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Arctic melt is a sign worth heeding on the road to Copenhagen

By Mike Peters (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-16 13:56

It's the blue that makes the Arctic so unreal - both in pictures and in real life. The color seems so unlikely in nature, that electric hue of the Internet Explorer icon on your computer desktop.

But that amazing color is real, thanks to the minerals in glacial silts and the wacky way they reflect light. Flying last year over the coastline at Barrow, Alaska - the northernmost city in North America - I was among the passengers glued to the windows as huge chunks of ice melted and seem to ooze puddles of cobalt.

Sea ice, of course, comes and goes with the seasons and with the millennia. In the May issue of National Geographic, McKenzie Funk writes of a time when "pieces of the supercontinent Pangaea were drifting apart, and at times greenhouse gases warmed the world to far hotter than it is today." For a time, he says, the Arctic was almost tropical - partly because "global temperatures were higher globally, but more so because parts of the Arctic have not always been in the Arctic."

Related readings:  Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat  Melting ice prompts military moves in Arctic  Scientists say arctic ice continues to shrink  Arctic fossil shows how seals went from land to sea  Drastic emission cuts can save Arctic: Study

In the past, such scientific observations have left many to conclude that if you can't prove global warming is caused by man, it's nonsense to fight it. Happily, one-time doubters like US Sen. John McCain and industry leaders in developed countries look at it differently now. If your house is threatened by a wildfire, do you try to save the house or simply surrender to nature?

As the climate summit in Copenhagen gets closer, there is a steady drumbeat for action. Developed nations and developing countries were once content to blame each other for the problem; now, instead of saying "you first," both are calling the fire department, so to speak. The US and China are struggling to agree but they are talking to each other about climate change and alternative energy. Europe has made stunning leaps reducing its carbon footprint. Vast windfarms are planned for Africa.

In 1421, Gavin Menzies presents a fascinating (and controversial) chronicle of Chinese voyages of discovery years before Europeans like Columbus and Magellan set sail. In the book there is an intriguing map of Greenland, nearly encircled by a sturdy line marking the presumed voyage of Admiral Zhou Wen's fleet almost 600 years ago. If the evidence Menzies' presents can be believed, that heroic Chinese admiral sailed in ice-free Arctic seas - impossible now at any time of year but we're going to see it again, according to forecasters of global warming.

That could have a plus side: a new generation of nautical adventure, enterprise and commerce. But the rising seas that result may spell disaster elsewhere for generations for people, places and creatures of all sorts. As the metaphorical wildfire mentioned earlier burns closer to our house, Copenhagen offers some hope that we humans have called the fire department in time.

Mike Peters is international editor of China Daily