Yes, global warming not only causes climate variations on planet but also causes additional dangers like unleashing the dangerous microbes .
Scientists warn that we are at a risk of being exposed to bacteria and viruses that were dormant for more than thousands of years and all this is caused due to climate change and melting of the ice around the world.
When the Arctic circle melts some of the infectious agents which may have caused global epidemics in the past could be released.
Scientists also say that this was experienced in the past 2016, in a remote part of Siberian tundra called the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic circle, where a 12 year old boy died and 20 people were infected by a dangerous bacteria , anthrax.
Theory suggests that the anthrax infected deer was trapped in the ice of arctic circle and when the permafrost was thawed in last summer this dangerous bacteria was released.
Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet which is underestimated before but there is no enough time for us to make us adaptable to these disease causing agents.
Jean -Micheal Claverie, evolutionary biologist at Aix Marseille University France said that permafrost can be exposed not just because of the melting of the ice but also due to our digging involving mining and drilling operations.
He also said that most viruses are rapidly inactivated by biochemical degradation and many other methods but the main problem is the giant viruses where their virions will be impossible to break open. And it is so simple that if there are viruses hiding in the arctic that we did not come across till now , then our bodies are vulnerable and our immune system could not defend when exposed.
Reaserchers Boris Revich and Marina Padolnayain in their study (2011) suggested that as a consequence of permafrost melting ,the vectors of deadly infections of 18th and 19th centuries may return.
And according to NASA ,scientists were able to retrieve 3200 years old bacteria from the frozen ponds which confirms us that bacteria can survive for many thousands of years under the layers of the ice.
These kind of pathogenic microbes can make humans vulnerable and cause extinction if not prepared but scientists say since not all bacteria and viruses will be successful in being infectious so our main focus should be upon the climate change. But these threats cannot be completely ignored because our immune systems may not be prepared for those microbes and this could mean that the diseases may not be curable even with our current medication.
One Planet 2017 