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Undated NASA composite image shows a fully dark (city lights) full disk image centered on the North Pole. (Photo - AFP/NASA-HO/File)

From Common Dreams, perhaps a little good news...

Researchers from some 60 countries will try to better understand the Earth's poles in 2007 and the effect of climate change as part of the first "International Polar Year" since the 1950s. "Close to 60 percent of what is known about the polar regions, particularly the Arctic, comes from research carried out in 1958," said Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian research network on the Arctic. "The difference today is that the new polar year will occur in the context of global warming," Fortier told AFP.

Then from the BBC, a little bit of bad : 2007 to be "warmest on record." Once the summertime Polar Ice Cap is gone, in another 90 years or so, the linked photograph will be a collector's item. I'm stuffing one into my time capsule right now.