Climate Change Could Soon Trigger New Epidemics

With the permafrost across the cold regions of our planet such as in Russia, Canada, and Alaska, slowly melting, the resurgence of viruses thought to have been long gone, such as smallpox, as well as viruses we have never seen before, could soon be wreaking havoc in our planet.

These could be disaster movie storylines, but they are also serious and increasingly plausible scenarios of epidemics unleashed by global warming, scientists say.

Climate change—already wreaking havoc with one degree Celsius of warming—is also emerging as a driver of infectious disease, whether by expanding the footprint of malaria- and dengue-carrying mosquitos, or defrosting prehistoric pathogens from the Siberian permafrost.

"In my darkest moments, I see a really horrible future for Homo sapiens because we are an animal, and when we extend our borders things will happen to us," said Birgitta Evengard, a researcher in clinical microbiology at Umea University in Sweden.

"Our biggest enemy is our own ignorance," she added. "Nature is full of microorganisms."

And perhaps the sad thing about this is that this awakening is inevitable.

Even if humanity manages to cap global warming at under two degrees Celsius, the cornerstone goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the permafrost area will decrease by a quarter by 2100, according to the UN's climate science panel, the IPCC.

In other words, we will have to deal with this sooner or later.

More details about this over at PHYS.org.

(Image Credit: FlorenceD-pix/ Pixabay)