Arctic about to become unbearable.

Literally, as the NYT pic above illustrates.

We’re likely to break last year’s recorded record for smallest end-of-summer Arctic ice minimum. And, that’s likely to become a sentence we utter every year at about this time.

“We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point,” said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the (National Snow and Ice Data Center), in Boulder, Colo. “It’s tipping now. We’re seeing it happen now.”

Read the full story for just how stressed polar bears are getting.

And, with well-timed insensitivity, five national business groups are fighting back against the Interior Department’s decision earlier this summer to list polar bears as a threatened species.

That includes the American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc.