"If there is a connection to Arctic sea ice then there are big implications for us in California," Montañez said. Arctic sea ice has declined by about 3 percent a year over the past three decades, and some forecasts predict an ice-free Arctic ocean as soon as 2020.[emphasis added]
I went and looked up the data and this is what I found.
In 1978 there was around 8.2 million square miles of sea ice. Declining at a rate of 3% a year it should have been in the range of 3.3 million square miles in 2008. There was in fact 6 million square miles of sea ice that year, using August minimums. The real yearly decline is then slightly less than 1% a year. At the yearly rate we have seen to this point we should expect around 5.4 million square miles of ice by 2020, and not zero.
Unless, that is, their version of "math" is different from real math.
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