Just Splendid!

The carbon dioxide emissions from burning such fossil fuels have now melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilisation and dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.

"The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado.

The volume - extent and thickness - of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month, Serreze told IPS.

"I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover," he said.

There can be no recovery because tremendous amounts of extra heat are added every summer to the region as more than 2.5 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean have been opened up to the heat of the 24-hour summer sun. A warmer Arctic Ocean not only takes much longer to re-freeze, it emits huge volumes of additional heat energy into the atmosphere, disrupting the weather patterns of the northern hemisphere, scientists have now confirmed...
~from Arctic Ice in Death Spiral by Stephen Leahy ~

Now, I fully realize that SOME people claim that what's going on in our environment is NOT human-caused. Climate goes in cycles and, from this perspective, we're going through a down cycle.

While there is no question that I think this rationale is crazy on its face, let's go with it anyhow. Let's say that the arctic death spiral is not caused by human technology. Does this STILL mean we humans should not alter our behavior to mitigate the fallout?

This is the place in which, I believe, climate change deniers really fall down. They maintain that climate change is out of our hands and so this gives us license to continue living our lives as usual. Of course, this makes no logical sense at all!!

If the climate is changing and these changes will have detrimental effects, then it makes sense to begin altering our lifestyles now so that we can better deal with the detrimental effects as they occur. To do nothing in preparation is a recipe for disaster. It would be the same as noticing that your house is on fire and yet not evacuating the children UNTIL they are on fire too!!