Some scientists have determined that loss of Arctic ice might not lead to a tipping point leading to runaway climate change. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14408930 This is good news, and I'm glad to hear some from a credible source for once.
The complexity of the climate is one of the main planks in the skeptics' platform. I'm sure they will happily leap on this news as a sign that we don't understand the systems well enough to predict what will happen in a few decades. But to my the-cup-is-half-full-and-rapidly-leaking mind there are probably just as many ways that the climate models fail to predict serious consequences.
I think the mind plays a great role in how we take in information and assimilate it into our worldview. It takes a huge blow to make a paradigm shift. Skeptics are so invested in their point of view that they will make any mental leap to preserve it. I've been waiting for the end of the world news since the 1970s when I was fighting against the expansion of the use of nuclear power for electricity generation. If I were a Chernobyl resident, I would have already had my told-you-so moment. But even now I see that the threat from nuclear power plants is relatively limited and local. The disaster posed by greenhouse gasses is so much more widespread, yet innocuous appearing. As T.S. Eliot said "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang, but a whimper."
Some say, "Think positive." But a rational perspective on the state of the world can only come to one conclusion: We're doomed!
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