WHEN London is submerged and New York awash, we may look back on 2004 as the year when the water started rising. Observations collected from both North and South Poles show that the world’s ice sheets and glaciers are disintegrating faster than anyone thought possible.
In September we learned that the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning following the collapse of the vast, floating Larsen B ice shelf in 2002. The Arctic Council warned in November that the continent could lose 60 per cent of its ice by 2100. Then, in December, came news that a giant glacier in Greenland,…
