A flying insect is wrapped in rosin to form amber, which can be passed through the years before and has survived to this day. A virus that is frozen by glaciers can travel through ten thousand years and threatens today's human beings!
On the ancient Antarctic continent, groups of viruses are thriving and thriving. The arrival of the glacier period has wrapped the Antarctic continent with a thick ice cap. After tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, or even hundreds of thousands of years, the glaciers melted. With it, the ancient viruses regained their reproduction and spread again...
This is not an alarmist story, but the environment in which we live!
Glacier! Huge glaciers
There are a large number of glaciers distributed in the North and South Poles of our earth, and there will also be glaciers in high-altitude mountainous areas in the middle and low latitudes. According to statistics, there is an area of about 1,600 square kilometers of covering glaciers around the world. It accounts for about 11% of the total land area of the earth.
Among them, Antarctica's land area is 14 million square kilometers, close to Russia's land area, ranking second in the world. It covers more than 24.5 million cubic kilometers of glaciers, containing 70% of the world's freshwater resources. If all Antarctic glaciers melt, the earth's sea level will rise by 60 meters, and the global land area will decrease by 20 million square kilometers, seriously threatening the survival of people in coastal areas.
These glaciers often have a history of tens of thousands of years. They not only preserve the fresh water from the earth tens of thousands of years ago, but also retain a variety of microorganisms of the same period, including bacteria and viruses.
virus! Tiny virus
virus As a tiny and simple structured organism, the volume is usually at the nanometer level. Although is small, they are widely distributed, with hundreds of billions of virus particles in one liter of seawater. And they have been alive on Earth for more than 3 billion years. There are almost countless different types of evolution and development during . new crown , which annoys us, is one of them. This is just something that has become popular in recent years. What if it is an ancient virus that has been tens of millions of years ago? Will it bring another critical hit to us humans?
paleovirus research found
In 2014, a research team from France and Russian discovered a large virus in the ice layer of 30,000-year-old soil layer of Siberian , a large virus - Siberian broad mouth tank virus . Although time has passed and has been going through more than 30,000 years, this virus is still contagious .
In August 2016, the anthrax virus , which was frozen in the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Circle in the in the Arctic Circle in the in the slump, causing more than 20 people in the local area to be infected and hospitalized, and one of the 12-year-old child unfortunately died of illness. In the end, all local herders evacuated the area .
In Qinghai-Tibet Plateau , people have discovered the virus from 15,000 years ago! According to the study of Ohio State University , was identified in the ice samples of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China, 28 of which are unknown viruses. But we cannot call it new viruses, because they are 15,000 years old.
Russian researchers once drilled holes and drilled on Lake Vostok, Antarctica, extracting the oldest ice cube on the earth, with a drilling depth of 3454 meters. The oldest ice sample comes from nearly 600,000 years ago.
In 2021, the drilling depth reached nearly 4,000 meters, opening up the underglacial lake 15 million years ago. Scientists discovered more than 3,500 species of organisms, including fungi, bacteria and virus .
glacier virus also contains at least 1500 genome . The more genomes, the more complex the viruses are, and the harder it is for humans to find a way to deal with them. Just think about how cunning the variants of this new crown are, and you will know. The melting of the glacier will release ancient viruses from millions of years ago, which is tantamount to opening the "Pandora's Box".Scientists assert that if these ancient viruses are resurrected, it will undoubtedly be a catastrophe for humans.
Accelerating melting of glaciers
It's a pity that, judging from the evidence currently available, glaciers on the earth are disappearing at a faster pace.
Through modern space technology, scientists have discovered the huge " Ice Lake " in the Antarctic Glacier Continent.
As the glacier melts, it is not rare to appear "Ice Lake" inside the glacier, but such a large-scale Ice Lake is still enough to alert humans - The rate of glacier extinction is accelerating !
This summer is undoubtedly a hot summer, but in the expectation that the earth will be even hotter in the next ten years. Due to the gradual apparent global warming effect, the area of glaciers around the world, including the Arctic and Southern Poles, has significantly decreased, and some glaciers at medium and low latitudes have even disappeared. Since 1980, the average thickness of glaciers in the world has decreased by 11.5 meters !
Among them, the European Alps lost half of the glaciers, and the African Kenyan glaciers decreased by 90% . In Tianshan Mountains, lost 22% of the glaciers, and Himalayas, the largest glacier in shortened by more than 300 meters !
As the glaciers continue to melt, humans are about to face the threat of viruses tens of millions of years ago! We who are experiencing the new crown are all afraid of the virus. What can we humans do in the face of the threat of ancient viruses?
Response to melt glaciers to prevent the release of ancient viruses
Response to the resurrection of glacier viruses, humans must stop or delay the warming of the earth. To this end, United Nations Environment Programme launched the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol , and organized 197 countries to sign the " Paris Agreement ". Guide the world to achieve "zero emissions" of carbon dioxide from 2021 to 2050, and control the global temperature increase to 2℃ before industrialization.
In 2020, China announced at the 75th UN General Assembly of : We will strive to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
In the implementation path, we can follow the following points:
1 uses clean energy instead of traditional energy; 2. Reduce energy consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions; 3. Plant trees and restore green space ecology; 4. Reduce carbon emissions in personal life.
At the personal level, we can also try our best to reduce carbon dioxide emissions: for example, reduces the frequency of air conditioning use in summer, or raises the air conditioning temperature; pay attention to energy saving and turn off the lights casually; avoid using disposable items; do not waste food resources; try to choose environmentally friendly materials when shopping; try to travel green, try to use public transportation ... and so on. In terms of energy conservation and environmental protection, each of us should practice it.
In the face of viruses, humans are huge, but also fragile. The huge glaciers sealed the virus from millions of years ago for us, so we must protect the glaciers and prevent them from melting. Energy conservation and emission reduction, take action to protect glaciers and also to protect us humans!
Author: Fang Ji Proofreader: Chuanchuan
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