Two items from the BBC today don't provide a very cheery note for scientists. The first article (click on title link above) concerns a warning that climate change, the effect of aircraft exhaust, and other factors could seriously degrade astronomers' ability to study the heavens with Earth-based optical telescopes in just a few decades.
The second item:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4767296.stm
reports on a study indicating Antarctica is losing about 150 square km of ice to the ocean every year. There are uncertainties in the data, as with any complex phenomenon (for example, some parts of the ice sheet, based on other studies, are actually getting thicker) but the University of Colorado scientists involved are certain the net effect on the continent is a significant loss of ice.
COMMENT: There is a lot we don't know about climate change, including how much is due to human activity vs. normal swings in the Earth's temperatures. However, these reports point out the need to minimize the activity we can control, since it amounts, in essence, to an uncontrolled experiment on the planet we inhabit.
(Thanks to my colleague Kris Winkler for pointing out these articles.)
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