Ayles Ice Shelf now "ice cube"

I haven't paid much attention to the whole global warming controversy over the years. Mostly because I didn't really feel like anything had changed, at least not in my lifetime. But this year seems remarkably different. It's January 5 and today was the first snow I've seen in a month. Odd for Michigan. Feeling the warming trend probably got me interested enough to watch Al Gore's documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. It's funny how timely things like that can be. Here's why...

I was in the laundry mat the other day (really long story involving my cat... don't ask), and I overheard the CNN news report about polar bears being added to the endangered species list. Now, usually I wouldn't pay too much attention to these little factoids except I remembered polar bears being an issue in the documentary. So, I walked around the bank of washers & dryers to watch this little segment. Read about the crisis polar bears are facing here.

Then my wife mentioned to me the other day that a chunk of ice broke off in the Arctic. So I checked it out and learned that it actually happened 16 months ago but nobody noticed because it's so far away. (I guess the world is getting smaller but it's still pretty big.) Here's a few quotes about what happened...

The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 kilometers (155 miles) away picked up tremors from it.

The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 66 square kilometers (41 square miles) in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada`s Arctic.

Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in Canada in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor.

"It is consistent with climate change," Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906.

Maybe we need to take this stuff seriously. I like polar bears.