The World Meteorological Organization just released a report at the U.N. climate conference in Doha with the staggering fact that the areas of arctic sea ice that melted this year was bigger than the area of the whole United States! The U.N. weather agency characterized this decline as showing that climate change is happening "before our eyes."
Link to Sacramento Bee news story on the WMO report:
http://www.sacbee.com/...
The arctic sea ice melt was just one of the extreme, record-breaking weather events in 2012, according to the WMO report.
Droughts devastated nearly two-thirds of the United States as well western Russia and southern Europe. Floods swamped west Africa and heat waves left much of the Northern Hemisphere sweltering.
Bit as bad as these facts, the worse fact is that there is no movement anticipated toward curtailing emissions at Doha. China and India don't see emissions from their countries peaking for a long while. According to a delegate from China at Doha,
"We are still in the process of industrialization. We are also confronted with the enormous task of poverty eradication," said Wei, acknowledging that the country's emissions won't peak by 2020.
"In order to eradicate poverty, to try to improve the living standards, certainly we need to develop our economy," he said. "So the emissions will need to grow for a period of time."