Correction: I typed predicted the arctic would be ice free below. Per the article I referenced it should have been could be ice free. This was pointed out a couple days agao but I misinterpreted what the complaint was until I reread my post again this morning.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center, which in May 2008 predicted the Arctic would be ice free during the 2008 melt season, underestimated the amount of Arctic ice by as much as 500,000 sq. Kilometers.
The reason? Sensor drift.
How was it discovered? Slashdot readers looked at the pictures and then emailed to ask why ares that were obviously covered in ice were being reported as ice free. Leading to the question who are you going to trust the sensors or your damn lying eyes?
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"Seems quite possible" is not by any means a "prediction". If you Google the news reports from that time, you will only find quotes like this one from an NSIDC scientist (quoted by CNN at http://tinyurl.com/5ezdkm):
"We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is 'does the North Pole melt out this summer?' and it may well."
There is a big difference between predicting something and wondering if it might happen.
Max: Thirty years ago, when climate science was in its infancy and there was much less data, a few scientists thought that cooling was likely. A much larger number predicted warming. A recent survey (http://tinyurl.com/2vdj8u) of the scientific literature from back then found only 7 papers that predicted cooling--fewer than 10% of papers published during that time. In contrast, more than 50% predicted warming. The media, for some reason, picked the 'coolers' for more attention than the 'warmers', but that didn't reflect what most of the scientists were thinking at all.
You are both absolutely free to have your own opinions on global warming--all good scientists are skeptical--but you aren't doing yourselves any favors if you don't have the facts right.
"NSIDC expects the pole to be ice-free."
"NSIDC says the pole might be ice-free."
The first one of those is what anyone would infer from your statement. The second one is what it actually said.
If the weather report says that there is a 30% chance of rain, are you going to say, "The weather service is predicting rain for today"? I wouldn't; I'd say something like, "The weather service says it might rain today." It's not really the same thing, is it?
As to the news reports, Google them. I did, and they all say pretty much the same thing: the NSIDC says that an ice-free Arctic is possible. It's not the NSIDC being alarmist if some media omit the qualification and report this as a flat-out prediction (and, again, I didn't run across any like that anyway).
Basically, people are remembering the reports as an NSIDC prediction that the pole WOULD be ice-free; but that really is not what NSIDC said, and it is not what the reports I've seen said, either.