This video shows how scientists were misled. They thought the healthy ice was expanding, when it was actually thinning and spreading out over a wider area. I can't wait until all the right wingers who've been triumphantly pushing this as proof there's no climate change acknowledge they were wrong. I'll just sit here and hold my breath:

WINNIPEG–One of Canada's top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world's polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.

Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding. But David Barber says the thick, multi-year frozen sheets crucial to the northern ecosystem have been replaced by thin "rotten" ice that can't support weight of the bears. "It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multi-year sea ice. The whole world thought it was multi-year sea ice," said Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.

"Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What's left is this remnant, rotten ice."

Permanent ice, which is normally up to 10 metres thick, was easily pierced by the research ship, said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba. The team finally reached what it thought was stable ice, only to watch a crack appear just as researchers were preparing to descend onto the floe.

"As I watched, over the course of five minutes, the entire multi-year ice floe broke up into pieces," Barber said. "This floe was 16 km across. Something that's twice the size of Winnipeg, it just broke up right in front of our eyes."

(Guest Posted by SteveAudio)

Preeminent legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein, tells TheREALnews.com that we should put more energy and resources into preventing future climate change crisis. Cass talks about how our thoughts about "the worst case scenario" of terrorism are more salient in our thoughts and influential in public policy than our thoughts and policy concerning the worst case scenario of climate change. Cass points out that the worst case scenario of climate change is far more likely to occur than a terrorist attack. Cass later points out that climate change is not a high priority for McCain, in contrast with Obama, whose top concerns include the close relationship among national security, environmental protection, and energy independence. This is one of those policy battles where we have to hope voters understand that having a more complicated view and approach is a good thing.

McCain's straight mess express: 

In a not unrelated piece, Pepe Escobar from TheREALnews.com details several of McCain's ties with paid oil company lobbyists. And McCain's stance on the economy is completely ripped apart in this one:

"From his lobbyists, to the economy and foreign policy, McCain's express off the rails. John McCain has been in Washington for 26 years. In the last 8 years he voted with George W. Bush 90% of the time. He admits he knows nothing about economics. Even some of his advisers admit he cannot run a company. But he knows K Street very well – the campaign of the self-styled maverick happens to be swamped by lobbyists"

I know all eyes are on Denver, but I thought we needed a little reminder that there's a whole world out there outside of Colorado and it's not such great shape.  Sadly, with John McCain in office we're not likely to put it on a better track either.    Greenpeace: 

Increased temperatures due to global warming have combined to create news of three separate climate disasters in different parts of North America. But while news of these disasters emerged in the past week, several states and Google announced major new investments in the clean energy technology necessary to solve the climate crisis and prevent even worse global warming. Meanwhile, President Bush and Congress were touting false solutions, like offshore oil drilling, that will only accelerate the climate crisis.

"These three events add up to a planet in deep trouble," said Greenpeace Global Warming Campaigner Melanie Duchin. "But while states and companies are responding to the climate crisis, the Washington politicians are just spraying offshore oil on the fire."

What three things, you ask?

1. Sea Ice at Second Lowest Level Ever; Polar Bears at Risk of Drowning as Ice Melts

2. Greenland Glacier Breaking Up, Threatening Sea Level Rise

3. Fay Dumps 26 Inches of Rain on Florida

That's one seriously miffed Mother Nature.  And as we lose more polar bears to drowning out in open water due to ice melting, what has the Bush adminstration done?   Pressure Congress to open up more off shore drilling leases and tried to gut the Endangered Species Act, of course.  Credo and the Wildlife Action Center have teamed up with an action letter you can sign to ask lawmakers to not allow Bush to dismantle the Endangered Species Act.

NY Times (reg. req'd): 

Even as many found cheer that floodwaters along the Mississippi River here would fall well short of what had been predicted, residents and the authorities in this town discovered a stark reminder of what might lie ahead: a sand boil on the aged levee that protects the town, a telltale sign that the swollen river had begun eroding the structure from beneath.[..]

As the river at nearby St. Louis leveled out at around 12 feet below the record set during the 1993 flood and about two feet below what had been predicted for the weekend, investigators had identified and contained several more boils on the levee, and the marshland that sits just behind it had crept to within 100 yards of the village hall.

Last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, after consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers, found that the five-levee system that protects the metropolitan area of East St. Louis, Ill., did not meet its standards for flood protection.[..]

(A)s cities, towns and farms north of here have yielded in the past few weeks to the Mississippi's tremendous flooding, scientists have again emphasized a sharp increase in flooding in recent history. They say established communities like East St. Louis and neighboring Cahokia would be well advised to repair their levee systems.

"We have had two almost 100-year floods and two almost 500-year floods in a 35-year period," said Nicholas Pinter, a professor who specializes in flood hydrology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. "Flood levels all along this stretch of the Mississippi have climbed upward, not just by inches but by 8, 10, 12 feet - up to 18 feet over historical 100-year flood conditions. So the simple answer is that floods are higher and more frequent.

"But the underlying theme to everything that's going on," Dr. Pinter added, "is that the current estimates for flood frequency and intensity appear to be grossly underestimated."

Dr. Pinter maintains that while climate change and levee construction have contributed to increased flooding in the St. Louis area, the real culprits are river modifications made to ease navigation, which put further stress on the levee systems.