It's Here, What are we going to do about it?

It has been reported that Switzerland's glaciers are melting faster than expected,shrinking by as much as one-fifth of their size over the 1985-2000 period alone.

Hot summers in the 1990s in particular, prompted a glacier melt-down which has outpaced previous forecasts. It could impact tourism and cause more environmental hazards such as flash floods, scientist Frank Paul said.

"It is amazing what huge masses of ice have been lost," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Every hiker in the Alps knows about it: the changes in recent years have been dramatic."

While Swiss glaciers shrank a meager one percent in the 12 years to 1985, they lost some 18 percent of their area in the 1985-2000 period, the research showed.

This suggests they are melting faster than earlier estimates which put the loss at 30 percent between 1980 and 2025.

Global warming is here and it's too late to stop it if indeed we ever could. Kyoto is important, there are a number of good reasons to reduce the burning of fossil fuels. Pollution and leaving our grandchildren some oil to make plastic out of are just two. We have already burnt half of the worlds oil reserves, the genie is out of the bottle and it's going to warm up, the storms are going to become more violent, there are going to be increasing droughts in some areas and heavy rain in others. The sea level is going to continue to rise perhaps as much as 100 feet.
We need to stop spending all of our energy looking for someone to blame and start looking at how we are going to adapt to the inevitable. It's time for a new Kyoto treaty where nations agree to work together to adapt to what could be rapidly changing conditions. Ninety percent of the worlds population live in areas that could be submerged by the year 2100. Changing weather patterns combined with the increased price of oil will impact how we feed the world. The threat of the inevitable climate change is the greatest civilized man has ever faced. Up to this point the worlds politicians have simply enabled denial. The longer we wait the greater the possibility that we will not survive.