I suspect this development portends interesting exogenous challenges for those committed to spreading interstate peace and democratic politics. I’m thinking of mass population displacements and natural disasters in centers of political and financial gravity.

Jan. 18, 2008 — A new study using satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice have revealed that thinner ice that’s only two or three years old now accounts for 58 percent of the ice cover — up from 35 percent in the mid-1980s.

Meanwhile, ice older than nine years had all but disappeared by 2007.

The extinction of the older, thicker ice is effectively melting away the Arctic Ocean’s hedge against complete summer meltdowns, say researchers.

I don’t have the expertise to say whether warming is anthropogenic. But it does seem, for political reasons, that we should do what we can to prevent the same at the south pole. There is more land under that ice, and since land is denser than water, there should be more time to act.