So while these defrosted bugs may not be appearing in a sci-fi thriller at your local movie house any time soon, they do present another worry for the future of the polar regions, scientists say. And when considered alongside rising seas, shifting wildlife habitats, a diminishing planetary albedo and other manifestations of a changing climate, the biggest impact of this newly liberated biological stockpile could be its ability to tip the planet's shaky equilibrium.
Priscu likens the state of today's climate to a light switch being tripped.
"If you hold that light switch right there before it flips, the lights begin to flicker. I think that's what we're seeing now," he said. "We're pushing it and it's becoming more variable, and pretty soon it'll pass a threshold and reach a new state. Whether or not it can go back to a previous state, we don't know… We may end up not ever being able to go back."
On the web:
Priscu Research Group, Montana State Univ.
Christner Research Group, Louisiana State Univ.
Foreman Research Group, Montana State Univ.
Scott Rogers, Bowling Green State Univ.
Jonathan Klassen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Antarctic subglacial lake and stream studies
Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core
NASA info on global ice sheets
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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36 Comments
Add CommentOh - just spray the ice sheets with antibiotics...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBetter hurry up & get that grant application in before the ice is all gone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStrange those glaciers have been creeping down to the ocean & calving for millennia yet it is only now that this poses a threat from microorganisms.
Good point - as I understand the melting occurs primarily at the surface AND at the lowest (oldest) levels, as melt water flows through the ice to the bottom. This would indicate to me that the oldest bacteria has been released for as long as melting has been occurring...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The more immediate concerns sit here on Earth. Cells and carbon dumped out of melting glaciers could turn into huge piles of decomposing organic matter – compost – that generate carbon dioxide and methane as they decay, a potentially significant source of greenhouse gas emissions that climate researchers have yet to consider."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat, something not included in our highly accurate climate computer models! Shocking!
Seriously, folks? Based on your personal understanding of how glaciers calve, you've concluded that these scientists must be dating their ice samples by sheer guesswork? No chance that they have some more reliable metric than that to work with, huh? Wow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis sounds to me pretty similar to the concerns about the melting of the permafrost in the Arctic, e.g., Siberia. The process is already underway above & below sea level. The real risk is the decomposition, not any threat of human disease but of greenhouse gases. Maybe we have just exceeded our welcome on the planet in terms of livable climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not mind in the least that they are researching the microbal content of the ice. I am cynical about the use of AGW to bolster the chances of getting attention & research funding when these processes have been going on for millenia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy comment is illustrated:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://ivansarmy.blogspot.com/2012/04/daily-headline.html
If you think false claims do not aid funding check my posts at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=renegade-glaciers-gain-ice
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeriously, if the still revivable ancient bacteria, are apparently "existing in a minimally-active state, maintaining their DNA and somehow repairing the damage incurred over time from radiation, oxidation and other harmful forces," perhaps their DNA repair mechanisms are not entirely successful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn that case, they could be mutating in ways that have not been test by the rigors of fully active normal life and reproductive pressures, allowing the survival of mutations that might not otherwise exist. The genome of these hibernating bacteria would no longer accurately represent the original ancient genome nor that of their current progeny. These frozen but semi-active non-reproducing quasi-ancient bacteria would represent a unique genome as yet untested by the rigors of survival and reproduction in any environment...
Perhaps these unique bacteria do not provide scientists with "an exciting opportunity to examine ancient genomes and learn about Earth's past climates from the organisms living in previous times of warming and cooling" but an opportunity to be misled about past microbial genomes...
It is good to see deniers jumping on every opportunity that comes their way. Some of you are acting like fleas when a deer passes by.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article does have some valid points, and some of these bacteria could be what sent some dinos into the after life and these same bacteria, when released, could send some of us into the after life. Don't start chuckling just because an idea sounds a little flaky. There are things on this planet you have no idea about and if they are released could replace you as the next intelligent life form. There are bacteria in autumn leaves that can actually increase your intelligence, and there are bacteria in those same leaves that can lower your intelligence. You don't know what a 200 million year old bacteria can do to you or for you when you confront it, so tread lightly and carry some antibiotics with you.
"as I understand the melting occurs primarily at the surface AND at the lowest (oldest) levels"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen, your understanding is wrong.
Well, as stated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaciers#Glacial_deposits
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"When a glacier reduces in size to a critical point, its flow stops, and the ice becomes stationary. Meanwhile, meltwater flows over, within, and beneath the ice leave stratified alluvial deposits."
Also, as stated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater#Glacial_meltwater
"Glacial meltwater comes from glaciers that have receded over time. Often, there will be rivers flowing through glaciers into lakes..."
"Meltwater also acts as a lubricant in the basal sliding of glaciers. Using GPS measurements to study ice flow has revealed that glacial movement is greatest in summer when the meltwater levels are highest."
Perhaps you can support your declaration, or is that your final decree on the subject?
First line in the article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"While most of the world's glaciers are shedding ice at a brisk clip..."
Classic Carlyle Cherry Pick!
"Several studies hint that the climate in the Karakoram may be cooling, contrary to the trend in most of the world."
Didn't even READ the article! Silly Carlyle, facts are for people who actually care about the truth!
This is great news! What could possibly be bad about enhancing biodiversity?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems that even older living organisms have been found to have a possibility of "resuscitating": those included in salt formed from oceans or seas that became dry. Whatever it can happen if these organisms go the environment, thrive and multiply, it's probably out of the reach of anybody stopping this. Just watching what happens is a feasible approach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyes i would like to add an argument to global warming by the fact that the ice caps on mars are also melting, along with the ice caps on the moons of jupiter are melting also the entire planetary system is also warming up .the earth went threw a violent change 10,000 years ago during the last ice age not by man ,the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is the lowest it has ever been .365 if it gets any lower plants will begin to dye most of this nonsense is to deindustrialize america and industrialize china learn the tricks of the new world order on INFOWARS.COM
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mentioned this with the drilling at the South Pole and was told oh don't worry, we know what we are doing. The bottom line is we don't know what we are doing because if we did, the global climate change we are undergoing would not be happening and worse yet we would know if it is a fire or ice ending. At the current rate we can pretty much kiss Greenland's sheet good bye and if the permafrost gives way the methane release will make all the automobile pollution in the world look like a candle being blown out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the Arctic Ice sheet gives way each summer the darker water will absorb more heat and the feed back will probably start a major defrost of the permafrost. Additionally Greenland is sieving at this point and more than a rise in sea level is the rise in life forms that have not seen the day of light in up to 750,000 years. We are currently dealing with the death of antibiotics as a defense against bacteria based disease (see this months issue regarding the rise of incurable clap) and one thing that viruses and bacteria do well is interchange genes to become more successful and they have short generation times meaning the mutations happen too quickly to respond to.
I think the best way to put it is I have looked into the mirror and seen the enemy of man and it is man. Enjoy these times because the ride has started and at this point there is no off switch. We are a clever race but that does not mean an intelligent one.
Too much gloom David. Predictions were that arctic Ice would disappear this summer. In fact average ice extent has been edging back up in recent years & at the moment is very close to the 1979-2000 average. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png Polar bear numbers are at thirty year highs, world food crops are providing record harvests.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill, if being gloomy is your thing you could look at all the alternative energy schemes that have failed, governments reducing expenditure on alternative energy schemes, the carbon price collapsing in Europe. It just goes on & on. The alarmism is running out of steam.
Boy, it's a good thing that these researchers have alerted us to this potential catastrophe! I'm glad that they caught it in time. It would have been a disaster if 100,000 year old bacteria would have been continuously melting out of the glaciers since the end of the last Ice Age!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe entire human race would have faced oblivion but for this brave and intrepid band of researchers!
Pray that they have the wisdom to act and please give them the budget to stop this now before we all die!
I enjoy your elegant style and as a worthy debate opponent, but it is simply not true that the icecap is normal. Notice that scientific icecap studies usually compare current icecap with 1900 levels, not 2000.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee from NOAA itself, at:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/noaa-gfdl-climate-research-highlights-ar4
or in
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
I challenge you to produce a single credible, high-level government or major university climate change site denying warming.
If polar meltdown was fictitious, the Navy itself wouldn’t be preparing for it:
http://greenfleet.dodlive.mil/climate-change/arctic-and-maritime-security/
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=51054
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA463334
The serious thing about this, as David aptly pointed out, is the not greenhouse effect, but the Runaway Greenhouse Effect, as what everybody studied in high school about what happened to Venus due to natural causes.
The
1) albedo feedback loop (darker areas absorb more sunlight, icecaps help cooling because they are white)
and the
2) methane that is being released right now, even as we type away for fun over our coffee
will warm the globe much more than anything else hence.
The key issue with global warming – and source of our fears - is that the environment, like most complex systems, probably cannot remain stable at any arbitrary intermediary level, but has stable points, and that the nearest stable point above the current one is quite higher than the pre-industrial one, so drought and famine are a distinct possibility, particularly considering overpopulation.
If the oil industry caused no other problems other than this, it might still be debatable. But conservatives complain about dependence on foreign sources, liberals about the wars spawned, and car fumes are noxious and unhealthy anyhow. If one third of the money spent on oil subsidies was spent on research, we could have electric cars (which economists have been predicting for the last 60 years anyhow as an obvious and unavoidable development) running on clean power (my favorite suggestion for the US is geothermal, the Yellowstone park could produce far more power than the world will ever need) everyone could be happy and we could go on to do fun stuff like colonizing Mars and so on.
I've always liked the idea of Yellowstone geothermal - at least until it pops!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease though - the last thing humanity needs is to subject its future genome to the ambient radiation on Mars... It'd be better if we just decided on the most humane method of managing our population here on Earth. Even a 22nd century Earth should be more habitable than any other planet we could migrate to (abandoning hope for the billions left behind) - if not we should avoid polluting them. America was our last chance at a New World...
Agreed! We must fix our blunders if we are ever to have the required surplus to pay for space colonization, which is exceedingly expensive. I never meant it as an escape, but as growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWorld government through a deepened grass-roots direct democracy, clean energy matrix, polluting chemicals replaced by alternatives wherever possible, overpopulation (and poverty) under control, rich and poor having the same rights and obligations (and risks, and taxes), enough world peace to enable most of the former military budgets to be used for colonization, and so forth. All quite utopist, but if anyone would describe the world today to a person from 1800 it would sound utopist too, even leaving technology outside, just describing political and social institutions in democratic countries.
The thing about tapping Yellowstone potential is the ‘busted balloon’ problem. Every magnetic polar inversion, which has occurred 171 times, and the last time was 700,000 years ago and is about due, the Y supervolcano erupts. This polar inversion has started already (it is called the South Atlantic Anomaly), note that tectonic activity is rising everywhere. We can reasonably expect an eruption sometime between next month and 10,000 years from now. It would cause an event analogous to a nuclear winter, there goes civilization, even if human groups might survive at a Neolithic or Bronze age level in the tropics.
So how to avoid creating a horrible volcano with the first drilled well? Two ideas. First, eat the hot porridge staring by the edges. First make the current geysers a little wider, than proceed from there (Old Faithful always being left intact as thermometer). My favorite idea, though, would be to drill several dozen very wide craters simultaneously – something like a subway tunnel drill (10 meters diameter), but pointing down, so they all burst into the magma simultaneously; being disposable of course, they would have to just drop into the magma when they got there. This done, with several wide craters looking down into the magma, the pressure would not be able to build up, hence no super eruption.
Then huge geothermal plants could be set up (underground for esthetic reasons, if we want to keep from spoiling the park), putting out enough yield to power all of North America with plenty left to spare. Hence we could solve the two problems at once.
Quick, everyone. Time for your monthly (daily?) panic attack. We are all going to die!! We are all going to die!!! New sources of CO2!!! New diseases being unleashed!!!! Ohhhhhh no!!!!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYep, if we were somehow extracting enough thermal energy from the magma chamber, perhaps we could postpone the next eruption... We'd better be careful, though!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease, you are doing your cause a disservice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYellowstone could not possibly produce that much energy and even less that much power except over a very short time and that would be a disaster of unknown proportions.
Reportedly that happened ~ 640000 years ago. Glad I was not alive then.
Similarly the battery in your car may be able to deliver many tens of amps at approximately 12 volts but not for an extended period of time because then it would melt and become useless and deliver zero amps. In fact this will not happen because the chemical reaction in the battery will sulfate the lead and make it useless.
There seems to be no end to the misunderstandings. If I have a gravity hydro plant I can steal some of the kinetic energy of the water but not more. Why? Because if I steal all off the kinetic energy the water will come to a complete stop right behind the turbine effectively killing the process that produces the energy. And like the battery I can not really do this.
Similarly I cannot get all of the energy in the fossil fuel we burn. That is why the efficiency is so poor i.e. in the neighbourhood of 25 to 45 percent.
Equally in nuclear plants. The actual energy produced is in the neighbourhood of 5 percent and 95 percent is unused.
There are various ways to improve efficiency of any energy producing process but I can never get all the energy available.
Too much fluff Carlyle. Please show me who said that ice would be gone this summer. Which summer are you talking about? Last year's summer? or perhaps the summer in 2135?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimilarly, where are the numbers that show that average ice extent has been creeping up? What about ice volume?
After all ice volume used to be the favorite amongst climate theory deniers.
Also the 1979-2000 average is now so low that it is easy to temporarily exceed that average even if, a very big if, your numbers are correct.
Polar bears have perhaps been counted more accurately in recent years? And that is why the numbers are higher?
World food crops are higher just because more people are planting crops? After all the population is increasing.
Perhaps you could look at all the alternative energy schemes that have succeeded? And government reducing expenditure on these schemes because they have succeeded?
The carbon price collapsing because the ceiling of the carbon price cap has not been raised because of spineless politicians?
It just goes on and on.
Denialism is running out of virtual steam and it has never had any real steam.
Most of what is claimed in Mark's blog entry is without sufficient evidence. We do not yet clearly know why, when and how magnetic reversals happen allthough progress is being made by our geologists. We know much less if at all whether or not magnetic reversals could be even remotely connected to Yellowstone erupting. In fact Yellowstone is the result of a hotspot below the continental crust and because of tectonics the next eruption may be in a different place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll this would have to be considered as the vaguest of hypotheses and therefor without any foundation at all.
As to accessing the hidden magmas in Yellowstone I would recommend trying it in Hawaii first in view of the fact that you have allready exposed magmas there without the risk of violent eruption.
Again, as soon as you start stealing heat from the magmas, hot rocks etc. the temperatures will drop locally where the heat is removed. There is much evidence that you cannot extract geothermal energy at a very high rate anywhere without the risk of running out of heat energy. This has happened in New Zealand, Iceland and other places where geothermal energy has been exploited. The various turbines had to be temporarily shut down or extensively slowed down to allow the heat to build up again. Rocks whether solid or fluid are very poor conductors of heat. If not the earth would be a solid block throughout notwithstanding the fissionable elements remaining in the planet after 4.6 billion years.
You have to remove energy sufficiently slowly to allow continued and subdued use of the energy resource.
This is in fact the very same case for fossil fuels. Allthough it may appear and some are deluded in thinking that we can use fossil fuels at ever increasing rates without limit we can not (in the long run) and should not use them faster than nature can replenish them unless you propose that we somehow could do the replenishing job faster than nature. While perhaps not impossible I have yet to see such a proposal.
The same applies to underground water, wind energy and all other similar resources. (In fact, as an aside, and in a very stretched sense (i.e. totally incongruous) the very same rules apply to our various economies yet we fail to see the problem.)
In short: you can temporarily and partially circumvent but you can not escape the second law of thermodynamics.
You can only use energy at the expense of even more wasted energy. That is the main reason for calling for conservation and efficiency in the use of energy.
Simple yet ... oh so hard to see.
I agree that getting into the magma would be going too far, but I suspect that some careful engineering could insert steam pipelines in the neighborhood of the magma chamber - at a distance to optimize safety & energy extraction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe island of Iceland lies on a hotspot and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Geothermal power has been safely and extensively extracted on the island. Again, we'd have to be careful!
I also agree that any magnetic reversals have nothing to do with Yellowstone eruptions. There's a nice chart showing the location of past calderas and the age of their eruptions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano#Known_super_eruptions
Very interesting commentary so far on this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComing back to the subject of the article I would like to know what _reviving_ this microbial material included.
Was it simply taking a hundred thousand year old ice cube and dropping it into a bucket of arctic seawater maintained at a conforming temperature and observing a fully functioning life form spring forth?
Or was it placed in a petri dish in a contained environment with every possible manipulation of salinity, temperature, light and other radiation, atmospheric conditions, amino acids and other life supporting elements, adjusted in whatever way possible to produce just one of the elements of a life form such as irritability, homeostasis, sentience or reproduction for just long enough to claim an experimental success?
Or maybe it was something in between.
The issue is whether real world conditions were employed on something that can't reasonably be considered to have already been exposed. Yes the samples are old. But are they old in way that is different from other previous naturally released samples? If they are old but being released in a new way with new contents are they viable under current conditions?
The article does a lot of speculation about pretty extreme consequences considering they haven't addressed the two previous questions.
Good points!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, I don't think it's been established just how reliably the (repaired) ancient DNA represents actual ancient species, or that ancient DNA has not been released every spring when glacial meltwater flows underneath glaciers, exposing ancient ice to water. Please see comment #10.
Yes, I was drawing on your comments in #10 actually and should have acknowledged such.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe impression I was given was that the microbes came alive as the water melted. As you pointed out there is a lack of explanation on the part of the writer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGiven this impression I am at a loss to understand the scientists lack of forethought when considering the possibility of a pathogen causing a pandemic today –
"So if [viruses] can survive in the ice, they could come back at a time when the population is naïve again and hasn't been exposed to that particular genotype," he said.
Rogers has found a living 140,000-year-old plant virus in glacial ice from Greenland. He speculates that it could be possible for some hardy viruses, like the one that causes polio, to survive in ice and come back to infect susceptible humans. However, he and other scientists think there's little possibility that melting glaciers will unleash virulent viruses that trigger pandemics like the one depicted in the recent Hollywood horror film, Contagion. Human and animal pathogens have evolved to live in a warm, cozy place and would have a hard time surviving the extremely harsh conditions in ice. Viruses tend to be especially fragile.
"The chances aren't zero," said Rogers, "but they're very close to zero."
Who says all pathogens were from warm climates, after all Gondwana was abundant with life as the ice age started. Therefore there must have been pathogens living there as well.
Given that these pathogens would blend into the ocean and mix with the currents they could possibly have several hundred or even thousand of life times to evolve as they are swept along and eventually reach landfall where they will come in contact with people in a warmer climate. By which time they would be acclimatised and possibly have even already started to cause substantial environmental and ecological damage to our food chain.
As a non-believer in the asteroid theory wiping out the dinosaurs, I believe it is more plausible that a pathogen caused their demise, and it is quite possible given this information that this pathogen could well be waiting in the ice right now to be reinvigorated. Or who is say another such pathogen is laying dormant just waiting for it’s chance.
I enjoyed your comments until I got to the part about the dinosaur extinction. I understand that Dr. Robert Bakker wrote a book, published in 1986 "The Dinosaur Heresies". I never read it, but I did watch a video program in the past few years that attributed the dinosaur extinction to insects and/or diseases. What struck me most about was Dr. Bakker emphatically asking something like 'If a giant meteor killed of all the dinosaurs, where are all the fossils!?'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis struck me as a preposterous challenge! I'm only a lay person, but as I understand, fossils are only produced under very specific conditions, most often when the body is immediately covered by sedimentary waters. This might most often occur when animals fall into fast running water, generally during flooding conditions.
Personally I doubt that those conditions were likely prevalent when the 6 mile asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula ~65Mya. Aside from the local geologic evidence that's now been discovered, the K-T boundary strata and its very unusual composition found around the world indicates extremely widespread secondary impacts likely reaching the stratosphere, falling back to Earth producing widespread burning. Throw in a lot of subsequent acid rain and I think there's very little chance that any fossils might be produced in those extreme conditions.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bakker's question is a more applicable test of his own slow death hypothesis, since dinosaurs with diarrhea would like become seriously dehydrated and seek out sources of drinking water... Indeed - where are the fossils!
Sorry for straying so far afield here, but I just couldn't leave it alone...
Good points. Well written.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this