The situation there is different, because you have thousands of feet of ice on top of a continent, instead of a few feet of ice on top of water. No matter how much antarctic ice melts, the ice sheet still looks the same to the sun, most sunlight gets reflected back into space. The ice variations along the coasts are minimal in area compared to the North polar regions.
It won't be til all that ice melts, and bare rock starts getting exposed in the Antarctic that the loss of the moderating effect of the Antarctic albedo will get to affect global climate. It will take a lot longer for the Antarctic continent to be exposed than the Arctic ocean. In other words, it is a much heavier-duty thermal shock absorber.
The action is going to all be at the North end of the world. Unfortunately, that's where most of the land masses and people are.
Space/Science » in reply to As the ice drifts, the goal posts move with it.
And what about the south pole?
The whole thread (22 posts)
- It always freezes in winter.
- Now that I think about it, I felt a cool breeze just last month.
- The only person less rational than an irrational person is someone who tries to talk sense with them.
- You win.
- The definition of gw that some are agitating for is that nothing freezes in winter? It might be too late if we wait for that.