Melting ice alarm

A Reuters article called "Nordic Nations Sound Alarm Over Melting Arctic" was published by Common Dreams today. Here's part of what it says:

OSLO - Nordic nations sounded the alarm on Wednesday about a quickening melt of Arctic ice and said the thaw might soon prove irreversible because of global warming.Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland also urged all governments to agree before the end of 2009 a broader U.N. plan to curb greenhouse gases in succession to the Kyoto Protocol.

“The Arctic and the world cannot wait any longer,” environment ministers from the five nations said in a joint statement after talks in Oslo. The five all have Arctic territories.

“The climate is hurtling towards a turning point after which irreversible processes will have been set in motion,” they said of the Arctic thaw.

They noted the ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank in September to 4.13 million sq. km (1.6 million sq. miles), the smallest since satellite records began in 1979 and far eclipsing the low in 2005. The ice extent is now expanding as winter approaches.

The melt, blamed by the U.N. climate panel on heat-trapping gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, threatens the livelihoods of indigenous hunting peoples and wildlife such as polar bears and seals.

Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said the thaw of the Arctic ice might already have reached a point of no return. “We may have passed the tipping point,” he said.

Many climate scientists say the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the globe because dark ground and water, once uncovered, soaks up more heat than white ice and snow.

What's it going to take for the world's leaders - especially those of the United States - to wake up and treat this as the catastrophic emergency that it is? I can only conclude that people like Bush and Cheney really don't love their children at all. If they did, they would want their children to inherit an earth that will sustain life.