Waiting for the ice to break?

Global warming was the topic of lunch conversation today. I thought of it again as I nearly fell through the ice while skate skiing across Loon lake with my brother. (If you haven't experienced that kind of moment--the kind that paralyzes your breath with panic--I highly recommend it). This time I heard the familiar crunch of my skies through the first thin layer of crust over the snow, and all seemed well as I scanned the snow covered lake immediately in front of me...But when i looked down I heard ice cracking and saw water running over my skies. I laughed a warning to my brother (who was grinning and poking his pole through open water) and used some mad turning skills to get to thicker ice in time to stay above water. Once a hundred yards back, we were able to survey the area and realized that it was easy to spot thin ice (under snow it's bluer and generally not quite as snow-covered) on both sides of the spot we'd tried to ski through. Still, our mistake could be rationalized easily enough...perhaps in the same way the Bush administration and some scientists are rationalizing a lack of human effect on global warming. (Come on, treat me to this one analogy, please?) A few reasons we should have been able to trust the ice: 1) yesterday the lake held an ice fishing contest, several fourwheelers and snowmobiles. 2) we were following the snowmobile tracks. 3) we had just skied over the other half of the lake and even determined via an icefishing hole that the ice was a good six inches thick (2in. required to hold a person). 4) the direction in which we were skiing showed no signs of thin ice within 10 yards or so. Well, any proud Ole or Lena could give you an essay on the flaws of those reasons. It had been 32 degrees for the better part of the week and today, the snowmobile tracks we followed could have been made two weeks ago, the icefishing was one the other half of the lake, just cuz one half of the lake is frozen doesn't mean the other half doesn't contain a hot spring, and while the part I almost sunk through didn't look like thin ice--likely because of deeper snow due to driftage--if I'd just looked up to survey what was going on 10 yards away I would have realized I was skiing across a bridge between thin ice--i.e. i was on thin ice myself. However, I was so focused on where I wanted to go, where I wanted there to be safe ice that by only staring at what was right in front of me, it was easy to convince myself everything was OK. I could only stay in my own world for so long though--pretty soon I was watching the only thing between me and a cold bath disintegrate.
The folks in the great mountains have been watching glaciers melt for years; those on tropical coasts have been witnessing coral reefs bleaching; now the signs are sadly becoming clearer every season around the world. Everywhere is affected now...and we've fooled ourselves onto thin ice. What's really the clincher about global climate change, though, is that as the U.S. bumbles across the ice, we're dragging the world with us. Disgusting.