It’s probably too soon to freak out, but many readers in a pandemic-weary world will not be pleased to know that researchers have found more than 1,700 “ancient” viruses preserved inside a Chinese glacier, and most of them are new to scientists.
Depending on whom you ask, people should either be alarmed at the prospect of melting glaciers releasing viruses that have been in suspended animation, or they should probably not assume the world will come to an end. Which point of view a person takes seems to track with whether they believe that man-made climate change poses an imminent threat to life on earth.
Scientists who study glaciers and biology found the viruses by taking a huge core sample from the Guliya Glacier located on the Tibetan Plateau. Core samples are cylinders of ice bored out and hauled to the surface, and this one was an amazing 1,000–feet-long.
The team that discovered the viruses said some of them are at least 41,000 years old and have stayed intact despite three major fluctuations between a cold and a warm climate on earth.
Internet users freaked out recently when rapper “Ludacris”, who was on a trip to a glacier in Alaska, took a video of himself drinking melted water from the land-based iceberg. TikTok and Instagram users seemed to believe he was taking his life in his hands by drinking water that had not been professionally treated. But a glaciologist responded saying that melted water from a glacier was some of the cleanest on the planet.
It is true that some killer pathogens can survive the permafrost and be released when it melts. In 2016 a melting glacier revealed a dead animal that had been buried in ice for about 75 years, and it released anthrax spores. One child died and several dozen others had to be treated.
But the viruses—different from anthrax spores—discovered in the Tibetan glacier are not dangerous to humans, according to the researchers who discovered them. They only infect single-celled organisms, and because of that, cannot even sicken plants.
