UPDATED: Arctic to be "ice free" in 20 or 30 years

It's-All-Happening-Faster-Than-We-Though Alert: Tedious stories about the Arctic ice keep cropping up, like bad pennies, despite the Arctic ice actually having increased by a million square km since 2007.

The Arctic ice cap will disappear completely in summer months within 20 to 30 years, a polar research team said as they presented findings from an expedition led by adventurer Pen Hadow.

Note that this is the same Pen Hadow who participated in the Caitlin expedition earlier in the year. See here for a dissection of the alarmism that spawned.

It is likely to be largely ice-free during the warmer months within a decade, the experts added.

Veteran polar explorer Hadow and two other Britons went out on the Arctic ice cap for 73 days during the northern spring, taking more than 6,000 measurements and observations of the sea ice.

The raw data they collected from March to May has been analysed, producing some stark predictions about the state of the ice cap. [Gee, there's a surprise - you could have bet your house on it NOT saying the opposite - Ed]

"The summer ice cover will completely vanish in 20 to 30 years but in less than that it will have considerably retreated," said Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at Britain's prestigious Cambridge University.

"In about 10 years, the Arctic ice will be considered as open sea."

And then of course the inevitable hysteria and call to action at Copenhagen:

Loss of sea ice cover will "set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself," he added.

"This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emission from massive carbon pools and extreme global weather changes." [One quarter of the world's population??! I think you've got frostbite on the brain, pal - Ed]

"Today's findings provide yet another urgent call for action to world leaders ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December to rapidly and effectively curb global greenhouse gas emissions."

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn. etc.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Anthony at Watts Up With That does the required demolition job.