The Arctic Snowball Effect  Andrew Sullivan —  Aug 28 2012 @
3:03pm   It's been a bad summer up north:  The Arctic sea ice
extent [Sunday] fell below its previous record low and is
currently losing frozen sea at the rate of ~29,000 square miles
(~75,000 square kilometers) a day. That's equivalent to an area
the size of South Carolina every 24 hours. … Note that this
year's record low was set more than three weeks earlier than the
2007 record. And summer isn't over yet. There's more melting to
come.  Michael Lemonick explains how all that ice isn't just
ice; it's part of our defense against the sun – and its loss
accelerates climate change:  Arctic ice, whether on land or on
the sea, is a powerful reflector that bounces a lot of sunlight
back into space rather than letting it warm the Earth. When that
ice melts, it exposes the darker ground or water underneath,
turning the region into an energy absorber rather than a
reflector. Sea ice is especially vulnerable to melting, and over
the past 30 years or so there