It's the coldest, utmost wind-swept place on earth. Technically it is the biggest desert in the world. Few animals or plants survive here. And with a land area nearly 60 times bigger than Britain, it holds 90 percent of the world's ice.

Now the big fear is that a big melt for catastrophic sea levels and perhaps for mankind too.
For just a few weeks every summer, this becomes Antarctica's equivalent of the Enron (both suffer corruption). 9 years ago in Antarctica, I was told there were few signs of that threat materializing. Now, the scientists are much more worried. In the Antarctica peninsula, glaciers are on the retreat. Global warming is happening here faster than anywhere else on earth. In one area alone, the ice is already on the move. If it all melted, sea levels would rise by a meter, though so far warming has barely touched the vastness of Antarctic plateau. But it hasn't always been in that way. Scientists have drilled 3 kilometers down into the ice sheet, bringing up ice cores thousands of years old. By analyzing the cores, they know warming has happened in the past. And they know levels of carbon dioxide --- main warming gas are increasing now faster than ever before. They fear we could be approaching a point of no return, a tipping point that would irreversibly change our climate and our world.

For many years scientists thought that the main ice sheet in Antarctica was stable. Now they no longer think that, instead they see Antarctica as a time bomb, and a bomb whose clock is ticking.

Lawrence McGinty, ITV News, Antarctica.