The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, the clearest sign so far of global warming, has taken a
sudden and enormous leap forward, in one of the most ominous developments yet in the onset of climate change
...
It means the possibility of a lethal "feedback" mechanism speeding up global warming, because the dark surface of the open Arctic ocean will absorb the sun's heat, rather than reflect it as the ice cover does now - and so the world will get even hotter
....
Yesterday, Jim Hansen, the leading climatologist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, issued a now-or-never warning to governments around the world, including his own, telling them they must take radical action to avert a planetary environmental catastrophe. He said it was no longer viable for nations to adopt a "business as usual" stance on fossil-fuel consumption.
"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," he said.
plenty more...
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1603667.eceand mods, can you pleeeezzzz not 'combine this with another thread' or send it to the dungeon? If there's room on the home page for the death of Ann Richards, can't there be room for the impending death of the planet?