Ominous signs
From the AP via HuffPo:
An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.
Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.
[...]
"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said [NASA climate scientist Jay] Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."
Go read the rest of it to see what else the canary said. It isn't pretty.
Meanwhile, the US is being its usual stonewalling, obstructionist self in Bali:
Over the weekend, officials from the United Nations, backed by the European Union and many developing countries, offered a draft plan for talks over the next two years, including a statement that dangerous warming can be avoided only if industrialized countries cut emissions by 2020 to levels 25 to 40 percent below those of 1990.
But on Tuesday the United States held firmly opposed to such language.
Of course they did. The White House is still suppressing science it doesn't like, so their stonewalling in Bali is no surprise:
In its report yesterday, the House Oversight Committee came to the "inescapable conclusion" that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming."
Among other offenses, the committee identified 294 edits the White House made to just one paper in order to exaggerate the uncertainties in climate science, so I guess it's no surprise the US delegation in Bali is obstructing advancement on the issue.
All the while, the Arctic is melting.