Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013.
The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong -- each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters.
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008.
In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years.
If the ice cover disappears, it could have major consequences. Shipping companies are already musing about short cuts through the Arctic, which also contains enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.
Vincent's scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 2,500 miles northwest of Ottawa.
"I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven't experienced in the 10 years that I've been working up there," he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament.
Comment: Ten years is close to zero in reference to geological time.
"We're losing, irreversibly, major features of the Canadian ice scape and that suggests that these more pessimistic models are really much closer to reality."
Comment: Ten years is close to zero in reference to geological time.
In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada's Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 percent.
Comment: 4,000 years old? What was there before the 4,000 years? No ice shelves? How could that be? Especially if this scientist characterizes this event with words such as "irreversibly"? It could never have grown from 4,000 years ago if such was the case. It did not exist 4,000 years ago, grew, may melt, but if it does melt it can never be again - it is irreversible! Words are such powerful tools when programmed to think in one direction only.
Vincent told Reuters last September that it was clear some of the damage would be permanent and that the warming in the Arctic was a sign of what the rest of the world could expect. He struck a similarly gloomy note in his presentation.
"Some of this is unstoppable. We're in a train of events at the moment where there are changes taking place that we are unable to reverse, the loss of these ice shelves, for example," he said.
Comment: We are unable to stop it. We are also unable to cause it. We did not cause the ice shelves to grow 4,000 years ago and we are not the cause of current climatic events either. Things can also change dramatically and quickly. We will ultimately have to see what the planet itself has to say about things. But fear mongering will only blind us all.
"But what we can do is slow down this process and we have to slow down this process because we need to buy more time. We simply don't have the technologies as a civilization to deal with this level of instability that is ahead of us."
Comment: If this winter is an indication of what we are doing then we must already be all powerful and acting to slow down the process. Good job.
...if the word "ice" is dropped from the title!