The prospect of the arctic being ice-free within the next decade stuns me. It's another order of magnitude (sort of) rate of increase in the rate of increase.

There is this snippet from Kolbert's "Field Notes from a Catastrophe":

"Obviously, if you get drought indices like these, there's no adaptation that's possible. But let's say it's not that severe. What adaptation are we talking about? Adaptation in 2020? Adaptation in 2040? Adaptation in 2060? Because the way the models project this, as global warming gets going, once you've adapted to one decade, you're going to have to change everything the next decade. [David Rind, GISS climate scientist, p111, Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe]"

I'd never thought of it that way but had focused on "what is the right paradigm" and how important it might be to jump to it directly. The requirement for a radically changing series of adaptations pretty well shoots holes in all the lifeboats. Restructuring our entire resource base decade over decade just to keep up - not going to happen.

cfm in Gray, ME