(AP) -- Since the 1997 international accord to fight global
warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated - beyond
some of the grimmest of warnings made back then. As the world
has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship
passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the
Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost
trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South
America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before. And
it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the
heat in the dozen years leading up to next month's climate
summit in Copenhagen: - The world's oceans have risen by about
an inch and a half. -Droughts and wildfires have turned more
severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel
desert of North Africa. -Species now in trouble because of
changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear
which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile
butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands