An Ice Free North Pole by 2040?

According to the Times of London, the great Arctic meltdown is accelerating:

"Ice is melting so fast in the Arctic that the North Pole will be in the open sea in 30 years, according to a team of leading climatologists.

"Ships will be able to sail over the top of the world and tourists will be able visit what was, until climate change, one of planet’s most inaccessible landscapes.

"Researchers assessing the impact of carbon emissions on the world’s climate have calculated that late summer in the Arctic will be ice-free by 2040 or earlier - well within a lifetime.

"Some ice would still be found on coastlines, notably Greenland and Ellesmere Island, but the rest of the Arctic Ocean, including the pole, would be open water.

"The Nasa-funded US team of researchers said the ice retreat is likely to remain fairly constant until 2024 when there will be a sudden speeding up of the process.

"In between 30 and 50 years, they concluded, summer sea ice will have vanished from almost the entire Arctic region.

"Their finding may, however, already be out of date and something of an over-optimistic forecast, said Professor Chris Rapley, head of the British Antarctic Survey.

"He said a recent study by the Global Carbon Project suggests emissions are rising more than twice as fast as in 2000 which is likely to speed up ice-loss even further."

30 to 50-years. That's not a lot of time for our government to come to grips with this prospect and design and put in place the regulations, systems and infrastructure we'll need to deal with it.