Read here. Great article regarding the wild and irresponsible predictions by "experts" about the Arctic sea ice extent (or lack of) made over the last decade. Simply summarized, for political and funding reasons, scientists made claims about melting sea ice, based on models that were designed to predict melting sea ice in the first place -- it's a simple as that. No IPCC scientist or government expert predicted, nor any climate model, that the polar sea ice would actually expand as the chart below shows. Consensus "science" and climate models present a united front in documenting why both are worthless.
At the end of the article is a rationale, scientific explanation of what happened to cause the melting Arctic sea ice from a non-hysterical scientist, unlike those representing the IPCC and the NSIDC. (click on image to enlarge)
A few "expert" quotes from the article -
2007: "And Serreze, "concerned at the accelerated annual loss of Arctic ice", was predicting that the entire polar region, including the North Pole, could witness a total summer melt by 2030."
2007: "He and his team were offering "modelling studies" that indicated northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years, putting the complete disappearance of summer ice at 2013."
2008: "Serreze was back in the fray in June 2008, offering 50-50 odds that the North Pole would be ice-free that summer, "a first in recorded history", he claimed. And, even if it didn't happen that year, it was "just a matter of time"."
2008: "With predictions mounting that the 2008 melt could surpass the "extraordinary 2007 record low", in the August, Serreze was talking to Reuters, telling them that last year's record was blamed squarely on human-spurred climate change. "No matter where we stand at the end of the melt season it's just reinforcing this notion that Arctic ice is in its death spiral," said Serreze."
2009: "the NSIDC, this time in the form of Walt Meier, a research scientist, was saying that the Arctic Ocean "will" be effectively ice free sometime between 2020 and 2040, although it is possible it could happen as early as 2013."
2009: "another study was claiming that: "virtually all the sea ice in the Arctic will have melted during the summer months by 2037, and that it may even disappear as soon as the summer of 2020." The survey was carried out by scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Washington in Seattle "using the six most sensitive computer models of the Arctic region."