Climate Change: The decade beyond 2010 will be like a countdown.

SHOOT: Either we'll reduce our emissions and we'll count those down, or we'll watch ice caps melting, watch oceans rise, and measure how our circumstances begin to change fundamentally. Either way it will be a decade filled, unsually, with tension and troubles, more so than the naughties, or the nineties.

clipped from news.yahoo.com COPENHAGEN – This decade is on track to become the warmest since records began in 1850, and 2009 could rank among the top-five warmest years, the U.N. weather agency reported Tuesday on the second day of a pivotal 192-nation climate conference. In 2007-2009, the summer melt reduced the Arctic Ocean ice cap to its smallest extent ever recorded. In the 2007-2009 International Polar Year, researchers found that Antarctica is warming more than previously believed. Almost all glaciers worldwide are retreating. If 2009 ends as the fifth-warmest year, it would replace the year 2003. According to the U.S. space agency NASA, the other warmest years since 1850 have been 2005, 1998, 2007 and 2006. NASA says the differences in readings among these years are so small as to be statistically insignificant. The difference now is that they are rising because of human activity, and humans could prevent dangerous warming.