Canary in the coal mine’: Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return, study finds

«Greenland is going to be the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is already pretty much dead at this point.» A new study, published in Nature, has found that the Greenland ice sheet, currently melting at record speed, might already have passed the point where it will inevitably vanish entirely, no matter what climate action is taken. And, as they say, «Things that happen in the polar regions don’t stay in the polar region»: All the water released in the process would push sea levels up by six metres. The study has been criticised for extrapolating rather than modelling, but the main point stands: Things are not looking good.