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The following interesting article appeared on Canada.Com and is worth your time.

Our governments better start listening to the likes of David Susuki and his counterparts before mankind destroys this planet we live on.

We might all drown otherwise.

Antartica Melting

Canadian Press February 25, 2007 It had been covered over by ice for many millennia - a sprawling and remote part of the marine world that remained one of science's great mysteries. So when two massive ice shelves began collapsing in the Antarctic several years ago, an international team of scientists saw a chance to explore a part of the ocean that had never been seen and learn about life at the bottom of the Earth. What they found was more than they expected - a once pristine marine environment being quickly reshaped by climate change and human behaviour millions of miles away. "When we were there, we feel so far from the cities where we usually live and we are really in the middle of nowhere," Gauthier Chapelle, a biologist based in Brussels, said of his recent trip to the Antarctic with 50 other scientists on the Census of Marine Life expedition. "And then you see that a huge chuck of ice has gone because of our way of life and it shows how everything is intertwined on this planet." The team, which set out from Cape Town on a German research vessel late last year, wanted to find out what lurked on the ocean floor more than 800 metres below the water's surface in an area of the Antarctic that was thought to be undergoing dramatic changes. Scientists from 14 countries, including Canada, Germany and Chile, were keen to see how the environment was being affected by the collapse of the two ice shelves known as Larsen A and Larsen B that had served as a roof over the sea bottom. Larsen A crumbled 12 years ago, while Larsen B fell apart about five years ago, both unable to remain intact in waters that researchers say are warming faster than any place on the planet. The destruction allowed the team to probe a 10,000-square-kilometre portion of the Antarctic using remote operated vehicles, special sounding devices, cameras and two helicopters. They found 1,000 species, including a prehistoric-looking Antarctic ice fish that has no red blood cells; bright pink corals; orange sea stars with 12 arms; glass sponges; and an Antarctic octopus. They expect many are new species that have never been seen before. "What was most striking is that there is so much left for people to discover," said Elaina Jorgensen, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle who was on the 10-week mission that ended in Chile on Jan. 10. "To see corals at 400 to 600 metres deep that were bright pink and bright purple, it's almost unreal at that depth in really the harshest environment on the planet." The team discovered a proliferation of life because the area was now exposed to light, allowing a greater diversity of species to take hold and plankton to grow. Species like sea cucumbers, sea lilies and certain types of sea urchins, which had been previously found only in deep waters, were now showing up in this relatively shallow body of water. But the apparent resilience of the area and its species' ability to adapt to new conditions belies a more ominous situation, say team members. They fear the collapse of the two ice shelves represents the beginning of the loss of sea ice, which is vital to the sustainability of ecosystems and ocean currents. "The polar regions are themselves the most vulnerable to climate change," Michael Stoddart, of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life, said from Hobart, Australia. "They are the canaries in the coal mine and keeping an eye on them will give us a good knowledge into the future of the rate of change, so they are crucial areas for us to keep under observation." Stoddart said the data they've gathered will help monitor future changes in the area and measure the effects of climate change. In many cases, he said scientists don't even know what's out there and therefore won't know what they've lost. "We're beginning to realize that we're destroying the environment before we even know what genetic resources we're getting rid of," he said. "We simply don't know what we have there and if we turn our backs on it and say, well it doesn't matter, then effectively we're mortgaging the future."

Additional material on the melting ice of Antartica can be read at the Washington Post's Special Report.