New ice, old ice and no ice

That picture is one recently released by NASA of the now-open-for-shipping Northwest Passage across the Arctic. On October 1 you'll be seeing more pictures like this when the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) comes out with its annual report on the summer ice season in the Arctic. We've set another record this summer for least Arctic ice since scientific measuring began more than a century ago. October 1 NASA and JPL will come out with their latest ice study findings as well.

Meanwhile, researchers at USC have found that CO2 did NOT cause the melting of ice at the end of the most recent Ice Age. That's been a commonly accepted theory in climate study. Nope, they find that solar heat and warming waters in the Antarctic began to melt away the ice BEFORE the earth's CO2 levels rose. However, once CO2 did increase it would have made the ice age melt away even faster, they confirm.