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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060304.BKFLAN04/TPStory/Entertainment/?pageRequested=2

This man-made carbon explosion is now jerkily changing the climate about 30 times faster than the last Ice Age did. The speed and scale of change, however, hasn't given most species much time to adapt. But thousands of creatures of all kinds, from butterflies to fish, are moving toward the poles to escape the rising heat. Some birds are laying eggs 24 days earlier, and many plants are pulling up roots and changing their range. Slow movers like frogs, glaciers, trees and most nature reserves are dying, or melting, or will be just left behind. The evidence is so decisive "that it's as if the researchers had caught CO{-2} in the act of driving nature pole-wards with a lash."

Meanwhile, things are really becoming balmy at the poles. Antarctica is now turning green, and the ice that used to sustain fantastic populations of krill is dwindling. Without krill dinners, penguins will march no more (the emperor penguin population has declined by half), and seals and whales are already starving. In the Arctic, it now rains instead of snows in the fall, and caribou can't scrape the ice off lichen. The great white bear, one of our national symbols and another mammal dependent on ice, is already making reservations at the global wildlife morgue. "If nothing is done to limit greenhouse gas emissions, it seems certain that some time this century, a day will dawn when no summer ice will be seen in the Arctic." Stephen Harper might have to cancel that order for icebreakers after all.

The oceans, too, are sending out wave after wave of disturbing signals. Between 1800 and 1994, they absorbed nearly half of the carbon made by humans. In fact, the oceans have sucked up so much carbon that they are turning acidic and can't handle any more of the gas. They are also warming at such alarming levels that they are creating hurricanes that can effortlessly drown oil rigs and petrochemical works. Melting glaciers are bringing up sea levels so quickly that islands in the South Pacific are negotiating migration rights to New Zealand.