According the the NSIDA in an article released on March 25th 2008, a 5,282 square mile ice shelf has begun to collapse. The catalyst for this reaction was the initial collapse of a 41 x 2.5 mile smaller ice shelf named Wilkins that started disintegrating into the sea. Check out the animation here.

It is hard to tell what the impact of this ice shelf melting will be in the next coming months. The last huge ice shelf break happened in January 2002 when a region named “Larsen B”, the size of Rhode Island, started to break away and completely melt within 30 days. Wilkins is roughly the size of Northern Ireland.

In the same days as the press release mentioned, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered a speech to the Environmental Committee.

“Now there’s enough evidence to show that there is accelerated melting of some of these large bodies of ice; west Antarctic ice-sheet, the Greenland ice-sheet…I think we need some coordinated actions that would put a price on carbon”

I do not mean to be a pessimist, but I still do not think anyone is listening even when the guy who is delivering the news looks at you like this: