The thaw and the freeze

Looks like the shit is in mid air and heading speedily (more speedily than most of us might have thought) towards the fan.

A story on the Environmental News Network, via Reuters, quotes a report released by US scientists that says the Arctic ice shelf is now smaller than it has been in a hundred years, or since we started measuring, so maybe the smallest its been in thousands of years.

The report warns that if melting rates continue, the summertime Arctic may be completely ice-free before the end of the century, echoing last year's findings from the Arctic Council, an eight-nation report by 250 experts.

WooHoo! It's all happening now. And in case you were wondering why it's happening, and who's to blame. We are. All of us, but mostly just all of us in the "developed world".

"It's increasingly difficult to argue against the notion that at least part of what we are seeing in the Arctic, in terms of sea ice, in terms of warming temperatures ... is due to the greenhouse effect," Mark Serreze, a research scientist at NSIDC, said in an interview.

"We've put a hit on the system and we are in the midst of a grand global experiment," Serreze said about the impact of global warming and ice melting on humans and animals. "We will have to live with the outcome."

The worst thing about it is that the more ice melts the spurs the water temperature to rise, which causes, you guessed it, more melting. Talk about a vicious circle.

Oh, and on the topic of viciousness and ice. The US congress, in fine form as usual, is thinking about freezing their mandatory UN dues if the organisation doesn't hastily enact the reforms hey want it to. Super dooper! Once again the US shows it is really part of the international community and not some unilateral, self-obsessed, over-the-hill superpower.

Ironically, the UN-hating US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has opposed the idea. Unfortunately he is opposed for all the wrong reasons, but opposed is opposed, I guess.