ICE

Nathan Kaye doesn't need to check the weather forecast before getting dressed for work. Regardless of whether it's going to be 60 or 110 degrees, he pulls on ski boots, a winter parka and gloves. Even then, within minutes of starting his shift, his ears and his nose are bright red. "They're numb," Kaye says with a laugh as he pours ice-cold vodka into a glass made of ice and sets it atop the bar, which is also made of ice. A customer takes her drink to a nearby couch, also carved out of ice.

Wanted: a charity with lots of freezer space. Or a town in need of flooding. Neither scenario is likely for Florida's State Emergency Response Team, which confronts a peculiar dilemma imposed by last year's dearth of hurricanes: The agency has almost 9 million pounds of ice cubes worth $1.8 million -- bagged, bundled and costing the state $90,000 a month in storage fees.

ARE the glaciers spreading, at least to our watering holes? Bartenders around the world have been showing new interest in ice, heretofore an anonymous bit player in cocktails. They're using extra-dense ice, ultra-pure ice, custom-chipped ice, ice frozen in oversized cubes or novel shapes and "double-frozen" ice. It's crunch time! "The question of ice is coming back in vogue," observes Christian Frizzell, co-owner of the Redwood Bar and Grill in Los Angeles.

A vast undersea wedge of gravel and grit holds the ice streams of West Antarctica in place like a doorstop, even as rising seas caused by global warming threaten to undermine them, researchers at Pennsylvania State University said Thursday. The discovery may give the world a bit of breathing room. West Antarctica encompasses enough frozen fresh water -- 7 million cubic miles -- to raise sea levels worldwide 16 feet if its ice sheet disintegrates.

There was less sea ice in the Arctic on Friday than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported. "Today is a historic day," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the center in Boulder, Colo. "This is the least sea ice we've ever seen in the satellite record, and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year."

Two-thirds of the world's polar bear population will be gone by 2050 -- including those in Alaska -- because of thinning Arctic sea ice from global warming, government scientists said Friday. Only in northern Canada and northwestern Greenland were polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

The Arctic ice cap is melting faster than scientists had expected and will shrink 40% by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals, according to government researchers. The Arctic sea ice will retreat hundreds of miles further from the coast of Alaska in the summer, the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.

Arctic sea ice melted to its lowest level ever this week, shattering a record set in 2005 and continuing a trend spurred by human-caused global warming, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said Thursday. Compared to 2005, the previous record-low year for Arctic sea ice, this year has had a decrease of more than 386,100 square miles. The ice hit its lowest level Sunday, and refreezing has already begun in some places, according to satellite imagery used by the center.

The collapse more than 8,000 years ago of the Laurentide Ice Sheet covering much of what is now North America triggered worldwide flooding that may have driven the spread of agriculture throughout Europe. Ocean levels rose nearly 5 feet, flooding what is now the Black Sea and causing it to spill into the Mediterranean, British researchers reported Monday in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

Widespread ice storm may get worse An ice storm slickened roads and sidewalks, grounded hundreds of flights and cut power to tens of thousands in a swath from the Southern Plains to the Great Lakes as even colder weather threatened. The wintry weather was expected to continue through midweek, with ice storm warnings from Texas to Pennsylvania.