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One of the ever-looming threats of climate change is sea level rise, which already threatens to displace millions of people worldwide and force them to move inland by the end of the century. A big part of the rising water levels are hotter temperatures at the poles—home to giant glaciers and ice shelves that hold crucial quantities of frozen H2O. The Florida-sized Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, nicknamed the “doomsday glacier,” is already losing 50 billion tons of ice each year. That in itself accounts for around 4 percent of annual global sea level rise. But unpublished research shared at the...

A new study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is collapsing due to geothermal heat, not man-made global warming.

The wailing today is that the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet has already begun. . .

On Monday, May 12, all three network evening newscasts hyped the dire consequences of a new NASA study which show that “large parts of the western Antarctica ice sheet appears to have collapsed.” ABC, CBS, and NBC hyperventilated over the report, and warned of rising sea levels in the immediate future. CBS News’ Elaine Quijano warned “A 10-foot rise in sea level would submerge tunnels and subways here in Manhattan and parts of Queens and Brooklyn. But, Scott, it would also put the entire city of Miami Beach and much of South Florida underwater.” NBC Nightly News and ABC World...

The Thwaites glacier is one of the most rapidly changing in Antarctica. It’s been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks, after scientists suggested that this sector of the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet was already on route towards collapse due to warming ocean temperatures. A major collapse of this part of the ice sheet could have dire consequences worldwide, with a global sea level rise of potentially up to 1m. Some models suggest this could take place comparatively rapidly, within a few centuries. But hidden beneath the kilometres of ice in this rapidly changing part of the...

Deciphering Contradictory Antarctic Climate Patterns Antarctica is experiencing some of the fastest warming in the world. Antarctica is cooling. Some of its glaciers are thinning. Some are thickening. Ice shelves are disappearing. More sea ice is forming. Scientists have reported all this in recent months. It may all be true, even the contradictory parts. "Confusing, isn't it?" asked Dr. Eric Rignot, a glacier expert at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dr. Peter T. Doran, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agreed. "It's a mixed bag of signals." The...

A glacier in West Antarctica, known as "the world's most dangerous," could completely melt away and cause a rapid and "catastrophic" sea-level rise, a new study warns. The study, published in the scientific journal PNAS, notes that the Thwaites Glacier is at a proverbial "tipping point" that could cause a neverending flow of ice into the world's oceans. “If you trigger this instability, you don’t need to continue to force the ice sheet by cranking up temperatures. It will keep going by itself, and that’s the worry,” said the study's lead author and Georgia Tech professor Alex Robel, in a...

Thwaites Glacier — otherwise known as the “Doomsday glacier,” due to the fact it could raise the sea level by several feet — is allegedly hanging on “by its fingernails.” Scientists discovered that the glacier’s underwater base has been eroding due to the increase in the Earth’s temperature, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. “Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails,” said Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist who co-authored the study. “And we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future — even from one year to the next — once the...

Some people love to be scared. Mary Shelley knew that when she wrote Frankenstein, and genres of fiction and film exist mining that desire for innocent fun and profit. But when politics enters the fray and fears are stoked to scare people into accepting costly and harmful policies, it is important to push back. Two articles from last week illustrate the panic-mongering and the responsible citation of fact. Breitbart highlights a prophet of doom from Rolling Stone magazine, home of the University of Virginia rape hoax story: The massive Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica could "fall apart overnight" and raise sea...

Nov. 5, 2004 — A quarter-billion years ago, forested islands flashed with autumnal hues near the South Pole — a polar scene unlike any today, researchers say. Geologists have discovered in Antarctica the remains of three ancient deciduous forests complete with fossils of fallen leafs scattered around the tree trunks. The clusters of petrified tree stumps were found upright in the original living positions they held during the Permian period.

An enormous underwater landslide 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet found on Earth. The landslide off the coast of north-west Africa dumped 225 billion metric tonnes of sediment into the ocean in a matter of hours or days. The flow travelled 1,500km (932 miles) - the distance from London to Rome - before depositing its sediment. The work, by a British team of researchers has been published in the academic journal Nature. The massive surge put down the same amount of sediment that comes out of all the world's rivers combined over a period...

Scientists are scrambling to explain why the continent of Antarctica has shown Net Zero warming for the last seven decades and almost certainly much longer. The lack of warming over a significant portion of the Earth undermines the unproven hypothesis that the carbon dioxide humans add to the atmosphere is the main determinant of global climate.Under ‘settled’ science requirements, the significant debate over the inconvenient Antarctica data is of necessity being conducted well away from prying eyes in the mainstream media. Promoting the Net Zero political agenda, the Guardian recently topped up readers’ alarm levels with the notion that “unimaginable...

A team of researchers has discovered five new meteorites in Antarctica—one of which weighs a whopping 16.7 pounds. For about a week and a half, the scientists rode snowmobiles and slept in tents, enduring the cold Antarctic summer temperatures of 14 degrees Fahrenheit as they searched for space rocks in the ice. Their largest find is among the heaviest meteorites ever found on the continent and could provide a glimpse into our solar system’s history. “The object comes from the asteroid belt and probably plopped down into the Antarctic blue ice several tens of thousands of years ago,” Ryoga Maeda,...

Large Antarctica meteorite The large meteorite that's been recovered. (Maria Valdes) ******************************************************************* Antarctica has a lot going for it when it comes to meteorite hunting. The dark rocks stand out against the icy landscape. Its dry climate keeps weathering to a minimum. And even when meteorites sink into the ice they are often returned to the surface by the churning of the glaciers. In spite of these ideal conditions, finding sizeable chunks of space rock is rare. A group of researchers have just returned from the ice-covered continent with five new meteorites that include an unusually large specimen. The big...

Last seen in 1958, it was designed to travel 5000 miles and self-sustain for an entire year. It’s quintessentially American to drive everywhere. This must’ve occurred to the planners of the United States Antarctic Service Expedition in 1939 when the joint government-private sector project ran into the question of how best to traverse Antarctica’s frozen wastelands. The obvious answer? A car. A really, really, really big car. Or so thought Thomas Poulter, designer of the doomed Antarctic Snow Cruiser seen in these pictures. You’d think a massive machine like this would still exist somewhere, even in pieces. And surely they...

We’re warned that Antarctica’s adjoining Southern Ocean is caught in an irreversible descending spiral, where life is scarce and on the verge of collapse. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the choice is clear: Radically reduce fossil fuels over an aggressive timeline or be complicit in the planet’s destruction. This distortion and selective manipulation of data and its use of public shaming are the tools of inquisitions, not rational scientific inquiry. Contrary to the incessant media barrage that predicts Antarctica’s demise, my personal experience during a three-week visit in November to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island,...

Four other tourists “sustained non-life-threatening injuries” and were treated onboard. The ship suffered minor damage and was anchored off Ushuaia, 3,200 kilometers (nearly 2,000 miles) from the capital Buenos Aires, with several windows smashed on the side, AFP journalists reported. Viking said it was “investigating the facts surrounding this incident.” Scientists often refer to rogue waves as extreme storm waves that surge out of nowhere, often in an unpredictable direction, and can look like a steep wall of water, up to twice the size of surrounding waves. These rare killer waves were once seen as a myth reported by mariners...

Extreme cold records continue to tumble at the South Pole. Three recent days – November 16th, 17th and 18th – have recorded a daily record, with the 18th plunging to –45.2°C, compared with –44.7°C on the same day in 1987. The records follow the six-month winter of 2020-21, which was the coldest since records began in 1957. Inexplicably, all these facts and trends have escaped reporting in the mainstream media. The excuse might be that it is just weather, and temperatures have always moved up and down. But the excuse doesn’t seem to apply to the July 19th U.K. high...

Many different species of phytoplankton are photosynthetic: They require sunlight to generate energy. When the ocean freezes over, less light can penetrate to the surface where they typically thrive. Scientists have been studying when and where the tiny organisms begin to flourish and have noted this typically occurs when the sea ice retreats. In recent years, work at the opposite end of the world, in the Arctic, has suggested masses of phytoplankton (or "blooms") can and do survive under sea ice in darker, low light conditions. [S]cientists collected data from 51 floating laboratories ("floats") deployed between 2014 and 2021. The...

This map shows the size and shape of the ozone hole over the South Pole on October 5, 2022, when it reached its single-day maximum extent for the year. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens The depleted area of the ozone layer over the South Pole was slightly smaller than last year and generally continued the overall shrinking trend of recent years. Between September 7, 2022, and October 13, 2022, the annual Antarctic ozone hole reached an average area of 23.2 million square kilometers (9.0 million square miles). This depleted area of the ozone layer over the South...