3 ms·

There are dorms at my university (University of Maryland) that are over 100 years old, but have been renovated enough that it's fine. I would hope that Universi

by tov247 5y ago

There are dorms at my university (University of Maryland) that are over 100 years old, but have been renovated enough that it's fine. I would hope that Universities have a long enough time horizon that things would be built to last an extremely long time with regular renovations. With catastrophic climate change on the horizon, the theory is that pandemics will become significantly more frequent.

nickff 5y ago
>"With catastrophic climate change on the horizon, the theory is that pandemics will become significantly more frequent. " What theory is this? I've heard of globalization and rapid transportation speeding up pandemics, but never climate change.
- burkaman 5y ago
  It's easy to find better explanations with a quick search, but the general idea is that as habitats change, animals will move toward the poles and come into contact with other species that they historically haven't, creating lots of new opportunities for diseases to jump between species and mutate and do all the things they love to do. There are also studies implying that animals like rodents and bats that spread the most diseases to humans are also adapting the best to climate change and human environments, which implies increased risk of new diseases: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2736 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.273... There's also the idea of frozen pathogens thawing and infecting animals, which has happened recently: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/4884009... In general it's not that climate change makes pandemics worse, but it makes the chance of a new disease infecting a human more likely.

3 ms·

There are dorms at my university (University of Maryland) that are over 100 years old, but have been renovated enough that it's fine. I would hope that Universi

by tov247 5y ago

nickff 5y ago
>"With catastrophic climate change on the horizon, the theory is that pandemics will become significantly more frequent. " What theory is this? I've heard of globalization and rapid transportation speeding up pandemics, but never climate change.
- burkaman 5y ago
  It's easy to find better explanations with a quick search, but the general idea is that as habitats change, animals will move toward the poles and come into contact with other species that they historically haven't, creating lots of new opportunities for diseases to jump between species and mutate and do all the things they love to do. There are also studies implying that animals like rodents and bats that spread the most diseases to humans are also adapting the best to climate change and human environments, which implies increased risk of new diseases: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2736 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.273... There's also the idea of frozen pathogens thawing and infecting animals, which has happened recently: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/4884009... In general it's not that climate change makes pandemics worse, but it makes the chance of a new disease infecting a human more likely.