"A remote chain of Arctic islands is advertising itself as a showcase of bad things to come from global warming.

Visitors to Svalbard can see reindeer, seals or polar bears in the Arctic, where U.N. scientists say warming is happening twice as fast as on the rest of the planet in what may be a portent of changes further south.

"Svalbard is an important meeting place...You clearly see the melting of the ice, problems for polar bears, for birds, which are damaged by global warming and environmental pollutants," Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy told Reuters.

A group of Dutch, British and Irish students attended a climate change college in Longyearbyen run by Ben & Jerry's, a U.S. ice cream maker, to educate them about climate change and help them launch grassroots environmental campaigns back home.

Briton Rob Bell, for instance, wants mobile phone companies to create chargers that switch off when the phone is full: "If everyone unplugged their phone chargers it would be enough to power 33,000 homes for a year."

Very interesting, and also very compelling to see how the world has changed due to global warming. The statistics is very interesting too, stating that if everyone unplugged their phone chargers, it would be enough to power 33,000 homes for a year. I would like to see how they came up with this statistic. Anyways, it's a real situation with the climate changes and we should all do our part to not further damage the environment more than it is already.