The Covid Pandemic Sucks To Put It Mildly. Will Climate Change Bring Us More Awful Viruses

Will climate change melt glaciers and release dangerous viruses 
from within them? Unlikely, but......

To start here, there's no evidence that the the grinding Covid-19 pandemic has anything to do with climate change.  

There's lots of ills in the world that we can attribute to climate change, but Covid isn't one of them. However, will climate change bring back zombie viruses that could be as bad or worse than Covid?

Maybe.

According to Gizmodo: 

"In the Canadian High Arctic, climate change is bringing together viruses and potential hosts in new combinations, according to recently published research. Every novel interaction increases the risk of 'viral spillover."

 If that sounds familiar, it's because one of the leading theories about Covid-19 originated from interaction between humans and some sort of bird in a live animal market. 

The last thing we need is more interaction with strange viruses.  

As Gizmodo continues:

"Viruses rely on their hosts to replicate and spread, yet most viruses are intricately co-evolved with the organisms that support them. Hosts develop defenses that viruses must work to overcome. But in instances of spillover - where a virus jumps ship to a new life form - hosts lack evolved immunity. As with the Covid-19 pandemic, when a virus finds a new host for the first time, the results can be catastrophic. "

A recent study of a high Arctic lake shows the evolutionary overlap between viruses and possible host organisms is lowest near places where glacial run-off is highest. As Gizmodo explains, that means less shared history and more opportunities for unfortunate cross-overs

Glacial ice is often thousands of years old and probably harbors ancient viruses, too. Since almost all the world's glaciers are now melting at an increasing rate, you can see where this is going. 

Before you go off on a panic about the next pandemic caused by a melting glacier, here are some things to make you relax. So far, nobody has actually seen a "cross-over" from a glacier virus to a human. Besides, most viruses out there don't even infect humans.

So the study Gizmodo cites in no, way, shape or form predicts the next pandemic. It just says that it's one more bad thing that could happen with climate change. 

There's already history that the Great Melt can create trouble in humans. For instance as The Guardian reports, a 2016 outbreak of anthrax in northern Siberia that killed a child and infected seven others was caused by a heat wave that melted permafrost that in turn exposed an infected reindeer carcass. 

Scientists have also been able to revive thousands year old viruses recovered from permafrost.  And scientists have found previously unknown viruses within Chinese and Tibetan glaciers.

So, the bottom line is climate change could start a new pandemic, but that isn't the biggest threat from climate change. It's just one more reason to try and combat it.