The Arctic ice cap shrank this past summer to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, reported The New York Times this morning. The poles, canaries in the mine of global warming because of their sensitivity to global temperature, have recently experienced unprecedented summer ice losses, but this year's Arctic melting dwarfs all prior events.

(see: www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html?th=&emc=th&pagewant...)

Andrew C. Revkin, reporting on a new study by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, "The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming."

In each of the prior three summers scientists have stated that the Arctic sea ice melt has been much greater than their prior predictions and estimates based on weather modeling. This year's data elevates their observations into a new dimension. The data begins to take on a "hocky-stick" appearance that signals a critical threshold. This occurs where a natural system experiences a "phase change" into an entirely new state or condition. In this case it could mean the end of summer ice at the top of the world and a retreat of winter ice toward an essentially ice-free state.

The implications of this could be enormous. Not only would the fabled Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia open to shipping during the summer months, a boon to those dependent on low-cost sea transport, but the possibility of mineral extraction from the polar sea bed seems more affordable.

On the downside, loss of polar albedo (the reflectivity of heating rays from the sun back to space) could accelerate ice losses from land-masses like Greenland. In the unlikely event that all of Greenland's ice cover melted, global sea levels would rise by as much as 23 feet. Such a massive amount of fresh water entering the polar seas could produce disastrous effects, slowing or stopping the deep ocean conveyor, the system that transfers warmer tropical waters up the US eastern seaboard toward Greenland and western Europe that moderates their winter temperatures.

The unremitting avalanche of bad news from the cryosphere adds urgency to need to slow global warming. Changing practices attributed to human activities and eliminating the production of greenhouse gasses as rapidly as possible is the only way to do this.

Yet without some palpable assault on the lower latitudes, like a large sudden rise of sea-levels, human societies will likely continue to act as if nothing really serious is happening.

Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", documents similar reactions from other societies and cultures. Although there are several parallels in some of the reasons for failure unearthed by Diamond, the one that most closely resembles our modern predicament is quite surprising to the researchers. "Contrary to what (they) would have expected, it turns out that societies often fail even to attempt to solve a problem once it has been perceived." Some of this is attributed to selfish behavior and a clash of interests between people.

Whatever the causes, humanity seems to be on the brink of the unparalleled catastrophe predicted by Albert Einstein. His prescription was for us to substantially change the way we think. At the moment the reductionists seem to be having their way.

How this all turns out will depend on the actions or inactions of everyone who has a stake in the outcome. Unfortunately, those who have the most to loose have yet to be born and their voice, if any, must from our mouths or not come at all. At the moment, the silence is almost deafening.