This is a pic from a National Geographic article about the fact that Arctic ice is at a record low this year. The purple line is the average August point for the years 1979 to 2000. The white is where the ice is now.

This is extra scary because:

• The current ice coverage is well below the record low which was set in 2005
• There is still a full month of melting this summer so things are only going to get worse
• The current rate of melting is way faster than what was predicted by computer models

Frightening stuff. The thing is that climate is a complex adaptive system so this kind of thing could easily kick off a massive chain reaction of changes. I’ll blog about it sometime.

Anyway, this is why all sorts of Arctic countries are starting to stake claims to the Arctic. I recently posted about how a Russian expedition recently planted their flag on the seabed of the North Pole.