The earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback," new research reveals today.

Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found.

As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilising the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it. [...]

"This is the first unequivocal detection of a carbon sink weakening because of recent climate change," said the lead author of the study, Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia. "This is serious. Whenever the world has greatly warmed in the past, the weakening of CO2 sinks has contributed to it."

Others have characterized the study's results in even more alarming tones:

Ian Totterdell, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre, described the research as “an important piece of work”.

He said: “This is the first time we have been able to get convincing evidence that a change in the uptake of CO2 by the oceans is linked to climate change. “It’s one of many feedbacks we didn’t expect to kick in until some way into the 21st century.”

We are witnessing changes that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Changes that were not predicted to occur for several more decades are showing up now, as you read these words of mine. Temperatures and sea levels rising faster than our climate change models predicted. Glaciers vanishing before our eyes. Ice melting in the interior of Antarctica in a region the size of California, where ice has never melted before in recorded history.

Warm temperatures melted an area of western Antarctica that adds up to the size of California in January 2005, scientists report.

Satellite data collected by the scientists between July 1999 and July 2005 showed clear signs that melting had occurred in multiple distinct regions, including far inland and at high latitudes and elevations, where melt had been considered unlikely.

Ocean life is dying, creating "dead zones" where nothing lives. Ocean wind speeds have picked up, leading to more violent ocean storms and hurricanes. The world is experiencing unprecedented levels of drought, wildfires and the spread of infectious diseases. We are the "beneficiaries" of "positive feedbacks" that may make it impossible to control the rate at which the planet's climate is changing:

Some researchers fear that feedbacks may make global warming happen much faster, and be harder to control, than is generally appreciated. The pessimism about the future of scientists such as James Lovelock is largely based on the fact that most of the feedbacks in the Earth’s system are likely to work against us.

All while Exxon continues to pour millions of dollars into the coffers of conservative think tanks which seek to deny that global climate change is occurring. All while the Bush administration continues to mount a diplomatic offensive to prevent any global action on steps to reduce carbon emissions and other green house gases.

Negotiators from the United States are trying to weaken the language of a climate change declaration set to be unveiled at next month's G-8 summit of the world's leading industrial powers, according to documents obtained yesterday by The Washington Post. [...]

The documents show that American officials are also trying to eliminate draft language that says, "We acknowledge that the U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change."

Let me be blunt. I fear for my children and my children's children in the coming century. I fear for humankind in general. We have opened a Pandora's box of ills with our continued use of fossil fuels to power our ever increasing energy consumption and prop up our ever more unsustainable lifestyles. We are driving a knife into the heart of our future with every day we delay taking action to confront this crisis.

The question isn't whether global climate change will be severe or mild, the question now is how many people, now alive or yet to be born, will suffer and die an untimely death as a result of our failure to act now? How much blood will be spilled in the coming wars over resources like water? How many regions in the world will see their supplies of safe drinking water diminish as a result of global climate change? How many cities and their citizens will be drowned in the floods and hurricanes of the coming century? How many will starve from the loss of arable land and decreases in agricultural yields?

How many of our descendants will curse us for our shortsightedness and judge us harshly for the collective failure of political will necessary to prevent or ameliorate this catastrophe in the making? I fear it will be most of them. And they will be right to do so.