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European Union President Jose Manuel Barroso has made an impassioned plea to world leaders to heed the warnings about global warming. He'd been visiting Ny Alesund, a small scientific research community in Norway that calls itself the world's northernmost town at 79 degrees North. His host was Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who wanted to show Barroso the impact global warming had on the Arctic ice mass. Before their helicopter touched down in Ny Alesund, the delegation made a brief landing on the Kongsbreen glacier just to see a small part of the glacier -- a few cubic metres of ice -- break off and fall into the sea, a phenomenon known as calving which experts say has increased with global warming. Scientists have warned that global warming may melt the polar icecaps, raise sea levels and inundate low lying areas, especially if the ice on Greenland and Antarctica was to melt. Jan-Gunnar Winther, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute, briefed Barroso and Stoltenberg on current research and said that in 2007, when sea ice shrunk to a record low in the far north, an area in the Arctic Ocean the size of California was free of ice for the first time since 1979. After the briefing, Barroso stressed that world leaders should heed the warnings of science about global warming and act to combat the problem, "They are calling on our attention for the need to act and to act as urgently as possible. So I really see very important policy implications and I hope that pol...