Melting ice in glaciers and at the poles is one of the most feared and debated offshoots projected for a warming world. A number of recent news accounts provided updates on the issue.

In a worldwide survey, the Associated Press reports that glaciers are shrinking in many locations as the climate gets warmer: "In east Africa, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are vanishing. In the icebound Alps and Himalayas of Europe and Asia, the change has been stunning. From South America to south Asia, new glacial lakes threaten to overflow and drown villages below."

The New York Times reported from Antarctica that "profound and potentially troubling changes are taking place, and at a quickened pace. With temperatures climbing in parts of Antarctica in recent years, melt water seems to be penetrating deeper and deeper into ice crevices, weakening immense and seemingly impregnable formations that have developed over thousands of years."

British news organizations, including The Independent, reported that U.K. scientists have discovered that a huge Antarctic ice sheet may not be stable, as previously thought. Instead, the researchers fear the sheet "may be starting to disintegrate," possibly as a result of global warming, and the result might be an enormous 16-foot rise in sea levels.