Bob Weber in the Canadian Press: A new report says Arctic climate change is happening faster than anyone anticipated and may soon be forcing more rapid warming on the rest of the planet. "It is a tipping point," said Craig Stewart of the World Wildlife Fund, which was to release the report Wednesday in London.The report is an attempt to update the work of scientists involved in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as world leaders prepare to gather in Copenhagen next December to discuss how to deal with the issue. The conclusion of many of those same top researchers is that changes are occurring much more quickly - especially in the Arctic - than was believed even two years ago. "We thought by 2050, multi-year (sea) ice would be cut in half," said Stewart from Ottawa. "Well, it happened in 2007."
But the biggest worry is the so-called methane hydrates - a strange, slushy form of methane frozen in ice molecules that exists in vast volumes in permafrost and continental shelves around the circumpolar globe. Cold and high pressure have so far kept that methane - a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide - out of the atmosphere….
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