James is an artist/writer and this post on the weirdly warm winter we experienced up until a few weeks ago is perfect: a beautiful photo comic strip that captures the poignancy of the changes we are witnesses to.
Very highly recommended.

Thanks to WorldChanging for this.

D’oh!
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was released this morning to great media hooha. Apparently it is official that mankind is the guilty party (really? You’re kidding…). IMHO, I’ve always thought this aspect of the global warming/climate change debate was ridiculous because it is a distraction from the far more pressing concern- what to do about it.
The ocean levels rose from six to nine inches during the 20th century and the report estimates another 8-12 inches this century with a 1 in 10 chance that it could be much more (they went conservative on those odds).
The good news here is that this report was created by a very large number of climate scientists and should stop real debate on the causes, moving us to the real issue of changing what we’re doing worldwide.
I hope.

This site shows a current world map and real time carbon emissions (and some scary stats on births and deaths while you’re at the site!)

“We are already in a new era of geography,” said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. “This phenomenon — of an island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice melting around it — is a real common phenomenon now.”

From the NYTimes.com article, The Warming of Greenland

The age of geographic discovery on Earth has long been over, eclipsed by the complete surveying of the planet, satellite imaging and other technologies. The lone exception has been the formation of new islands from volcanic activity. Now we face the discovery of new islands as ice pack recedes and, eventually, the disappearance of low-lying countries as ocean levels rise.