It doesn't take a company or a government to save the world (though, admittedly, it helps). People - individual people - are making a better future right now, and we've got a passel of the best. Brilliant minds from art to science, entertainment to architecture, government to technology and points in between are writing for SCI FI's new online blog, "How You Can Save the World". This blog site will bring you amazing ideas from the frontiers of innovation and help set forth first steps in helping solve some of the challenges we face today. Read it and join the conversation.

"We were here a few weeks ago and there were a lot of jellyfish. We didn't even go in the water. It was horrible," one teen told CBS News correspondent Susan Koeppen.

And with thousands being stung by jellyfish this summer, lifeguards at Long Beach are armed with spray bottles filled with alcohol and water to take away the pain, says Koeppen.

"We didn't get these a lot years ago," says Chief Lifeguard Paul Gillespie, "but now they're, we're getting, the frequency of them a lot more. ... We've had some of them that were just (so) tremendous that we have to come and pick off the beach."

It's not just beaches seeing a problem, Koeppen points out. "During the recent New York City triathlon, thousands of competitors were stung by jellyfish in the Hudson River.

"Sharks are going to arrive in Antarctica as long as the warming trend continues, a bit more slowly than crabs - crabs are going to get there first," said Professor Cheryl Wilga of the University of Rhode Island (URI), US. "But once they do get there they are capable of eating the organisms that live there."

Professor Wilga said the arrival of sharks and shell-crushing bony fishes would lead to dramatic changes in the number and proportions of species found there.

Shrimp, ribbon worms and brittle stars are likely to be the most vulnerable to population declines.

Dr Sven Thatje of the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, said animals living in shallow water in Antarctica were unique on Earth today because they evolved in a very cold environment over tens of millions of years.

"A fire of this size and this intensity in this country would have been extremely rare 15, 20 years they're commonplace these days," Boatner says.

"Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire. And if we had one or two of those a year, that was probably unusual. Now we talk about 200,000 acre fires like it's just another day at the office. It's been a huge change," he says.

Asked what the biggest fires now are, Boatner says, "We've had, I believe, two fires this summer that have been over 500,000 acres, half a million acres, and one of those was over 600,000 acres."

"You wouldn't have expected to see this how recently?" Pelley asks.

"We got records going back to 1960 of the acres burned in America. So, that's 47 fire seasons. Seven of the 10 busiest fire seasons have been since 1999," Boatner says.

Mr Gore, US vice-president under Bill Clinton, said he was "deeply honoured".

Mr Gore, 59, won an Oscar for his climate change film An Inconvenient Truth while the IPCC is the top authority on global warming.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said he was "overwhelmed" by the award.

He told a cheering crowd of colleagues and journalists outside his office in Delhi that he hoped the award would bring a "greater awareness and a sense of urgency" to the fight against global warming.

Rattlesnakes - everywhere. More than Bo Slyapich has seen in his 20-year career as a snake wrangler. The prolonged drought and extreme heat have combined to drive the thirsty and venomous creatures too close for comfort - back decks, play equipment - anywhere they can find shade.

What do they want?

"Food. Just like you go to the supermarket to go shopping, they come to our homes to go shopping," Slyapich says.

Not too far from the steps to homeowner Tom Mahan's family pool, there was a four-foot rattlesnake.

He's found them even sipping from his pool. Now he's taken protective measures.

"Half-inch grid galvanized fencing around the three-acre perimeter here, which keeps 99 percent of any kind of snakes out," Mahan said.

Deer and coyotes are coming down from the hills, too. A disoriented bear climbed up a utility pole in triple-digit heat.

"It is uncharted territory," said Paul Edelman of the Santa Monica Mountain Conservatory. "It is the equivalent of the stories you see on the big droughts in the African Serengetti plains where the animals drop three feet in front of the water hole."

A new study by NASA scientists suggests that greenhouse-gas warming may raise average summer temperatures in the eastern United States nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2080s.

"There is the potential for extremely hot summertime temperatures in the future, especially during summers with less-than-average frequent rainfall," said lead author Barry Lynn of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University, New York.

The research found that eastern U.S. summer daily high temperatures that currently average in the low-to-mid-80s (degrees Fahrenheit) will most likely soar into the low-to-mid-90s during typical summers by the 2080s. In extreme seasons – when precipitation falls infrequently – July and August daily high temperatures could average between 100 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit in cities such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers analyzed nearly 30 years of observational temperature and precipitation data and also used computer model simulations that considered soil, atmospheric, and oceanic conditions and projected changes in greenhouse gases. The simulations were produced using a widely-used weather prediction model coupled to a global model developed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The global model, one of the models used in the recently issued climate report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was utilized in this study to identify future changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns due to the build up of greenhouse gases. This information was then fed into the weather prediction model to forecast summer-to-summer temperature variability in the eastern United States during the 2080s.

The weather model showed that extreme summertime surface temperatures developed when carbon dioxide emissions were assumed to continue to increase about two percent a year, the "business as usual" scenario. These findings are too recent to be included in the latest IPCC report.

Thousands of football-shaped hornet nests are now dotted all over the forests of Aquitaine, the south-western region of France hugely popular with British tourists.

"Their spread across French territory has been like lightning," said Jean Haxaire, the entomologist who originally identified the new arrival.

He said he had recently seen 85 nests in the 40-odd miles which separate the towns of Marmande and Podensac, in the Lot et Garonne department where the hornets were first spotted.

The hornets can grow to up to 1.8in and, with a wingspan of 3in, are renowned for inflicting a bite which has been compared to a hot nail entering the body.

Billions of people will suffer water shortages and the number of hungry will grow by hundreds of millions by 2080 as global temperatures rise, scientists warn in a new report.

The report estimates that between 1.1 billion and 3.2 billion people will be suffering from water scarcity problems by 2080 and between 200 million and 600 million more people will be going hungry.

The assessment is contained in a draft of a major international report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be released later this year, Australia's The Age newspaper said.

Rising sea levels could flood seven million more homes, while Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, treasured as the world's largest living organism, could be dead within decades, the scientists warn, the newspaper said.

The Age said it had obtained a copy of the report, believed to be one of three prepared for release by the IPCC, which is highly regarded for its neutrality and caution.

While he is not technically a nominee - the film's director, David Guggenheim, won the nod, as did singer Melissa Etheridge for the song "I Need to Wake Up" - Gore said he was "thrilled" that his movie was honored.

"The film ... has brought awareness of the climate crisis to people in the United States and all over the world," Gore said in an e-mail statement. "I am so grateful to the entire team and pleased that the Academy has recognized their work. This film proves that movies really can make a difference."

Aides say the former vice president plans to walk the red carpet with Hollywood's beautiful people at the Academy Awards ceremony next month.

"An Inconvenient Truth" has been a critical and box office success, bringing in more than $24 million to make it the third highest-grossing documentary in history. A companion book has been on national best-seller lists for months.

The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record and nearly identical to the record set in 1998, according to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Seven months in 2006 were much warmer than average, including December, which ended as the fourth warmest December since records began in 1895.

Based on preliminary data, the 2006 annual average temperature was 55°F - 2.2°F (1.2°C) above the 20th Century mean and 0.07°F (0.04°C) warmer than 1998. NOAA originally estimated in mid-December that the 2006 annual average temperature for the contiguous United States would likely be 2°F (1.1°C) above the 20th Century mean, which would have made 2006 the third warmest year on record, slightly cooler than 1998 and 1934, according to preliminary data. Further analysis of annual temperatures and an unusually warm December caused the change in records.

These values were calculated using a network of more than 1,200 U.S. Historical Climatology Network stations. These data, primarily from rural stations, have been adjusted to remove artificial effects resulting from factors such as urbanization and station and instrument changes which occurred during the period of record.

The unusually warm temperatures during much of the first half of the cold season (October-December) helped reduce residential energy needs for the nation as a whole. Using the Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index (REDTI - an index developed at NOAA to relate energy usage to climate), NOAA scientists determined that the nation's residential energy demand was approximately 13.5 percent lower than what would have occurred under average climate conditions for the season.

A Scottish team from Aberdeen University and the Scottish Agricultural College found that the number of harbor porpoises dying from starvation rose to 33 percent in 2002 and 2003-up from 5 percent in previous years.

The study, reported in the journal Biology Letters, was based on autopsies of beached harbor porpoises, Europe's smallest whale.

The porpoises rely heavily on sand eels, which make up to 80 percent of the mammals' diet in the spring, said Aberdeen University's Colin MacLeod, who led the study.

"We didn't really find other species of fish in their stomachs," he said. "If the sand eels aren't there, then there isn't any alternative food for them."

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.

Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert. Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.

The United States is the only country to ever deny funding to UNFPA for non-budgetary reasons. In July 2002, the U.S. Administration announced its decision to withhold $34 million - that had previously been appropriated by Congress to UNFPA - based on false claims that the Fund supports coercive abortion in China. The decision was taken despite recommendations made by a State Department fact-finding team to release the funds. The State Department team investigated UNFPA-supported projects in China and submitted a report in May stating, based on what we heard, saw, and read, we find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC [People's Republic of China]. Indeed, UNFPA has registered its strong opposition to such practices.

The current Administration has, so far, withheld $127 million in funds appropriated by Congress. UNFPA has publicly stated that it has never, and will never, be involved in coercion in China or any part of the world. The Fund is a staunch supporter, and promoter, of the human rights-based approach to family planning.

"We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics said.

Boehm based his comments on the results of a project conducted by a group of European institutes between March 2003 and August 2006. Their aim was to reconstruct the climate in the region encompassing the Rhone Valley in France to the west, Budapest, Hungary to the east, Tuscany, Italy to the south and Nuremberg, Germany to the north over the past 1,000 years.

Boehm said the current warm period in the Alpine region began in the 1980s, noting that a similar warming occurred in the 10th and 12th centuries. However, the temperatures during those phases were "slightly under the temperatures we've experienced over the past 20 years."

Mr Murdoch also says he has had a change of heart on climate change and now believes global action is needed - although not in the form of the US-opposed Kyoto Protocol.

Mr Murdoch has called for a new treaty that is acceptable to all countries and brings in emerging economies.

"I have to admit that, until recently, I was somewhat wary of the warming debate. I believe it is now our responsibility to take the lead on this issue," he said.

"Some of the presumptions about extreme weather, whether it be hurricanes or drought, may seem far-fetched. What is certain is that temperatures have been rising and that we are not entirely sure of the consequences."

"The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt."

In the documents, a request from CNBC's On The Money for an appearance by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) scientist Tom Knutson was, for some reason, forwarded to the press office for the United States Department of Commerce and answered by Chuck Fuqua, who was previously the 2004 Republican National Convention Director of Media Operations.

Mister Fuqua responded by asking the NOAA what Mr. Knutson's stance on global warming's impact on hurricanes was, specifically asking if it was consistent with that of two scientists who have claimed there is no impact on hurricanes from global warming.

After being informed that Knutson believed that global warming would lead to a "very small increase in hurricane intensity" that wouldn't be felt for nearly a century, Fuqua requested that "one of the other guys" be sent.

At that point, communication between Fuqua and NOAA was suspended.

All around the world amphibians - frogs, toads, salamanders, newts and the like - are facing extinction by a rapidly spreading fungus that's being made even more deadly by pollution and overdevelopment, some of world's top scientists warned in research published Friday. At least 427 species are considered "critically endangered," with at least a third of all amphibians threatened. In the past 25 years, the scientists say, about 122 species have become extinct.

But the fungus, a unique species called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, could start taking on a larger role in the increasing extinction because of global warming, which scientists suspect is lowering amphibians' resistance to the disease.

The fungus was discovered in Australia and Panama only eight years ago and since then has spread across Europe and both the Americas, causing skin infections called chytrid disease in every amphibian species it attacks. The death rate from the infections is 100 percent, biologists have found. The disease, they concluded, "causes catastrophic mortality in amphibian populations, and subsequent extinctions."

The oxygen-starved "dead zone" along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought, scientists said.

Weather, not pollution, appears to be the culprit, scientists said, and no relief is in sight. However, some said there is no immediate sign of long-term damage to the crab fishery in the dead zone, a 70-mile stretch of water along the Continental Shelf between Florence and Lincoln City.

Oregon State University scientists looking for weather changes that could reverse the situation aren't finding them. They say levels of dissolved oxygen critical to marine life are the lowest since the first dead zone was identified in 2002. It has returned every year.

Strong upwelling winds pushed a low-oxygen pool of deep water toward shore, suffocating marine life, said Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at OSU.

Some Spanish beaches have been closed, but Sicily and North Africa are also reported to be badly affected.

Researchers say at least 30,000 people have been stung since summer began.

Marine biologists blame hot dry weather for bringing jellyfish closer to the shore, and say overfishing may be increasing jellyfish numbers.

A recent survey by the Oceana environmental group found concentrations of jellyfish of more than 10 per square metre in some areas off the Spanish coast.

From 2002 until this year, NASA's mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can."

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" deleted. In this year's budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is "to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."

David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President Bush’s goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.

But the change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists, who say the "understand and protect" phrase was not merely window dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Although Hansen will no longer have the mission statement to justify his research on global warming, on July 29, Griffin assured The New York Times that the change does not reduce NASA's commitment to Earth science. "The strategic plan states that one of our strategic goals is to "study Earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs."

But skepticism remains. One scientist (who did not want to be named for fear of retribution from NASA) questioned the motivation behind this recent change. "It's really curious to see these changes coming during the Bush Administration — perhaps the most science-unfriendly administration in recent history. From having White House flunkies doctoring scientific reports on global warming, putting political 'minders' in charge of science communication, and slashing budgets for Earth and environmental science, you have to wonder if this is all politically driven."

SOMEONE SHOULD sit NASA's leaders down and have them read the part of the agency's mission statement that says NASA will work to "understand and protect our home planet." Budget cuts, commitments to the International Space Station, and President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the moon by 2020 have forced the cancellation or postponement of projects aimed at better understanding what is happening on Earth.

Earth is losing species faster than at any time for at least 65 million years, when it was hit by an enormous asteroid that wiped out thousands of animals and plants, including the dinosaurs.

Scientists say the rate at which species are going extinct is between 100 and 1000 times greater than the normal "background" extinction rate - and it's all because of human activity.

The call for action comes from some of the most distinguished scientists in the field, including Georgina Mace of the UK Institute of Zoology, Peter Raven, head of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis and Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank.

"For the sake of the planet, the biodiversity science community had to create a way to get organised ... and together with one clear voice advise governments on steps to halt the potentially catastrophic loss of species already occurring," Dr Watson said.

Atmospheric scientists around the world agree that the additional carbon dioxide in the air and oceans has come from exponential growth in fossil fuel burning emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

Current carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been for at least 650,000 years, according to ice core data from the Arctic and Antarctic.

Ocean acidity has already increased 30 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, said Richard Feely, an oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

By the end of the 21st century that could go up to 150 percent, he said.

"This is not controversial," said Kleypas, referring to the current acidity levels. There's an overwhelming amount of data backing it up, she said.

Research conducted by a Nasa- affiliated scientist suggests that the frozen object that plummeted from the clear sky last Friday morning was one of the first "megacryometeors" to be recorded in Africa.

And Professor Jesus Martinez-Frias, head of the Planetary Geology Laboratory at the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, has warned that the microwave oven-sized ice object could be a portent of "serious environmental problems".

Frias is an authority in the megacryometeor phenomenon, having written a number of research papers on possible reasons for its development. According to his research, falling ice balls have been recorded since the 19th century.

And, six years ago, a plague of falling ice balls caused extensive damage to cars and an industrial storage facility in the Iberian Peninsula.

Located five to nine miles above the surface, the tropopause marks the limit of clouds and is important in the development of storms. Global warming may be making the tropopause colder, moister and more turbulent, creating conditions in which ice crystals grow like ordinary hailstones in thunderclouds, but much, much bigger. We recommend watching the skies and stocking up on umbrellas.

Western wildfires have increased "suddenly and dramatically" since the late 1980s and the wildfire season grew longer -- a pattern that appears tied to global warming, according to a study published Thursday.

"The increase in large wildfires appears to be another part of a chain of reactions to climate warming," said Dan Cayan, a co-author of the paper and director of the climate research division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The authors said that while part of the increase may be attributed to natural fluctuations, evidence also links it to the effects of human-induced climate warming.

Scientists have become increasingly concerned in recent years about the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels. Average worldwide temperatures have risen this century as a result of what many believe is a greenhouse effect from those emissions.

Asked about the environment, Hawking, who suffers from a degenerative disease and speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer, said he was "very worried about global warming." He said he was afraid that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid."

Deserts in the American Southwest and around the globe are creeping toward heavily populated areas as the jet streams shift, scientists reported Thursday.

The result: Areas already stressed by drought may get even drier.

Satellite measurements made from 1979 to 2005 show that the atmosphere in the subtropical regions both north and south of the equator is heating up. As the atmosphere warms, it bulges out at the altitudes where the northern and southern jet streams slip past like swift and massive rivers of air. That bulging has pushed both jet streams about 70 miles closer to the Earth's poles.

Since the jet streams mark the edge of the tropics, in essence framing the hot zone that hugs the equator, their outward movement has allowed the tropics to grow wider by about 140 miles. That means the relatively drier subtropics move as well, pushing closer to places like Salt Lake City, where Thomas Reichler, co-author of the new study, teaches meteorology.

If the trend continues through the end of the century, it would drive rain-bearing storms toward higher latitudes, deprive heavily populated southern Europe of much-needed winter rain and snow, and expand the world's subtropical deserts, atmospheric scientists say.

"It's a big deal," notes Thomas Reichler, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist and a member of the research team, which reported its results in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Some aspects of the results are consistent with global-warming projections, team members note. If the cause does prove to be global warming, these results would represent the first direct satellite evidence of its impact on worldwide atmospheric circulation, says team leader Qiang Fu, a researcher at the University of Washington.

A new, unpublished research paper by Kerry Emanuel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology torpedoes one of the few comforting thoughts of this storm-racked era: The notion that our current spree of active hurricane seasons is part of a natural cycle that's due to calm down in 10 or 20 years.

Instead, Emanuel says, the culprit is probably global warming.

As a result, "it's unlikely we'll ever see a quiet decade for the next 100 years in the Atlantic," said Emanuel, a professor of tropical meteorology and climate, and author of the respected 2005 hurricane text Divine Wind. "I don't think there's any evidence of anything you would call a cycle."

We still could see some calm years here and there, he said — maybe because of a periodic El Niño, which depresses Atlantic hurricanes.

The new paper, co-written with Penn State researcher Michael Mann, promises to stoke a debate Emanuel inspired last summer — when he published research tying global warming to an increase in hurricane strength in both the Atlantic and North Pacific since the 1970s.

These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.

"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He added that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."

Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.

Once in 2002, Milly said, Interior officials declined to issue a news release on grounds that it would cause "great problems with the department." In November 2005, they agreed to issue a release on a different climate-related paper, Milly said, but "purged key words from the releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate' and 'climate change.' "

A large majority of Americans - 85% - say global warming is probably happening, according to a new TIME magazine/ABC News/Stanford University poll. An even larger percentage (88%) think global warming threatens future generations. More than half (60%) say it threatens them a great deal; 38% feel that global warming is already a serious problem, and 47% feel that it will be in the future.

Just over half of Americans (52%) say weather patterns in the county where they live have grown more unstable in the last three years and half (50%) feel that average temperatures have risen in their county. A large majority (70%) think weather patterns globally have become more unstable in the last three years and 56% feel average temperatures around the world have risen.

Almost half (49%) say the issue of global warming is "extremely important" or "very important" to them personally, up from 31% in 1998. When asked about the causes of rise in the world’s temperatures, 31% feel it is caused by the things people do, 19% feel it is due mostly to natural causes, and 49% feel it is a combination of the two. Almost seven-in-ten (68%) Americans think the government should do more to address global warming, according to the poll; however, 64% think scientists disagree with one another about global warming.

Two-thirds of Americans (66%) say President George W. Bush's policies did little or nothing to help the environment in the past year. More than half (54%) feel American businesses did little or nothing to help. Three-quarters want to see Bush and others - Congress, American businesses and the American public - take action to help the environment in the year ahead. About one-third (35%) of Americans say that in the past year they have personally given a lot of thought to the impact they were having on the environment.

In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line "... the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. ..." References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase "earth may be" undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn't room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.

"Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting," says Piltz. "That's why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they're retired or unless they're ready to resign."

Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.

"Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river," Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.