My colleague Ruth Davis, who's in Bonn for the crucial climate talks, sent this update earlier today.
Hi there from Bonn,
You probably all saw the news about the Wilkins Ice Sheet break-up.
The report released almost at the same time by the US Geological Survey and British Antarctic Survey records the unprecedented rate of ice melt across the region. It pins this firmly on climate change, suggesting that map-makers are now struggling to keep up with changing face of the Antarctic continent.
Meanwhile here in Bonn, small island nations, mountainous countries, countries subject to flooding and drought - in fact most of the developing world - have all taken to the floor calling for emission reductions which match the science and the scale of the risk. These are (of course) even further away from the cuts to which developed countries and large emerging economies are prepared to commit themselves.
This could seem like a recipe for misery and disempowerment - sometimes it feels like that. But oddly enough, right now this grim news is fuelling a focussed sense of anger, and a determination by affected countries and their NGO colleagues to fight harder and more effectively.
There was something of a rebellion on Saturday in the formal working groups, when it seemed like discussions on tropical forest emissions would be squeezed out of the talks - concerned countries insisted that they were firmly put back in.
There are now lots of national negotiators wandering around the conference centre wearing tee-shirts printed by the Youth Delegation, asking 'How old will you be in 2050? A kind of personal protest against the 'hand-cuffs' they are forced to wear by their governments.
And there is an odd sense that sooner, rather than later, the reality of droughts, ice-melt, floods, famine, ocean acidification, forest die-back and desertification, will collide with the politics - and that we have to keep pushing so that we can act when that moment comes.
It's an open secret that the steps made in any Copenhagen deal are likely to be tiny and tentative in comparison to the effort needed. But also, an open secret that the people pushing for change will never, ever go away; that every day the evidence will accumulate to back us up; that more and more people will become affected and demand action; and that therefore, eventually, we will win.
If you can't change the science, you have to change the politics, is the catch-phrase for now. Naive? Maybe - but then that's like saying it's naive to try and plug the holes when your ship is sinking, or grab the controls when your plane is crashing. Especially when you only have the one ship.
Ruth