Wild about the Antarctic?

I’m back! And as is so often the case, there’s a lot waiting to be done that didn’t disappear while I was on holiday. So for today,I’d like to draw your attention to some people who have been looking after the icy regions of the planet while the ice-blogger was still on holiday.
IUCN and WWF jointly produce a podcast called Wild Talk.
In the latest edition, one of the topics is the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. There’s an interview with Carl Gustav Lundin
head of the IUCN Global Marine Programme about the Treaty and the state of the Antarctic today. Worth a listen.
Ministers from the Arctic Council and the Antarctic Treaty states held their first ever joint meeting in Washington on April 6 celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Antarctic Treaty. WWF provided the ministers with recent evidence from both the north and south poles that clearly demonstrates global temperature increases must be kept well under two degrees Celsius.
“A global average temperature rise of 2 degrees is clearly too much for the poles,” says Rob Nicoll, Manager of WWF’s Antarctic and Southern Oceans Initiative. “Scientists are already unpleasantly surprised at how quickly the impacts of warming such as sea ice loss are showing up in the polar regions, exceeding recent predictions.”
Global average warming due to climate change since the late 1800s is showing severe impacts at less than one degree, as the Arctic is warming at about twice the global average and parts of the Antarctic are also outstripping the global average. The polar regions themselves have profound and not yet fully understood impacts on climate globally, and there are fears that polar tipping points could trigger abrupt change around the world.
A forthcoming report on Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research is expected to up previous estimates on Antarctica’s expected substantial contributions to sea level rises. Marine food chains of global significance are also under threat from warming in the Antarctic.