A new study has answered the question as to what would happen to Antarctica if we use all of the world’s known fossil fuel.
From GeoBeats News:
The answer is alarming: all of Antarctica’s ice would melt—and take down much of human civilization with it.
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If we use all the world’s fossil fuels, we’re likely to melt all the ice on Antarctica.
And what’s left would barely resemble the Earth as we know it. A study in Science Advances notes that burning all the world’s presently-existing oil, coal, and natural gas would raise global temperatures so high that all of Antarctica’s ice would melt—resulting in a sea level rise of at least 160 feet.
But if temperatures reached such a point, the rest of the world’s land ice would likely melt as well.
This could result in a sea level rise of over 200 feet. Gone would be Paris, London, Tokyo, Beijing, New York, Washington, New Orleans and Houston—to name but a few.
The process would take a while—the study mapped out ten thousand years of carbon release—but half of the melting could occur in the next thousand years and this could result in sea levels rising around a foot per decade.
Climate scientist Ken Caldeira noted, “We’re not a subtle influence on the climate system—we are really hitting it with a hammer.”
