More than 80% of the natural forests have been destroyed in the last several hundred years with most destruction occurring in the last 200 years by humans. Up to 90% of West Africa’s coastal rain forests have disappeared since 1900. Brazil and Indonesia, which contain the world’s two largest surviving regions of rain forest, are being stripped at an alarming rate by logging, fires, and land-clearing for agriculture and cattle-grazing.

Destruction of trees (the great equalizer) removes carbon sinks. Tree burning pumps even more carbon dioxide, along with methane, into the air. Now, add in billions of tons of coal and petroleum products that man has continued to pump into the atmosphere over the last 200 plus years and sooner or later, the slow but steady CO2 release, eats away at the ice caps.