Is the slippery slope some sort of smooth progression, or a series of dips and drops on the descent to eco-hell? If you've follwed this blog you've read about ocean currents, ice shelfs and more. But this is right out of The Andromeda Strain. I don't remember why I ended up on this blog entry, but it caught my attention for a few reasons. Its premise, or assertion, is that as Greenland glaciers melt due to global warming, bacteria held in their ice will be released and may well cause global pandemics on the scale of the Black Death or the Spanish Flu. I have written elsewhere about the "organism out of place" syndrome that is both the rationale for being wary of exotics in the landscape (if we care about invasive species), and a great argument for caution in terms of genetically engineered plants and animals. The realization that glacial melt could release long-dormant bacterial (or fungal) species makes me very concerned, too. One of the "new" bacteria discovered, named Chryseobacterium Greenlandensis is a gram negative bacteria, and other members of its genus have been implicated in such wonderful diseases as hepatitis, sepsis, osteomyelitis, cholera and meningitis in newborns. But we have not been exposed to this bacteria since we were hobbling around practically on all fours. As I have said (often to small minded derision) there is no such thing as evolution; there is only co-evolution. All species evolve within the context of their ecosystem. And our bodies (and immediate environment) are an ecosystem. What this means is that we have evolved at the same time as the bacteria that inhabit our bodies and our homes and the world outside in which we eat, drink and breathe. There may be -- will likely be -- many more microbial species long dormant, held within glacial ice that, given the conditions of a warmer world -- and given the opportunity for spread by global, nearly instantaneous travel -- that will infect whomever does not have a genetic immunity. And who will, given that those bacteria have not been around in the environment for what, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years? A large portion of the aboriginal American population was thought to be wiped out by diseases brought to America by Europeans, diseases they had never been exposed to and had no resistance to. Take that and put it on steriods.
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