The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished….

“I would argue that, from a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multiyear sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” said Barber [Canada's Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba].

The latest tracking of Arctic sea ice extent from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that we’ve hit the record low Arctic sea ice extent for this time of year.  In a post last week, “Warm winds slow autumn ice growth,” NSIDC noted “October 2009 had the second-lowest ice extent for the month over the 1979 to 2009 period.”

As Reuters noted in their remarkable piece on Canadian cryosphere scientist David Barber, “Scientists link higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.”

Duh.

Here’s more on what Barber found in a recent expedition:

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In the first 40 minutes of Saturday’s debate on the landmark bill, representatives from the minority party objected — or threatened to object — no fewer than 75 times, throwing in 35 “parliamentary inquiries” for good measure. The debate was delayed by nearly 90 minutes.

Anybody who wondered whether more active involvement by President Obama in the climate bill process — lots of town hall meeetings, big speeches, more direct lobbying of members — would have led to a better outcome now has their answer.  No.

After all of the administration’s effort — “hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to “answer the call of history” — Democrats passed the health care reform bill 220-215 with 39 defections.  Precisely one Republican voted for it, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, who represents a heavily Democratic district in Louisiana.  So the score in the House is 0 votes for the stimulus, 1 for health care reform and a whopping 8 for the climate and clean energy bill, which actually ended up with one less vote overall – see The U.S. House of Representatives approves landmark (bipartisan!) climate bill, 219 – 212. Waxman-Markey would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill.

We’ve recently seen every Senate Republican support a trumped-up effort to boycott and obstruct the clean energy bill (see “The GOP’s phony excuse for delaying the climate and clean energy bill“).  The WashPost‘s Dana Milbank has an excellent piece on the GOP’s essential (Groucho) Marxist nature over the health care bill, “The object of their objections“:

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