The party’s over, we had us a time..
We burned all the kindling...
Watched the last coals dwindling
And the ice melting down...

-- Eliza Gilkyson

Is the party over?

According to a new study by scientists at the NSICD (National Snow and Ice Data Centre), there's a good chance that Arctic sea ice has melted beyond the point of no return.

Joseph Romm points us to a story in today's edition of the UK's Independent.  The news is not good:

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

Roy Cordato, "Resident scholar" at the John Locke Foundation, asks the question: "What's really going on with Arctic and Antarctic sea ice?"

The answer for Cordato and the JLF can apparently be found at the Exxon-sweet Heartland Institute, who claims that the contracting of Arctic sea ice is due to localized wind patterns and "is unrelated to global warming."

Impressive. Too bad it's only half the story.