Re: SC56

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3287372.ece

The Year in Review: The planet
No denying the cold, hard facts

The sheer scale of what happened hasn't sunk in, it probably hasn't sunk in at all, with most people. They're not looking back on 2007 and talking about it, in the office, in pubs or over dinner. Listen to them: they're talking about Brown taking over from Blair, or David Cameron's prospects, or England failing to qualify for the European football championships. Or they're talking about getting and spending, or love and hate, as they always have. But what happened in September dwarfs all that.

You might compare it, in its implications, to Hitler marching his troops into the previously demilitarised Rhineland, in March 1936 – the clearest possible sign that the world was in for serious trouble. Some people understood the potential consequences of Hitler's move at once, but the world as a whole carried on with business as usual, until three years later the storm burst upon it. And so it seems to be with the ice.

On Sunday 16 September 2007, the sea ice covering the Arctic ocean melted back to a record low point. It has always melted back in the summer, but in recent years it has retreated further and further, to new lows, strongly suggesting the influence of climate change. The 2007 retreat, however, shattered the previous record, set only two years earlier, by a quite colossal amount, an amount so enormous as to be scarcely credible. It exceeded the September 2005 low point by another 22 per cent – an area of 1.2 million square kilometres, or more than 385,000 square miles. This represents an extra area of ice five times the size of the United Kingdom. Gone in a single summer. If you consider that and you don't think the world is rapidly warming up, what do you need to convince you?

This summer's Arctic melting astonished scientists around the world, and sent a chill down the backs of those who saw the implications. As the head of the Canadian Ice Service said, it wasn't predicted in any supercomputer-generated climate change scenario. The scale was entirely unexpected. It was not just the clearest signal yet that global warming is taking hold; it was an ominous indication that the warming process is proceeding far, far faster than anyone considered possible even five years ago, and that its catastrophic consequences may be upon us much sooner than we have hitherto imagined...............