Feedback Loops

Something bigger than a great white is circling Antarctica. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current - 150 times the flow of every river on Earth - spins off eddies sixty miles wide that batter the ice shelves for a month at a time. Why engineers dream of a 50-by-100-mile underwater net, and what your food scraps have to do with it.

Hi, I'm Jenny Mason, your tour guide to feedback loops, a journey through food waste cycles and the solutions that curb climate change. Something big is swirling around the southern ocean. Bigger than a great white shark. Careful. Don't get too close to the AHAHAC. That is the ACCC, Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This current is many hundreds of miles across and is 150 times larger than the outflow of all the world's rivers combined. Because the southern hemisphere holds more ocean than landmass, the ACCC rockets around like a formula one car. It's so fast, smaller eddies peel off it and go whipping through the ocean. Often, they slam into Antarctica's ice shelves. With the average eddy measuring over 60 miles across, the impact is huge and the barrage can span a whole calendar month. The eddies crack and crumble the ice shelves while also generating powerful tides that pry the ice shelf up off the land. Warm water funnels under the ice, which further melts and cracks it. The shelves act like fences that keep the three mile thick glaciers on the continent from slipping off the land and spilling into the sea. Some engineers want to block the ACCC eddies using a giant underwater net anchored to the ocean floor. However, building and installing a 50 by 100 mile net is going to take at least 15 years. In the meantime, ordinary households prevent the ACC-celerated global heating, driving polar ice melt, when they convert food scraps to compost. Feedback loops is produced in collaboration with Table to Farm Compost in KDUR. For more information about curbing food waste, visit tabletofarmcompost.com.

When a submersible robot scanned the underside of Antarctica’s ice shelves, scientists expected a smooth plain. They found something groovier - and far less stable. A story about carved ice, warm-water feedback loops, and why groovy and cool do not mix.

Hi, I'm Jenny Mason, your tour guide to feedback loops, a journey through food waste cycles and the solutions that curb climate change. The hippie era gifted society, bell bottoms, psychedelics, civil rights, and sunny and share. We also inherited new expressions like far out, groovy, and cool. Unfortunately for surviving hippies, scientists are finding that groovy and cool don't mix. This discovery was made while using a submersible robot to scan the underbelly of Antarctica's ice shelves. Much to their surprise, researchers found not a flat or gently undulating ice plane, but rather a wildly carved, channeled, and chewed underside. Were there monstrous ice-eating termites no one knew about? No, but there were tumbling, rumbling water currents all around the continent. At temperatures slightly warmer than freezing, these swirling waters acted just like termites. The groove suggests that Antarctica's ice shelves are far less stable than previously thought, and to make matters worse, all those grooves and divots act as holding cells for warm water. The longer the warm water stays in contact with the cool ice, the more it melts, making bigger channels and divots to hold even more water. The cycle intensifies itself in a constant feedback loop. The grooveier the ice gets, the less cool it is. So long as more people convert food scraps to compost, we can all chill out, cause. Babe, ice got you, babe. Feedback loops is produced in collaboration with Table-to-Farm Compost in K-D-U-R. For more information about curbing food waste, visit Table-to-FarmCompost.com

Antarctica’s ice sheet has a fingernail, and something is chewing at it. The grounding line - where ice, land and ocean meet - is retreating up to 2,300 feet a year. What happens when warm water gets under the nail.

Hi, I'm Jenny Mason, your tour guide to feedback loops, a journey through food waste cycles and the solutions that curb climate change. Look at your fingernails. Go on, it's for science. See where the nail transitions from being firmly attached to the skin to freely extending out into thin air? Antarctica's ice sheet is its fingernail. Currently, climate scientists are obsessed with what's happening under that nail. At the edge, or grounding line, where land and ice connect. As the planet heats up, warming sea water accumulates along the grounding line where it chooses at the ice and pushes the line farther back. In 2025, researchers analyzed a quarter-century of polar data and found that the grounding line retreats by 2300 feet per year, which is way faster than they thought. In some places, the grounding line has shifted back some nine miles. And the continent's topography is speeding up the process. From the coastline inland, the land dips down like a bowl due to the weight of all the ice. As warm water breaches the grounding line, it spills down into this bowl and gradually forms a lake. The lake heats and destabilizes all the ice above it, further speeding up the melting process. Imagine something chewing the tissue out from under your nails until finally they pop off. Will Antarctica's ice cap break off and flood the ocean? We might avoid that nail-biter catastrophe if ordinary people convert food scraps to compost. Feedback loops is produced in collaboration with Table-to-Farm Compost in KDUR. For more information about curbing food waste, visit Table-to-FarmCompost.com.

The world map in your head is due for a redraw. Melting even a small fraction of the Antarctic ice sheet would lift the oceans ten feet - enough to erase the Everglades, drown coastlines from Shanghai to New York, and reshape every continent.

Hi, I'm Jenny Mason, your tour guide to feedback loops, a journey through food waste cycles and the solutions that curb climate change. I don't know how you studied for your grade school geography tests, but I relied on memorizing countries and continents by their shape. For example, South America resembles a YAM, while Africa is the one that looks like a long. Italy is a boot, and the waffle cone is India. Unfortunately, the conventional world map image we all carry around in our heads is likely to radically change in the coming years as sea levels rise. One of the biggest drivers of this phenomenon is massive ice melt chipping away at the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica. Actually, melting only a small fraction of the Antarctic ice sheet would be enough to trigger a 10-foot rise in global ocean levels, which is plenty to redraw all the maps. Florida's Everglades, Gone, the Netherlands submerged along with most of Bangladesh and China's east coast from Shanghai to Beijing, New York, Edinburgh and Kolkata, all under water. Scientists have recently uncovered several culprits erasing Antarctic ice, and they're all in cahoots, working together like thieves in a museum-heist movie. With countless wetland ecosystems and 250 million coastal residents at risk, it's worth getting more acquainted with Antarctica's shape, which I'd describe as not so hot. Good thing ordinary people prevent sea levels rising when they convert food scraps to compost. Northback Loops is produced in collaboration with Table-to-Farm Compost and KDUR. For more information about curbing food waste, visit Table-to-FarmCompost.com