Yeah, you’re right. None of these absurd journeys can take place if the rest of the population struggles to survive. My guess is, wrecking the whole planet beyond repair is the only thing that will force governments to start banning fossil fuels and investing in carbon capture and storage technologies.

Humans are so invasive that they have gone to places that can’t even support human life for prolonged periods of time. Deep sea trenches, tall mountains, polar ice caps etc. Even the Moon isn’t safe from humans, and now they are also planning to invade Mars. Once they’ve spread all over every planet, moon and asteroid in the solar system, they’ll probably try to land on the Sun.

Ice also has a fairly high specific heat capacity, which means that changing the temperature means there’s lots of energy involved. Energy can’t just leave the ice at whatever rate you want, which means there’s a potential bottleneck.

As the environment cools down during a clear skies, there a lot of energy trapped inside the snow, and it’s leaving at some slow pace. Even when there’s less heat in the snow, that change translates to a very small difference in temperature. The air around it can also cool down much faster, which means that the temperature difference can be surprisingly big.

You can also go 3D. January 8, February 5, March 4, April 8 would be 4 in a stack.