0...
Definitely. that would be the source of the swine flu and bird flu: H5, H7 and H8 series.
Or giant mosquitoes? Or, or, or infestations of ants that can pinch through steel? OH! Zombies? .....
It could be a problem if modern humans have no means of immunity to the various viruses that might be exposed however, there are other indications that such viruses have already been conquered by earlier humans and they left remnants of their DNA in ours such that we still may have immunity or means to thwart any viral attacks from an ancient source.
So called "junk DNA " is now thought to perform a variable function of turning gene expressions on or off or to be a sort of library of bits or codes of DNA that contains information that can be re-accessed by the body in order to ward off similar diseases today that our previous ancestors had to deal with. Any successful mechanism or DNA that overcame ancient viruses was passed on genetically to their descendants. Vitamin D also plays an important role in producing or regulating antibodies so ancient people who might have been Vitamin D deficient..... Neanderthals or others in climates or areas with less sunlight and few food sources of Vitamin D ... had less chances of warding off some ancient viruses and thereby became extinct. Since people today are descended from those that survived any ancient viruses, it's likely that we still have DNA sources and mechanisms within our bodies to fight off any current attacks from an ancient virus.
There is some evidence that people who lived through the Bubonic Plague or survived small pox passed on DNA which enables their descendants to be resistant to HIV so some diseases/immune system responses and data storage in DNA do make survivor's offspring stronger in a sense. If our living ancestors survived earlier viruses, then it's likely that we will too or our bodies can provide enough defense mechanisms to deal with them although some people may still have problems. Situations like the Spanish flu of the early 1900's show that we can still have major viral pandemics but perhaps nothing that will cause our extinction.
It remains to be seen whether warming would release some sort of killer virus that would spread throughout the world and affect large populations with flawed immune systems could not deal with it. Genetically we are all degrading so it could be that some features of DNA may be getting lost or altered.
Some related articles...
"These findings provide a better understanding of this modern pandemic infection through the study of an ancient virus called Pan troglodytes endogenous retrovirus, or PtERV1.
"This ancient virus is a battle that humans have already won. Humans are not susceptible to it and have probably been resistant throughout millennia," said senior author Michael Emerman, Ph.D., a member of the Human Biology and Basic Sciences divisions at the Hutchinson Center. "
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/heal...
"The genetic material – called an Alu short interspersed element – is part of what used to be thought of as "junk DNA" and makes up more than 90 percent of the human genome. That genetic material, however, is now understood to often play important roles in regulating and "turning on" the expression of other genes.
In this case, the genetic element is believed to play a major role in the proper function of the "innate" immune system in primates – an ancient, first line of defense against bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, in which the body recognizes something that probably doesn't belong there, even though the specific pathogen may never have been encountered before.
"Many people are familiar with the role of our adaptive immune system, which is what happens when we mount a defense against a new invader and then retain antibodies and immunity in the future," Gombart said. "That's what makes a vaccine work. But also very important is the innate immune system, the almost immediate reaction your body has, for instance, when you get a cut or a skin infection."
"Vitamin D prevents the "adaptive" immune response from over-reacting and reduces inflammation, and appears to suppress the immune response. However, the function of the new genetic element this research explored allows vitamin D to boost the innate immune response by turning on an antimicrobial protein. The overall effect may help to prevent the immune system from overreacting.
"It's essential that we have both an innate immune response that provides an immediate and front line of defense, but we also have protection against an overreaction by the immune system, which is what you see in sepsis and some autoimmune or degenerative diseases," Gombart said. "This is a very delicate balancing act, and without sufficient levels of vitamin D you may not have an optimal response with either aspect of the immune system."
After years of research, scientists are continuing to find new roles that vitamin D plays in the human body. It can regulate the actions of genes that are important to bone health, calcium uptake, and inhibition of cell growth. It helps regulate cell differentiation and, of course, immune function."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...
"Did Black Death boost HIV immunity in Europe?
Experts argue over whether smallpox or plague should take the credit."
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/f...
"Stephen O’Brien from the US National Cancer Institute has discovered that a mutant form of one particular gene, called CCR5, confers protection against HIV.
That same gene variant may well have arisen in Europe, as a direct response to the Black Death. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_te...
Study of Paleovirology...
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%...
As permafrost melts, it seems that it does release viruses (virui? :) ) that are currently frozen?
http://news.yahoo.com/giant-virus-resurrected-permafrost-30-000-years-202120390.html
Would that news sway any AGW deniers to change their, "It's not a problem" type of AGW view?
Well it is possible, but hopefully most have died with the extremely cold temps. It is quite possible that a few have survived We will have to wait and see
Yes. We should all be very scared of climate change and spend trillions on CO2 reduction that wouldn't have any effect on temps even if CO2 and temps were directly correlated.
Not likely.
There is a nonzero probability that I will.
