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Get With the Times.org will be a place for Cascadia Times and its readers to share important information and insights that don't make it into the magazine. We plan to be offbeat and to have some fun.

Our new issue is Arctic Meltdown.

The facts about the recent warming of Earth’s north pole, as described in this new issue of Cascadia Times, are truly frightening. Journalists who report the facts about global warming are often accused of fear-mongering, as if reporting the facts about climate change is somehow a crime. It would be a crime not to do so.

We also believe that it is much worse to deny the truth about these facts. Global warming is not just a theory. It is already happening.

What frightens us most is that global warming is arriving with unexpected speed and ferocity. The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change,  has underestimated global warming. Its models did not take into account several important factors. The IPCC did not expect the late-summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean to melt as thoroughly and as rapidly as it has.

Nor did the IPCC factor in the vast quantities of methane that are already seeping from the permafrost as it melts under the Arctic Ocean floor. Methane is 60 times more efficient as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. CO2 is far more abundant in the atmosphere than methane, but scientists say this methane gets into the atmosphere, the results could be staggering.

For every fact, it seems there will always be someone who is a denier.

"Global warming is a gigantic hoax, pure and simple," Philip Brennan, a writer for the conservative news site Newsmax.com, told me in December 2008. "Baby it’s getting cold out there — and it’s going to get worse, much worse!"

People who dispute the facts about global warming may be making it harder than it needs to be to implement a solution. They can paralyze political leaders who need to be taking action before it’s too late, if it’s not too late already. Some experts say there’s already a chance the planet will never return to a climate most of us would consider normal.

Nothing could be more frightening than that.

- Paul Koberstein, Editor, Cascadia Times