Thunder? It's the sound of Greenland melting

ILULISSAT, Greenland (Reuters) -- Atop Greenland's Suicide Cliff, from where old Inuit women used to hurl themselves when they felt they had become a burden to their community, a crack and a thud like thunder pierce the air.

"We don't have thunder here. But I know it from movies," says Ilulissat nurse Vilhelmina Nathanielsen, who hiked with us through the melting snow. "It's the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If we're lucky we might see one break apart."

It's too early in the year to see icebergs crumple regularly but the sound is a reminder. As politicians squabble over how to act on climate change, Greenland's ice cap is melting, and faster than scientists had thought possible.

A new island in East Greenland is a clear sign of how the place is changing. It was dubbed Warming Island by American explorer Dennis Schmitt when he discovered in 2005 that it had emerged from under the retreating ice.

If the ice cap melted entirely, oceans would rise by 23 feet, flooding New York and London, and drowning island nations like the Maldives.

A total meltdown would take centuries but global warming, which climate experts blame mainly on human use of fossil fuels, is heating the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth.

"When I was a child, I remember hunters dog-sledding 50 miles on ice across the bay to Disko Island in the winter," said Judithe Therkildsen, a retiree from Aasiaat, a town south of Ilulissat on Disko Bay.

"That hasn't happened in a long time."

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This is getting scary.

I can remember as a boy and a teenager in the Midwest during the fifties and sixties, the winters were cold. Very cold. In Southern Indiana, the snow stayed on the ground all winter long and it was the right of spring for the county to flood from the White River as the snow melted. It was not uncommon to see the Ohio River frozen solid!

When we got a snow, if it was eight inches or below, school was in session and factories were open. These days we would be lucky to 8 get inches all winter long! We did, however, get 22 inches 2 years ago. That snow didn't last long. It was melted within 3 days.

Something is wrong. This is more than just a routine climate change.

The really scary part about all of this is, politicians are dismissing global warning as not being real so special interests and corporations across the US and the world can continue to earn their mighty dollar!

Species of animals are extinct and nearing extinction. Mankind will be next. I don't trust the leadership we have to actually do anything about it.