Congratulations, my fellow anatomically modern human. Most especially, those of you who played Sgt. Schultz on a global scale and saw nothing—abs-o-lute-ly nothing!—as temperatures increased, ocean currents shifted, and ice melted. Paleoclimatologist Michael Mann summed up the news about West Antarctica. "This is yet another example of how uncertainty is not our friend when it comes to human-caused climate change. Here once again mother nature is ahead of schedule relative to our best model forecasts. ... There is still a good chance, however, that we can prevent even larger contributions to ice melt and sea level rise (e.g. the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet), if we reduce carbon emissions substantially over the next decade." Mann added, "But make no mistake, this is a reminder of the urgency now of acting to avoid dangerous and potentially irreversible climate change."
The pristine skeleton of a teenaged girl who lived about 13,000 years ago, discovered in a deep, water-filled underground cavern in the sprawling a cave system in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, is providing archeologists with an unprecedented glimpse into the history of the early inhabitants of the Americas.