Since much of this energy comes from the utilisation of fossil fuels, wastage of food potentially contributes to unnecessary global warming as well as inefficient resource utilisation.

As long as we're consuming fossil fuels, we're putting out CO2,"says Klaus Lackner, a geophysicist at Columbia, University" We cannot let the CO2 in the atmosphere rise indefinitely.

They found fossils of microscopic marine plants which suggest that the region was once open ocean not solid ice.