Majorly dooooomed, per Bryan Walsh, one of Time’s resident climaysterics
Antarctica Melted in the Past, and As the Climate Warms, It’s Poised to Melt Again
Wait, wait, the headline says it has happened before, and will happen again? What made it happen before? Bryan goes on to describe that Antarctica has been relatively stable, boring, and for the most part non-melting (temps have been flat for this entire century), then
A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that large of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet experienced significant melting during the
Pleistocene Pliocene epoch*, between 5.3 and 2.6 million years ago, when atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were similar to where they are today, and temperatures were about 2 to 3 C warmer than they are now. It was a time when sea levels were some 66 ft. higher than they are today—more than high enough to swamp coastal cities. While scientists knew that all of Greenland and West Antarctica had to be ice-free at the time, the sediment data in the Nature Geoscience shows that the East Antarctic ice sheet must have retreated a couple hundred miles inland. “The East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been much more sensitive to climate change in the past than previously realized,†said the study’s lead author, Carys Cook of Imperial College London, in a statement.
If CO2 was the same as today, but temps were higher, then, wouldn’t that mean that something else was driving the warmth other than CO2? But, we’re all meant to freak out about CO2. Because apparently the Antarctic permafrost is melting faster than evah!!!! but, um, wait, ah
It’s important to note that global warming is not responsible for the permafrost melt here—that region of Antarctic actually experienced a cooling trend from 1986 to 2000, followed by relatively stable temperatures. The Scientific Letters researchers suggest instead that the melting is due to an increase in radiation from sunlight resulting from changing weather patterns that allow more light to reach the ground during the summer.
So, not global warming, and certainly not anthropogenic global warming. Just nature. Good to know. So the entire point of the article, which was to Blame humans, was false.
