Melting Arctic ice

"The pace is staggering" according to an AP article entitled "The Arctic region as global warming barometer". Here's an excerpt:

TROMSOE, Norway (AFP) - The Arctic Ocean's pack ice is expected to disappear entirely in the coming decades and will bring unforeseeable changes to the region, international experts meeting this week in Norway said.

For many participants at the Arctic Frontiers conference held in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsoe, 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) south of the North Pole, the pace of global warming is staggering.

"Climate change in the Arctic is not coming. It is here," said Canadian researcher at the University of Manitoba, David Barber.

Barber predicts that between 2030 and 2050, the Arctic's sea ice will have disappeared completely during the summer months.

"Last time something like that happened was a million years ago. It is a tremendous change," Barber added.
...
The waters of the ocean have become more acidic in line with increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. A development that could, according to Bellerby, lead to the extinction of certain marine organisms, especially plankton, altering the ocean's entire ecosystem.
...
"The winters are getting warmer, the vegetation is changing and it has consequences for the reindeer that graze in winter ... they cannot reach lichen," the speaker of the Sami parliament Aili Keskitalo said.

"Insects are more numerous, worms are eating the birch leaves, all this because we did not experience in the last winters ... the (typical) temperatures of minus 35 to 40 C (minus 31 to 40 F)," she added.

I don't have much of a comment. I just hope the powers that be pay attention.