Ice, Ice Baby....

Both of these are images taken in the last 24 hours.

According to the University of Illinois, the ice should start refreezing within the next couple weeks, if it hasn't started already. This is the lowest measured sea ice extent in history.

http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png



For more information:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,6000,1569830,00.html

Set in an America of the almost-now, Fifty Degrees Below (and the first volume of the trilogy, Forty Signs of Rain) tells the story of the efforts of a loosely-connected group of scientists, campaigners and politicians to provoke a national response to the crisis of global warming. Unfortunately for them, as environmental aide Charlie Quibbler observes, it's "easier to destroy the world than to change capitalism even one little bit". It is not until the combination of two colliding storm systems and an unprecedented tidal surge causes Washington's Potomac river to bursts its banks and overwhelm the country's capital at the climax of book one that the world sits up and takes notice.

But, by this point, the polar ice caps have already begun to melt in earnest, shutting down the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and creating environmental conditions that could usher in a new ice age. The last ice age, 11,000 years ago, took just three years to start.>>>>is this true?


These disturbingly convincing, exceptionally well-realised novels are the latest works from one of the undisputed leaders of the field in contemporary science fiction. Justly famous for his epic, award-winning trilogy on the colonisation of Mars, Robinson's brand of imaginative but grounded sci-fi, combined with his gift for riveting narrative, fine evocation of place and flair for acute personal and social observation, has brought him many devotees, from within the genre and beyond. The topical subject matter of his latest novel, particularly in light of its disturbingly prescient depiction of a US under siege from the weather, will no doubt bring him many more.