Everything’s connected

Melting glaciers.

Disappearing Canada jays.

Now, COVID-19?

Stay with us here.

Over the weekend, a glacier in India collapsed, sweeping away two hydro projects. More than 100 workers are missing, some trapped in tunnels.

Experts say the collapsing glacier, unexpected in midwinter, is the result of climate change, just another sign of the effects of warmer temperatures worldwide.

Meanwhile, in Ontario, there’s an interesting — and alarming — study about the Canada jay. The Canada jay, also known as the whiskey jack or grey jay, is a gregarious little pest around campsites, it’s also a year-round resident of many parts of Canada, known in part for its thieving ways, grabbing food from campsites and storing it in winter food caches for later use.

But while those food caches may be a great way to save for later, the study says that only works if winter is consistent.

As parts of Ontario are going through more and more freeze-and-thaw cycles during winters due to global warming, the food caches that the Canada jays have so carefully stocked are spoiling.

When food is short, the jays reproduce at lower rates — and, the study suggests, may have to move their range northward in order to survive.

Now, to COVID-19. And, if so far, you’re sensing a climate change theme, stay tuned.

A new study suggests climate change may have played a role in the COVID-19 pandemic, too.

The study looks at the prevalence of bat species in areas of China where the COVID-19 coronavirus variant first appeared last year.

Bats are known to carry scores of coronaviruses — most of them harmless — and are believed to have played a role in the genesis of the current pandemic.

The research points out that climate change has caused changes in vegetation in those parts of China, resulting in something of a bat population explosion, along with different bat populations spreading into new areas.

The shifting habitat may have brought the bats into contact with more animals of different species, making species-to-species transfer more likely. (The view’s not unanimous — other scientists argue that things like large-scale agriculture and deforestation may have played a larger role than climate change in bat migration.)

“Climate change can drive where these animals occur; in other words, climate change can move pathogens closer to humans. It can also move a species that carries a virus into the habitat of another species that the virus can then jump to — a step that might not have occurred without climate change, and that might have major long-term consequences for where the virus can go next,” Dr. Robert Beyer, one of the study’s authors, told CBS News.

In other words?

Cause and effect is a long, detailed chain. Mess with nature, and you never know what might happen.

• It’s a myth that no two snowflakes are the same. In 1988, a scientist found two identical snow crystals. They came from a storm in Wisconsin.

• Nova Scotia holds the record for the most snow angels ever made simultaneously in multiple locations. In 2011, more than 22 thousand Nova Scotia residents in 130 separate locations all plopped down in the snow to make snow angels.