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Antarctica is losing ice 6 times faster today than in 1980s

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By SETH BORENSTEIN

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None of us will be alive to see it, but if the melt is total, that translates to about 87 m of sea level rise, close to 300 ft.

Aside from the obvious inundation of coastal cities (even including all but a couple of spots of NYC), that would obliterate some of the prime agricultural land in the world, not to mention the living places for a few hundred million people (think Bangladesh, India, and much of coastal China).

The last time the Earth was at 400 ppm CO2, it was ice free, and we are above that now and increasing at about 2.5 ppm/yr.

If this is not an existential crisis, I don't know what is. That it seems to be in slow motion (because of the geological time scale of related history) is surely a justification for many to dismiss it. But this is real geological change taking place on human time scales, and that is unprecedented in the history of our species.

Time for a Manhattan Project approach to renewable energy to reduce the new input and to CO2 removal to reduce, hopefully back to around 350 ppm.

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