The real impact of climate change depends on tiny organisms we can’t even see, argues an international panel of more than 30 microbiologists in a consensus statement published Tuesday.
Microbes, or microorganisms, are any organism or virus invisible to the naked eye. Numbering in the nonillions (in the U.S., that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or a 10 followed by 30 zeros), they make up the “unseen majority” of life on Earth, according to the scientists. Microbes not only contribute to how fast the climate changes, but to our ability to mitigate and adapt to it.
