• naught101@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Not in a meaningful timeframe, I think. Even if we get a worst case outcome (say +5°C by 2100, ongoing warming), permanent land ice in Antarctica will likely take many hundreds, or even thousands of years to melt entirely.

    It’s always going to have frozen winters with lots of snow, due to the long dark polar winter… I guess some boreal tundra species could survive that, but farming is probably unlikely to be viable, I would guess.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Earlier tonight I was watching a video going over sone climate predictions. There was a legit worst case scenario of an ice-free Arctic Ocean as early as 2030. Once one pole goes, it’s hard to see the other tensing frozen much longer

      • naught101@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Sea ice (most of the arctic) is VERY different to land ice (which is most of Antarctica). Check some sea ice maps and ice thickness maps to see the difference.

        Also, the two hemispheres are not tightly coupled over short (decadal scales). The Arctic has been warming much faster than the Antarctic (so far).

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    20 days ago

    If we are talking about sustaining agriculture, likely not but it wouldn’t be a heat related problem.

    Any decent plant growth needs a soil base, and Antarctica’s soil is likely to be incredibly shallow and not bioactive. If you look at places like Iceland and the Scottish Highlands, those places lost a lot of soil as forestry removed the topsoil protection. You would need to implement significant resources into improving very marginal agricultural land.

    Also, while the continent is covered in ice, there isn’t much in terms of precipitation.

  • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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    20 days ago

    Besides temperature there’s the issue of sunlight.
    We’d need plants for agriculture adapted to a completely new life cycle.

  • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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    20 days ago

    In short, no. Not at least outside of a vast geological timeframe. Antarctica was once habitable around 100 million years ago, and that was only because it was part of a supercontinent located much further north than its current location.

    Even if the earth warmed enough to melt the ice at the poles, its location would basically make it impossible to maintain a complex ecology suitable to life. The light cycle of roughly 24 hours of light in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter would preclude the needed agriculture requirements needed to sustain any meaningful population.

  • 11111one11111@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Follow up question that I fear may shed top much light on how dumb I am… is there land under the polar ice caps? I guess I never thought about it but assumed they were just frozen masses.

    • purplemonkeymad@programming.dev
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      19 days ago

      The artic (north pole) is just sea ice, so no land.

      Antarctic (south pole) has a continent (Antarctica,) so land, but has a very think layer of ice over much it it. Due to the shape, there are also some areas that are just sea lice.