Melting ice is Earth's warning signal, and we cannot ignore it
Ice is the white flag being waved by our planet, under fire from
the atmospheric attack being mounted by humanity. From the
frosted plains of the Arctic ice pack to the cool blue caverns
of the mountain glaciers, the dripping away of frozen water is
the most crystal clear of all the Earth’s warning signals. It
relies on neither the painstaking compiling of temperature
records back through history nor the devilish complexity of
predicting the future with supercomputers. Ice on Earth is
simply and unambiguously disappearing. Last week saw the annual
summer minimum of the Arctic ice cap, which has now shrunk to
the lowest level satellites have ever recorded. The ice at the
roof of the human world is faring little better: mountain
glaciers are diminishing at accelerating and historic rates. The
lower glaciers are doomed. Kilimanjaro may be bare within a
decade, with the Pyrenees set to be ice-free by mid-century and
three-quarters of the glaciers in t