Antarctica is starting to look a lot like Greenland—and that isn’t good

Global warming is awakening sleeping giants of ice at the South Pole.

See full article...

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

What I find remarkable is that CO2 has been understood to be a greenhouse gas since the 19th century, settled science. The CO2 ratio in the atmosphere is increasing which correlates to fossil fuel burning. Yet denialists wave it all off.

Lavoisier was a woke antifa terrorist. /s

 

[The Taxpayer]

The one thing I've learned about climatologists over the past few decades is that they always, always underestimate the rate at which things are going to change. We've gotten hotter, faster than we thought we would as recently as the 1980s. Ice has melted faster. Sea level has gone up more.

And despite it all, there is a substantial group of folks out there dedicated to calling it all a hoax.

That’s a fact.

Reality has shown to a lot worse than the worse predictions.

That and the lack of good sense on the matter.

On one side we have people calling climate change a hoax and saying that’s BS, ignoring the facts.

On the other side, we have people thinking that’s possible to revert the consequences on climate of the last 200 years of human activity, on a World scale.

Both are deluded and completely ignoring reality.

In the best case scenario we are able to mitigate climate change consequences and ecosystem destruction.

 

[ALittleTeapot]

Sure. So you're in the "go hide under the bed" camp, because the tools we have this exact moment won't solve our problems. Noted!

The problem you have, and the reason pretty much everyone is disagreeing with you here, is the timescale. Global warming isn't a hypothetical future problem that is happy to sit around waiting while we spend decades developing new tech to address it. It is a problem right now, and we need to address it right now.

I completely agree with you that if, in the future, we develop magic sci-fi technology and pay for it with rainbows and unicorns, that could well be much more effective than anything we are able to do today. But that technology, as you apparently admit, does not actually exist. Fusion power is not a thing. The most optimistic of optimistic predictions about fusion power say we might have one or two small demonstration power plants in maybe 30 years. We don't have 30 years to wait around hoping that will work out. Your "solution" is for us to simply sit around doing nothing for a few decades hoping really hard that there's a breakthrough big enough to fix everything. That's not actually a solution. And you claim it's other people that are advocating hiding under the bed?

But maybe we don't need to pull a whole 1% to address the problem, either.

Yeah, your maths is way off. You suggest taking 5.5 Gt of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year. 1 ppm of atmospheric CO2 (by volume, as is normally discussed) is about 7.8 Gt. CO2 is currently increasing by 3-4 ppm each year, and accelerating. Your insane solution that requires building hundreds of power plants using non-existent technology, along with tens of thousands of industrial plants to use it, would counter less than 1/4 of annual rise, let alone do anything to actually reduce it. It would not be anywhere close to the 1% you claim, that would require removing well over 30 Gt/yr. You're not even pretending to actually address the problem, and you evidently know so little about the issue that you somehow imagine that you're over-engineering things instead of being wildly optimistic.

As for the actual workings of the maths, I honestly have no idea what you even thought you were doing; it's very much in "not even wrong" territory. You start out with an approximate mass of the Earth's atmosphere. Then you divide it by 100 for some reason. Then you state there will be 10,000 processing plants so you divide the atmospheric mass by another 10,000. Then you convert to tons and state that now it's actually just CO2 and not the whole atmosphere with absolutely no justification. And then you just run with that as a target number as if it's somehow related to actual CO2 content, despite nothing you've done having any relation to that. You end up with a number that's significantly smaller than anything relevant, but as far as I can tell it's pure chance that you even hit close to the correct order of magnitude. A small child discovering they can divide by 10 by simply removing zeroes is technically doing maths, but let's not pretend it's somehow relevant to solving real world problems.

 

[elboku]

The Earth will be fine. The things living on Earth? Not so much.

 

[THT]

Yep. We don't hear about about it because there's no green money in solving the problem of animal livestock farting. It's pretty grim.

1Zach1 posted a handy dandy chart of contributors to GHG emissions are, upthread. Livestock and Manure are about 5.9%. Agriculture is about 10%.

Once people see that, they know it's not something to drive down until much later; hence, no big money. There is some money, but it is commensurate to its contribution.

The big contributors are electricity generation, transportation and industrial processes. It's about 75% of emissions. If you get EVs, solar, and electrify your household, that drives your emissions down 90%.

It's even a win for reducing emissions in the agriculture sector, at least in the USA. Driving an EV means you are not using gas, which in the USA is required to have ethanol. Something like 10%. 30% to 40% of USA corn crop is used for ethanol production.

It's a win-win-win just to get solar, EV and electrifying. Now, actually doing it? Seems impossible. Among Ars fans, I don't think the percentage of people who have electrified is that high. Maybe 20%. Doing it at country level in the USA is impossible given its current state. The best we can do is chip at it. Electrify yourselves, get solar, vote, and proselytize.

 

[RZetopan]

His knowledge is so vast, that he may even be vaguely aware of the existence of something called "the periodic table", as obscure as that is. There's even an outside chance that he knows the distinction between a molecule and an atom. Something you and I could never grasp.

Not a chance. If he has ever heard that term, he likely thinks it has something to do with women. Remember, this is the moron who considers the National Enquirer to be a reliable source of news, and the Continental Army attacked the airports in the 1770s, water kills magnets, windmills cause cancer, etc. (a long list that would fill a book).

 

[THT]

Not a chance. If he has ever heard that term, he likely thinks it has something to do with women. Remember, this is the moron who considers the National Enquirer to be a reliable source of news, and the Continental Army attacked the airports in the 1770s, water kills magnets, windmills cause cancer, etc. (a long list that would fill a book).

He's not stupid. You're taking his bullshit at face value, which is a mistake. He's a conman and is very much in tune to how his bullshit is affecting his marks. His marks are not you, not Ars, and not Democrats. He says whatever works for his Republican base. If the bullshit doesn't work, he changes his bullshit until he finds the messaging that works.

The bullshit is entirely for Republicans, Conservatives, and the 5% of the middle who could be swayed. The Republican propaganda machine is very strong in the USA, perhaps the best in the world, and the bullshit messaging is amplified and modified into a hell-stew of feedbacks until it works. That the bullshit sounds absolutely bonkers stupid, tyrannical, dangerous, horrifying is more reflective of this audience than on him.

Assuming this audience is like you, thinks like you, has similar needs and wants as you, and that they will come to their senses is a mistake. Our job is to really to convince the 5% to 10% in the middle who can swing elections. And remember, we like facts and rationality, which apparently, this middle doesn't care much for.

 

[Veritas super omens]

Professor Farnsworth: "Good news everyone!"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/climate/carbon-dioxide-emissions-record-jump.html


We have achieved another record!


Okay...so not really good news. But definitly par for the course in the current timeline.

 

[A Man A Plan A Canal Panama]

Yep. We don't hear about about it because there's no green money in solving the problem of animal livestock farting. It's pretty grim.

Funny.

It's not the methane emissions, that is a very small part of the total warming gas emissions.

It's the fact that most of human agriculture output is devoted to raising animals. That is not captured by the chart the other responder posted above.

Also I posted the down vote comment because Arsians are ignorant and deny the deleterious primary and secondary effects of industrial scale animal production.

 

[Oldnoobguy]

Funny.

It's not the methane emissions, that is a very small part of the total warming gas emissions.

It's the fact that most of human agriculture output is devoted to raising animals. That is not captured by the chart the other responder posted above.

Also I posted the down vote comment because Arsians are ignorant and deny the deleterious primary and secondary effects of industrial scale animal production.

I downvoted your post because you persist in making a claim without providing any evidence. The chart the responder provided was evidence. That chart shows the proportion each industrial sector contributes to global warming. So what if the majority of human agriculture output is devoted to raising animals, a claim you made without providing any evidence. That sector of agriculture is contained within the agriculture section of the chart. The chart clearly shows that the entire agriculture sector, including raising animals is far smaller than other sectors, like transportation. So unless you can provide evidence, based on objective data that animal husbandry contributes more CO2 than for example the travel sector you are posting unverified opinion.

 

[tuubad]

When Earth was last at 4C above the pre-industrial baseline, there were palm trees in the arctic circle. That's how warm the poles were. Antarctica is almost certainly going to overshoot Greenland as we've known it.

If you want to know what the next few decades have in store, just read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells. It's a digestible review of the IPCC report from 2018.

Was it physically in the same spot? Plate tectonics and all.

 

[brewejon]

It's time for the human race to commit to the idea that this is happening, and the only way to stop it is to improve our technology. Specifically, we need enormously more powerful electrical generation (fusion, unless someone comes up with an easy way to make antimatter), and then we will need to pull CO2 out of the air in large amounts into some inert form, be it carbon fiber or simply new dirt.

It seems crazy now, I know. So did flying, and going to the moon, and machines that could think like people (even though the ones we have now still don't, we're getting closer). Step by step, we've gotten there. We can, and I believe we will, solve the CO2 crisis as well.

But we need to stop thinking in terms of conservation alone, because that approach simply isn't going to work for us in time. Stopping burning fossil fuels will help massively of course, and the world already is trending that way, if in fits and starts. We need much more though.

No, it's not time to do that. None of that will come fast enough to save ecological collapse. We have the means to solve the problem, just not the inclination,.

 

[Philip B]

The Antarctic ice sheet covers about 5.4 million square miles, an area larger than Europe. On average, it is more than 1 mile thick and holds 61 percent of all the fresh water on Earth, enough to raise the global average sea level by about 190 feet if it all melts. The smaller, western portion of the ice sheet is especially vulnerable, with enough ice to raise sea level more than 10 feet.

Can we have some metric, please, Ars?

Why am I reading only about miles and feet in Ars-Technica – a website reporting scientific stuff?

How hard can it be in 2025 to add some kinda automatic-widget-fancy-gadget-thingy that proof-reads an article then adds a set of brackets after any imperial measurements and inserts the metric equivalent inside those brackets?

You know, like, presenting the rest of the world the SI equivalent.....considering it is 2025 and all that.

Also, while I'm at it, what's with "61 percent" – I'm not expert in this stuff, but for consistent style shouldn't it be either "sixty one percent of all the fresh water...." or "61% of all the fresh water..."?

 

[numerobis]

There are some green shoots.


Bloomberg reported that developing nations are switching to EVs way faster than anyone ever expected. Which seems amazing considering how broken the infrastructure often is in these places... but as long as they have a reliable source of electricity, EVs are better than gas.

I also see testing of electric powered freight trains run by batteries. Given how much of US goods transport is by rail, I think we have a good shot of electrifying trains faster than cars.

Not faster than I have been expecting, I’ve been predicting for a few years that China would be flooding the market with their cars.

You don’t need a reliable grid. Quite the opposite: if you have an unreliable grid, a giant battery is pretty damn valuable, making an EV even more desirable since it provides both transportation and electricity services.

 

[numerobis]

No, it's not time to do that. None of that will come fast enough to save ecological collapse. We have the means to solve the problem, just not the inclination,.

We don’t have the means to reverse the mass extinction we’ve started. To hide it from future observers would require a massive effort to de-extinct anything that can fossilize, something we don’t know how to do yet.

Without carbon capture we don’t have the means to prevent 6-8m of sea level rise. That was baked in as of about 10 years ago when we hit 400 ppm. Every year that carbon concentrations grow means more sea level rise.

Without carbon capture we don’t really have the means to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5C increase — which is already a huge increase. We’re already there this decade, and we don’t have the means to halt emissions immediately while keeping any kind of society going.

We have the means to clean up over time and mitigate how bad things are going to get, but it’s already bad and it’s going to get worse than now. So we need to do that. Plus we also need carbon capture and sequestration. Plus ecosystem recovery somehow, even if we get concentration back down to 350 ppm.

 

[bthest]

We don’t have the means to reverse the mass extinction we’ve started. To hide it from future observers would require a massive effort to de-extinct anything that can fossilize, something we don’t know how to do yet.

Maybe we can explain ourselves if we leave an engraved gold plate in high orbit that explains how free markets work and how we needed the the data farms, and how we planted some trees and stuff, and how we tried to bring back a few extinct animals but all we could make were sterile monstrosities that died with hours, and how China actually poluted WAY more than us, and also they can't judge us because God gave all of Earth and it's creatures to us to use however we wanted.

Just so they won't think we were a terrible civilization.

 

[numerobis]

Maybe we can explain ourselves if we leave an engraved gold plate in high orbit that explains how free markets work and how we needed the the data farms, and how we planted some trees and stuff, and how we tried to bring back a few extinct animals but all we could make were sterile monstrosities that died with hours, and how China actually poluted WAY more than us, and also they can't judge us because God gave all of Earth and it's creatures to us to use however we wanted.

Just so they won't think we were a terrible civilization.

It better show some lines going up too.

 

[bebu]

<DJT>People are going to be very happy when Greenland becomes part of the US, including Greenlanders... such a wonderful people. Will be a very beautiful and dramatic scenery part of America... the 52nd state after Canada, maybe before the 53rd of Antarctica. Many people are saying we need it, and very quickly. Fast becoming a more beautiful place, much less cold and... less frozen... like Greenland. Beautiful sea ports and tourist destinations can be built there, just like Gaza, you'll see. Many, many people are excited about this... that I can tell you.</DJT>

DJT?
Ah. I see the Orange IDJIT.

 

[bebu]

A fundamental issue nearly nobody with influence will talk about is that there are too many of us. It would be considerably easier to deal with climate change if we were 1 billion rather than 8 billion.

But whenever that topic's raised, <crickets>...

OK, so who do you want to kill first?

No one, but should the Almighty be open to suggestions or nominations for expedited embarkation for the hereafter, I should think I might manage a little list of those outstanding individuals who wouldn't be missed.

But never mind, our mistreated planet will doubtless perform the grim deed without our further assistance.

 

[bebu]

The Antarctic ice sheet covers about 5.4 million square miles, an area larger than Europe. On average, it is more than 1 mile thick and holds 61 percent of all the fresh water on Earth, enough to raise the global average sea level by about 190 feet if it all melts. The smaller, western portion of the ice sheet is especially vulnerable, with enough ice to raise sea level more than 10 feet.

Can we have some metric, please, Ars?

Why am I reading only about miles and feet in Ars-Technica – a website reporting scientific stuff?

How hard can it be in 2025 to add some kinda automatic-widget-fancy-gadget-thingy that proof-reads an article then adds a set of brackets after any imperial‡ measurements and inserts the metric equivalent inside those brackets?

You know, like, presenting the rest of the world the SI equivalent.....considering it is 2025 and all that.

Also, while I'm at it, what's with "61 percent" – I'm not expert in this stuff, but for consistent style shouldn't it be either "sixty one percent of all the fresh water...." or "61% of all the fresh water..."?

I would have thought just show US customary units to US readers and SI to the rest of the planet. I am sure between a bit of html, css and javascript the selection could be made on the browser's locale settings.

The Opera browser offers to convert the selected "5.4 million square miles" and "helpfully" comes up with 3.5 billion acres :{
Could be worse — it wasn't in roods or perches.
14.0 million km², 1.6 km thick, ... level by about 58 m, ... more than 3 m. [Clearly were converted from SI to begin with.]

Don't suppose the majority of the population of the US who recalcitrantly adhere to quaint antique colonial units of measurement imagine that they really are a tiny minority of the global population. Only Nigel Farage and fellow travellers in the UK are keen on the imperial equivalents and honestly neither he nor his followers are anywhere near the full 20 shillings† in the quid.

‡ FWIW: US customary ≠ British imperial † 2/6d would closer.

 

[GTROME]

Swear I’ve heard of this Artic ice melting before…

 

[JohnDeL]

Swear I’ve heard of this Artic ice melting before…

You probably have because, for some strange reason, we have less ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic every year. (BTW - TFA was about Antarctic ice.) As a result, nearly every year sets a new record as "the least sea ice extent ever recorded!"

 

[Shavano]

As an “older” person, all I can say is my generation tried and mostly failed to address climate change/global warming. So sorry for future generations.

We didn't really try. We said words about it and bought bigger cars and houses than our parents had.
That goes for Boomers and Gen X at least.

 

[Shavano]

Per the US EIA, 93% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions in the United States comes from burning fossil fuels.

Cutting that number doesn’t require miracle solutions. It just requires the climate deniers to get out of the way. Economics will accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to renewables. For personal transport, electrification is already under way but needs a rebalancing of incentives. Changing building codes, adjusting tax policies, and other social measures would boost adoption of more energy efficient products that already exist.

The rest of us are going to need to become a majority and then realize that deniers aren't going to get out of the way on their own, or with modest nudges. They're going to have to be PUT out of the way with measures that cannot easily be bypassed.

 

[Atpaw]

I see two problems with carbon capture and storage. Firstly, it always seems to be just around the corner, but then never is.

An observation I've made about Australia's mainstream centre-right political party's election promises: It's nothing but dangling another 'maybe some day' future technology in front of the populace with the promise that nothing has to change.

Ten years ago it was "There's no need to stop using fossil fuels, because Carbon Capture and Sequestration is going to save us!"
(spoiler: I'm not aware of any CCS pilot programs in Australia that have gotten remotely near their fairly-unambitious targets for capture)

Then at the next election it was, "There's no need to stop using fossil fuels, because Blue Hydrogen is coming to save us!"
(blue hydrogen being where you keep extracting natural gas and then strip the Carbon atoms off it and hope none of the gas escapes through leaky joints and seals)

Then at the next election it was, "There's no need to stop using fossil fuels because Small Modular Nuclear Reactors are coming to save us!"
(what do you mean, nobody has them operating commercially or at scale, and one of the major SMR programmes collapsed a couple of years ago?)

And most recently "Umm.. uhh.. what about large-scale reactors instead...?"
(nevermind that it requires dismantling legislation at three levels of governance)

I'm certain Cold Fusion is the next thing they'll promise rather than just building more hydro/batteries/wind/solar with commercially-available technology we have right now at commercial scales.