New work demonstrates the planet’s remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica if burned, leading to a 160 to 200 ft rise in sea level. Because so many major cities are at or near sea level, this would put many highly populated areas where more than a billion people live under water, including NYC and DC.
“Our findings show that if we do not want to melt Antarctica, we can’t keep taking fossil fuel carbon out of the ground and just dumping it into the atmosphere as CO2 like we’ve been doing,” Caldeira said. “Most previous studies of Antarctic have focused on loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Our study demonstrates that burning coal, oil, and gas also risks loss of the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet.”
Although Antarctica has already b...
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