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Comment by Turing_Machine | Hacker News Reader

2017: "On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040."

2009: "[S]cientists at Cambridge University predict the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free during the summer within the next ten years (i.e., by 2019)"

http://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2009-10-15-voa41/414370.html

2007: Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm

The date for the Arctic becoming "largely ice-free" appears to be receding about as fast as break-even fusion power. :-)

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It's good for you to point out how little the headlines represent the actual content of the articles, much less the science itself.

For example, that 2007 article:

"In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly. It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040."

Which lines up with the 2017 article.

Cutting edge science is not headline-friendly!

A bit of a buried lede, and not quite headline material in the 2007 BBC article:

"My thinking on this is that 2030 is not an unreasonable date to be thinking of."

Those headlines are talking about different things, the article is already largely ice free in the summer is already true with only 28% being covered year round. As to your 2007 example the direct quote was "My thinking on this is that 2030 is not an unreasonable date to be thinking of."

Don't forget 2040 is only 22 years away, on that time scale weather becomes important not just climate.

While it seems clear all the sibling comments thus far want to point out how inaccurate your comment it, I fell it's an important factor in the general malaise about climate change.

Of any number of people who read headlines only some subset of those read the articles, and even fewer of them remember what the article said.

They literally have been saying, for at least a couple decades before I started paying attention, the world is going to end, for one reason or another, quite soon now.

I thought that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.

One of the few things that benefit from pushed-back dates.

Somehow you think this is the important part of the message?

it might point out that they are wrong and that they don't know what is really going on? which would not surprise me when talking about weather topics.

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