Both ice caps are melting

ABC News- For the first time, scientists have confirmed Earth is melting at both ends, which could have disastrous effects for coastal cities and villages.

Antarctica has been called "a slumbering giant" by a climate scientist who predicts that if all the ice melted, sea levels would rise by 200 feet. Other scientists believe that such a thing won't happen, but new studies show that the slumbering giant has started to stir.

Recent studies have confirmed that the North Pole and the South Pole have started melting....

"The warming ocean comes underneath the ice shelves and melts them from the bottom, and warmer air from the top melts them from the top," said NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally. "So they're thinning and eventually they get to a point where they go poof!"

Zwally explains that the ice shelves, which the Antarctic ice cap pushes out into the ocean, are responding more than they expected to Earth's warming air and water. If the melting speeds up to a rapid runaway process called a "collapse," coastal cities and villages could be in danger...

James Hansen, director of NASA's Earth Science Research, said that disaster could probably be avoided, but that it would require dramatically cutting emission outputs. If the proper actions aren't taken, Hansen said, the sea level could rise as much as 80 feet by the time today's children reach middle age.

"We now must choose between a serious problem that we can probably handle and, if we don't act soon, unmitigated disaster down the road," Hansen said.

Unfortunately, as we have all noticed, the clown in the White House ALWAYS opts for unmitigated disaster down the road, when offered that choice.

You know what bothers me most about the global warming debate? That there IS a political debate. It's a SCIENTIFIC question. It should have nothing to do with politics at ALL. But it's treated like a political one. As though what matters isn't whether or not it is occurring - a purely factual question - but spinning it and minimizing it. And for what? So a handful of people - whom most of us have no use at all for - won't have to slightly cut back on their obscene profits? Let the cities drown, just don't affect my bottom line? Is that it?

One way you know which "side" (and what a thing for their to be sides to, eh?) is telling you the truth is by the old Watergate testL "Follow the money." Those who claim that global warming is occurring have no vested financial interest in saying so. They have nothing to gain by taking the stance they take. But those who claim it ISN'T have a very STRONG financial stake in denying it. So you know which of those two is most likely to be lying to you.

Remember - the tobacco companies found scientists who were willing to deny that cigarettes were bad for you, too.

Well, at least if it happens, Bush will be out of office, so we won't have to hear him say, "Nobody anticipated the ice caps melting."