A recent study showed alarming news: the Arctic ice cap could disappear in 20 to 30 years thanks to global warming?

Well, the earth has been through this before. During the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM (about 55 million years ago), the temperature of the earth rose an estimated 9-16 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few thousand years! There was no Arctic ice cap and the polar seas were as high as 73 degrees Fahrenheit!

Mass migrations of wildlife occurred during this era, and probably the same will happen again, if we try to hold onto our old ways. I suspect that a positive feedback loop has already begun, and no matter what we do, the earth's temperature is going to rise quite a bit. This will lead to a rise in ocean levels of a few feet, and so displace huge portions of the human population and probably kill a large portion due to disease.

Then the loss of human activity will finally cause CO2 emissions to finally drop, and only then will the ice caps return. At least, there is evidence of the existence of a feedback loop that will lower temperatures..... eventually. It would be very sad if earth ended up like Venus.

This reminds me of the famous quote of Richard Feynman after investigating the Challenger Space shuttle disaster where odds of such an event were 1 in a 100. However, official management claimed the probability was a thousand times less because it was in their interest to do so, to insure the continued funding of " For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Strangely, I am excited about this, because I live in Hawaii, and I like to go bodyboarding.

This year, the waves have been the best since I moved here 25 years ago! Usually this time of year, there are no waves to ride, but the weather report this morning says this weekend, there will be the potential of high surf warnings on the south shore (Waikiki) where I like to go. When that happens, people take off from work, students cut class, and parking is hard to find, because the SURF's UP!

Duenhsiyen.

I follow the ice every year at Cyrosphere. It was obvious a few years ago that the summer would be ice free a lot sooner than first predicted. If you go to the link and to the Compare side by side images its amazing ( down near the bottom of the main page ) arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ The images go back to 1980 so its a great history of ice melt ..... I think it will be an interesting time for everyone.

Humans will cope but its how we cope that will be interesting.

All the ice in the Arctic is a LOT of ice! Fortunately (thank god for any good news here), most of the ice in the Arctic is already in the water, so melting it will not affect the sea level much. But almost all of the ice on Greenland is on land, which means that if that ice melts, it is all going into the sea.It has been estimated that if all of the ice on Greenland melts, the average sea level rise will be more than 600 cm - that's more than 20 feet!

Most coastal cities will be submerged with that amount of water. By the way, the ice in the antarctic is mostly on land too...

Well, I am not looking forward to it. I have a heat allergy and can't handle being hot. It's sad that we aren't taking care of our planet more.

I really enjoyed duenhsiyen answer!

I think in some ways we are doing it to ourselves, people that smoke, cars that burn more oil then gas, pollution in itself has just become just ridiculous... I cant wait for a few years where there is going be a big change in cars on the road, I hope these new hybrids will make some effect to this. Thanks Mike!

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.