Long-dormant bacteria and viruses in ice are reviving as climate warms
&gt; &quot;as climate warms&quot;<p>How much warming, in degrees F, C, or K, since when, measured how, by whom, published where, compared with what other measurements?<p>Why ask these questions?  For one, AFAIK &quot;climate warms&quot; essentially has not been happening to any significant extent for about 20 years and, really, since the coldest of the Little Ice Age -- apparently there was some cooling from 1940 to 1970 so some warming since then.  On the Little Ice Age,  there was ice skating on the Thames River in London.<p>Reference for temperature over the past 2000 years?  Okay:<p>Committee on Surface Temperature
Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years,
National Research Council, <i>Surface
Temperature Reconstructions for the Last
2,000 Years</i>, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196
pages, National Academies Press, 2006,
available at<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nap.edu&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;11676.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nap.edu&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;11676.html</a><p>In the Medieval Warm Period, did all the ice and permafrost melt and make everyone sick?  Well, if it all melted, then what&#x27;s in the ice and permafrost now is not so old and maybe safe.  But I didn&#x27;t hear that diseases released by the melting ice and permafrost made lots of people sick during the Medieval Warm Period.<p>My guess:  The BBC is pushing made-up, cooked-up, stirred-up, gang-up, pile-on, continually reinforced fake, nonsense scare stories to get continuing eyeballs,  ad revenue, and British government subsidies.<p>Not reading it.<p>For some simple evidence:  The Little Ice Age really was significantly cooler, but there is no evidence that it was preceded closely by lower concentration of CO2 -- the lower temperatures had some cause other than lower CO2.<p>The Medieval Warm Period really was warmer, but there is no evidence that it was preceded closely by higher concentration of CO2 -- there must have been some cause other than higher CO2.<p>It appears from ice core samples and more that the temperature of the earth has varied significantly over at least the last 800,000 years.  Maybe CO2 has had something to do with warming since the Little Ice Age, and otherwise it looks like the causes of warming&#x2F;cooling had little or nothing to do with CO2.<p>It appears that people who talk about warming are blaming CO2, in particular from human activities, and from what I&#x27;ve seen in the temperature records for the past 800,000 years, the only time when CO2 might have caused significant warming was since the Little Ice Age -- even if we accept this, there&#x27;s the problem of the cause of the cooling from 1940 -- 1970.  Otherwise the temperature changes had other causes -- so, my guess is that the temperature change since the Little Ice Age also has some cause(s) other than CO2.<p>Is CO2 a greenhouse gas, that is, absorbs Planck radiation from the surface of the earth?  Yup, absorbs in three bands in the infrared; since we can&#x27;t see CO2, it does not absorb visible light.  So, is there a warming effect from that CO2 absorption?  Well, maybe, but water is also a greenhouse gas so that maybe the radiation would be absorbed by water instead of CO2.  But even if CO2 is the only way that infrared radiation can get absorbed, it&#x27;s still not clear how much warming, net, all things considered, it would cause.  E.g., lighting a match will also warm the earth.<p>Is there more CO2 in the atmosphere now?  Apparently the concentration someplaces is 400 ppm (parts per million) -- IIRC that would be in Hawaii, right, near a volcano, and volcanoes are supposed to be one of the major sources of CO2.  Also there&#x27;s CO2 in the ocean, and warm water absorbes less CO2 than cold water, so maybe recently some of the ocean around Hawaii is warmer and the source of the Hawaii CO2.<p>I&#x27;ve seen no good presentations of CO2 levels over time with explanations of the causes.<p>I&#x27;ve seen no good data on CO2 sources, sinks, or flows.<p>E.g.,  first cut, how much CO2 is in the atmosphere now?  Then, how much CO2 enters the atmosphere from human activity each year now?  If the ocean warms a little, say, from an el Nino, how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere?  At what rate do green plants take CO2 from the atmosphere?  My guess is that CO2 from human activities is comparatively tiny, that the basic data would show this, and this is why we don&#x27;t get the basic data.<p>I see lots of articles on CO2 and warming, but I don&#x27;t see articles with even this basic, first cut data.<p>So, to me, the articles don&#x27;t really have a case since if they did they would make their case.  In the articles I see efforts to grab people emotionally but darned little data to convince people rationally.<p>BBC:  &quot;as climate warms&quot; is where you lost me.<p>Or with this logic, we could write even more shocking articles:<p>As the next galactic gamma ray burst hits the earth, all the atmosphere will be blown off the earth, and everyone will die.  Moreover, since the gamma rays will come at the speed of light, we will never be able to see them coming.  Now, get scared.  Get afraid.  Be very  afraid.  Watch the BBC for hourly updates 24 x 7 for the rest of your life to keep up on just what will happen as the next gamma ray burst hits the earth.  Same for marauding neutron stars, highly magnetic neutron stars, and black holes.  Read BBC tomorrow for the results as the next black hole hits the earth.
For more, the expansion of the universe is slowing down, and we may be in a <i>big crunch</i> and all compressed to a point -- see the BBC next week for the details when this happens.  Back home, see what will happen when Yellowstone blows again -- last time it put ash 10 feet deep (it&#x27;s rock and enough to crush nearly any roof) 1000 miles down wind or some such. Remember, those bacteria are down there, fighting every second among themselves, evolving, just to come out and kill everything else, including YOU!!!