Antarctica Ice Caps' Collapse 'Unstoppable'; Could Make MIllions Homeless

Global warming has been an issue for the past few decades. Today, governments and international entities have put in effort to minimize carbon footprint, but are efforts enough?

Apparently, they aren't. According to a report by CNN,  global warming is beyond control as ice caps in Antarctica have begun melting, and such phenomenon is "unstoppable."

In the report, CNN said that the major section of the ice sheet on the western part of Antarctica will inevitably melt, and will lead the way to higher-than-anticipated sea levels.

According to a study presented by NASA researchers and the University of California, the earth have passed "the point of no return."

This is due to the presence of ocean currents that deliver warm water at the base of the glaciers, or their grounding lines, where the ice attaches to the bed. The heat from warm currents make the grounding line retreat inland, causing ice shelves to lose mass, and leaving glaciers to flow toward sea.

The study's lead author, glaciologist Eric Rignot, said that West Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment "sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come. A conservative estimate is it could take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea."

How will that affect the rest of the world? Initially, according to NASA, the region has enough ice to raise sea levels up to 4 feet, but that is not the end of it.

CNN also reports that such melting as big as this may be uncommon, but not necessarily unprecedented. In the reports, it is said that evidence has shown the same ice sheet to have retained over the past hundred thousand years or so, in a cycle of glacial formation and retreat.

The Amusden Sea Glaciers are just a few portions of the entire Western Antarctic sheet, and Sridhar Anandakrishnan, geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State said that the melting of the Amundsen Sea could cause destabilization of other sheets. This is a problem because the whole of the Antarctic Ice sheet has enough ice to raise the global sea levels to a staggering 16 feet, leaving millions homeless, and some cities underwater.