SW2------"This is just another depressing story that emphasises the mistakes we have made and how we are slowly destroying our earth "--------

Yes, it is depressing. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything. For one thing, just reduce the amount of electricity that you use. There are lots of ways. When a light bulb goes out, replace it with a fluorescent rather than an incandescent bulb. You'll get the same amount of light using about 1/4 to 1/3 the amount of electricity that the incandescent bulb used.
Wash clothes in cold water instead of hot water. It will cost less, your clothes still get clean, and the colors on your clothes won't fade nearly as quickly. You save money on energy to heat water, and your clothes last longer----and no more pink socks or underwear.
Support and use renewable energy whenever you can. If a filling station near you has E10 gasoline--use that. Tell them you'd use it year around if you could get it. If you buy a new car---get a flex fuel car---you can use ethanol blends anytime, and gasoline when ethanol is not available. Flex fuel costs about the same or only minimally more than a conventional gasoline vehicle. If you are looking at used cars----check the fuel tank door or cap, it will tell you if it is flex fuel or not. Many people who live in areas that do not have ethanol don't even know they have flex fuel vehicles because they've never used it.

There are a lot of things that can be done. Small steps to be sure, but a journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step. If enough people take small steps---big things can happen.

"How was the environment in the Arctic different from today?"

"Very different. There is a very good plant record from up there and the plants tell us that this was a frost-free area. We have the kinds of plants that suggest that there was no frost, or very little frost. The plants are telling us warm, temperate. And also the animals—we've got alligators and salamanders and big land tortoises and they're telling us the same thing."

This is just another depressing story that emphasises the mistakes we have made and how we are slowly destroying our earth

And as usual, denialists snipe at everyone over whether humans are part in the cause of this, because some can't admit they might have a hand in this by their own actions or lack thereof and would then be morally bound to get off their asses to do something. As if the effects of it regardless of the cause won't hurt real people, real species, and a real environment we depend on to survive. All they know is the Al Gore spiel... the same boring, redundant, misinformed, misleading BS we have heard from Fox News to every other Internet site on the web ad nauseum.

Hopeless, dangerous ignorance.

denialists are funny. and stupid.

It won't solve the temperature problem, but I'm curious to why the following solution wouldn't be technically feasible.

Create hundreds of thousands of desalination plants and pump water from the ocean to where it's needed to irrigate crops.

If we were able to remove the salt from salt water than not only could we prevent the sea level from rising, but we could also bring fresh water to wherever it is needed for irrigating crops.

We could even take it a step farther and bring water to previously uninhabitable deserts and terraform them as well.

I know scientist types are rare on Current.com, but if anyone had a logical thought on the viability of this, I would be interested to hear it.

From unphiltered:

-------"Sorry, but thinking this is not natural occurence is stupid. Yes we play a role in our immediate enviroment, but if the glaciers are melting its sure not the bogus lie of "global warming"... "------

OK.......you do not accept any evidence that global warming is occurring. Forget global warming.

That STILL leaves the fact that there are MANY other reasons for us to change our dependence on coal, oil and nuclear power. All of which are finite and going to get more and more expensive, and one day run out.

It only makes good common sense for us to switch to biofuels, wind, solar, geothermal and other sources of power. Just the fact that they are renewable, sustainable, and low pollution makes them a better choice than what we have now.

The fact that they also do not contribute to global warming, whether you accept the truth of global warming or not, is simply a bonus that would come from switching. And there are plenty of other reasons to make the changes even if we discard global warming.

These are sad times. The Earth is hurting greatly,... and some of us continue wanton destruction and/or denying the planet's obvious problems. This is something we need everyone on board for, to fix. And I don't think we're even at 1/2 the human population who believe Climate Change, let alone are willing to do something for it. Now, we might be at the point where we need to be scared into submission and legally obliged to comply.
We cannot cry "It's natural!" and wait for environs to heal themselves. This won't go away until more people agree, work, unite and think about the future.

I would like to posit the following. I wholeheartedly believe in Global Climate change. It is evident. When every single summer, you get shattered records for "hottest year ever", come on! Enough with the coincidences, its evident.
Yet furthermore, when you tell me that his is all due to man, but climate change is happening in Mars, in the moons of Jupiter, on Venus, everywhere in the solar system, you have to start thinking in the interplanetary dimension. And furthermore, there have been repeated, documented cases of former NASA (with credentials) scientists quitting and coming out to speak about how they have been covering this up. Within NASA for petes sake. People wake up, this not just man made, we are talking interplanetary changes. Across the solar system.
Reality is a cruel hoax.

does that mean we all get to grow pot or what!?

if we do nothing it wont matter if we do everything it wont matter the earth changes all the time there are sea shells on top of Everest for gods sake! We have only been around for a eyeblink we dont know what NORMAL is to the earth.Climate Change is a religion a cult.Try telling a religious nut his god doesnt exist or the schemer like Gore who uses the cult to become rich or famous

I wonder if we will get more or less rainfall in Southern Alberta? Where will the coastline in British Columbia be? I hate to see my country overrun by starving Americans.

Sorry, but thinking this is not natural occurence is stupid. Yes we play a role in our immediate enviroment, but if the glaciers are melting its sure not the bogus lie of "global warming"... Hockey stick theory- disproven, global warming and melting of anarctica- shown that the same scientists made up info they couldn't back up, now satellite photos? Ha.

How does one go about effectively taking matters into their own hands?

I already know how to swim, what other adaptations do we need?

Humans living in small pockets, cultivating their food and defending it against marauders.
Nasty thought.
Ever see the movie, The Postman?
When I was a teenager, in the early 70's, I remember hearing about the CFCs destroying the ozone. I remember hearing newscasts about the smog in Los Angeles and I also remember hearing about greenhouse gases and how the Earth could end up like Venus if we didn't mend our ways.
The information was there, but no one was listening.
The info is now screaming for attention, and some are beginning to listen.
You're right about taking the matter into our own hands, Jan.
It's the only way to bring about he change needed.

Probably because he knew as we now know that the political arena is not the place to pin all of our hopes on much getting done. Oh, Obama will put some money aside to put up some solar panels, but in the end I too now believe that Congress will be insignificant in doing much to address this urgent crisis. As soon as Obama took the oath of office he should have called a global meeting to seriously make plans for mitigation where it is still possible, and make plans for adaptation. I fear we will be woefully unprepared for the refugees the effects of this will bring, and that will in turn only bring us more war. There will be no way any country could accomodate the hundreds of millions of refugees that would migrate from any given country hit hard by climate change. These plans should have been made twenty or more years ago, when Al Gore was in Congress having the first hearings on this and introducing testimony from Roger Revelle hoping it would inspire Congress to do something. So he was there trying, but again as we have seen, the political sphere doesn't seem to be the place where the most change and action will come on this. The people will now have to take matters into their own hands.

Sadly, I think it's too late. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but I'm getting depressed hearing that we're getting closer to more land mass disappearing. I say we plan for the next step.

On a side note, why didn't Gore use more of his VP statis to combat global warming. The problem has been around since the eighties (maybe earlier) why didn't he focus and make an inconvienent truth earlier? I saw the movie and admitetley got a little teary-eyed, but he could have made it instead of sticking parental advisory stickers to products that are still accessable to young children 20 plus years later?

Another side note and a crazy thought, but, what if at one time say, Venus, or Mars was once habitable, but because of the planet aging (like all living things) it became a barren wasteland? Maybe Earth is going through the same cycles. It's clearly alive and like with every living thing, it will soon die. As sad as this may be I think it has something to do with why all humans feel that the whole earth is ending.

All you can do is live life as full as a fat man at an all-you-can-eat.

Ten months until Copenhagen, and then who knows how long with all of these governments fighting over what to do, what to include, which country isn't responsible, blah blah. Think we'll make that six year cut off?

From the article:

Glaciers in Antarctica are melting faster and across a much wider area than previously thought, a development that threatens to raise sea levels worldwide and force millions of people to flee low-lying areas, scientists said Wednesday.

Researchers once believed that the melting was limited to the Antarctic Peninsula, a narrow tongue of land pointing toward South America. But satellite data and automated weather stations now indicate it is more widespread.

The melting "also extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

"That's unusual and unexpected," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

By the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 to 5 feet — levels substantially higher than predicted by a major scientific group just two years ago.

Making matters worse, scientists said, the ice shelves that hold the glaciers back from the sea are also weakening.

The report Wednesday from Geneva was a broad summary of two years of research by scientists from 60 countries. Some of the findings were released in earlier reports.

In Washington, as part of an overall update on global warming, top researchers on Wednesday sounded a similar warning to the U.S. Senate about rising temperatures in the Antarctic.

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group set up by the United Nations, told lawmakers on the Environment and Public Works Committee that Earth has about six more years at current rates of carbon dioxide pollution before it is locked into a future of severe global warming.

For years, the continent at the bottom of the world seemed to be the only place on the planet not experiencing climate change. Previous research indicated that temperatures across much of Antarctica were staying the same or slightly cooling.

The report Wednesday was compiled as part of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year, an effort by scientists to conduct intense Arctic and Antarctic research over the past two Antarctic summers.

The big surprise was exactly how much glaciers are melting in western Antarctica, a vast land mass on the Pacific Ocean side of the continent that is next to the South Pole and includes the Antarctic Peninsula.

The biggest of the western glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, is moving 40 percent faster than it was in the 1970s, discharging water and ice more rapidly into the ocean, said Summerhayes, a member of International Polar Year's steering committee.

The Smith Glacier, also in west Antarctica, is moving 83 percent faster than in 1992, he said.

The glaciers are slipping into the sea faster because the floating ice shelf that would normally stop them — usually 650 to 980 feet thick — is melting. And the glaciers' discharge is making a significant contribution to increasing sea levels.

Some people "fear that this is the first signs of an incipient collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet," Summerhayes said. "If the west Antarctica sheet collapses, then we're looking at a sea level rise of between 3 feet, 4 inches, to nearly 5 feet."

Together, all the glaciers in west Antarctica are losing a total of around 114 billion tons per year because the melting is much greater than the new snowfall, he said.