Global Climate past the "tipping point?"

I had a friend who once said, "maybe the reason the Bush's aren't worried about global warming/climate change, is that they know we're going to get oil shortages before the permanent damage is done."

Well, that appears to be a miscalculation. Apparently, we can have both oil shortages and permanent environmental damage thanks to the republican global warming deniers.

Two articles on reaching the "tipping point". First, NYTimes recaps the report the Independent published a week ago.

The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in at least a century of record keeping, continuing a trend toward less summer ice, a team of climate experts reported yesterday. .......

The change also appears to be headed toward becoming self-sustaining: the increased open water absorbs solar energy that would otherwise be reflected back into space by bright white ice, said Ted A. Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold," Dr. Scambos said.

And second, an article from a month ago from BBC:

The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting, which could speed the rate of global warming, New Scientist reports.

The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago.

The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball, scientists fear. .....

The whole western Siberian sub-Arctic region has started to thaw, he added, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".

Oh, my.