The age of the ice is very impressive, but the shear depth of the ice still blows my mind.
The weight of that ice is another vast number to ponder.
Several million years past when the southern pole was ice free that land mass was riding a lot higher without kilometres of ice above pushing it down.
Some parts of Sweden are still moving UP by 8 to 9 mm every single year[1] due to the rebound after the ice sheets retreated, just about 10k-15k years ago.
[1] https://highcoastkvarken.org/our-joint-world-heritage/the-la...
> The speed is fast enough to see the changes in the landscape in a few decades.
> 1.2 million-year-old ice core from Antarctic
Dumb question … does that mean that 1.2M years ago, Antarctica wasn’t frozen but a warm climate at South Pole?
EDIT:
When I say “warm” climate, I mean “an above freezing climate” (which might still be cold but warmer than 0C/32F)
1.2M isn't very long. It was in the same place and the climate was similar to today's. There were human-like apes living at the time in Africa. The Antarctic ice sheet is believed to be more than 30M years old.
No. That means it was frozen at that time.
The big freeze was 10-14 million years back. Before that it was tundra and small ice caps.
Go back 30-50M and you'll get to tropical rainforests.
So the ice just wasn't accumulating until 1.2 million years ago despite that? Why not if the climate was already similar to today's?
EDIT: notice that they "hit bedrock" at 1.2 million year old ice... perhaps you missed that part.
What exactly are you struggling with? Ice caps move. The original ice from ten million years ago largely made its way into the ocean as icebergs.
The oldest ice we can find is stuff stuck in depressions somewhere that hasn’t moved in some time. We may find another older pocket in another space, just like this one was older than the last record.
For similar reasons, the oldest paper we can find is not the first paper ever. It sets a minimum age for paper, not a maximum.
Can you explain to me how this sort of thinking works? I couldn’t ever imagine making this sort of assumption based off an article and my admittedly very low understanding of Antarctica.
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So, you did applause In contrast to all the other scientists in that field, warning for ages; who according to you are just fools unable to read...
Oh my gosh... yawn What's next? Flat earth again?
> What's next? Flat earth again?
Sorry, but he's right. Nobody ever reads the results of multi-million dollar research efforts. Including the authors.
Have you noticed how all these publications always list multiple authors? Each author is only allowed to write a little bit of the paper and the paragraphs are later merged and etched into printing plates in a dark room. This is standard procedure to ensure nobody can comprehend such forbidden knowledge.
Only the most elite of the most elite are allowed to reflect on these ancient wisdoms sent from the heavens and sealed far from the surface for millions of years.
These elitist space lizards do not live like us, drink like us or eat like us. They have no digestive tracts in the first place, but they feed off our negative emotions and despair. They do not go to the toilet to unburden themselves, but to ingest the hidden knowledge waiting for them in invisible ink on satin-like paper scrolls.
These scrolls are long and thin to make reading them with their slit-like pupils utmost comfortable and the paper is soft, textured and multi-layered to caress their sensitive fingers. They reveal the ink with the venomous chemicals from their fangs and take great care to destroy any evidence of the hidden writings with the pulper installed in every lockable reading booth.
If you need any more evidence, just look at how whenever they pass down knowledge or narratives, the text is split into narrow columns, placed next to each other on a much wider paper, clearly showing the limitations of the medium the text was written on when it was approved for publication.
Unless the overlords decide to grace their subjects with the knowledge, the actual results of such research will only become available to us if someone recovers the printing plates from the government warehouses they're stored in and somehow obtains the necessary intaglio printing machines to transfer the hidden knowledge onto paper. But that will never happen, because any government viciously hunts down anyone obtaining either of these items.
Our only hope is taking back our governments by exploiting their only weakness: Their lack of first hand digestive experiences: Before voting for anyone, judge how they like their steaks, count their scoops of ice cream and figure out whether they've worked in the food industry before, like working the grill at Wendy's.
My god, did you even read the article? They did say the previous samples showed that CO2 is now 50% higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. If all this CO2 was not our fault, then you could win a Nobel Prize by showing proof for your alternative explanation.