Meltdown!

The Arctic is warming up even faster than scientists feared. That could spell doom for the polar bear

If global warming is real, experts have been saying for decades, then basic climate science dictates that it should show up earliest and proceed most rapidly in the Arctic. But even the experts were stunned at the results of a study released last week. After four years of intensive research by more than 250 scientists, a prestigious multinational body called the Arctic Council reported that the region has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the globe over the past 50 years. Arctic Ocean ice has shrunk by as much as 20%, snow cover has diminished on land, and the permafrost underlying the tundra has...

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