In the Q&A after a speech I gave yesterday, one of the people in the audience told how his children had been left very scared about the warming doom being preached to them at school. They were convinced, for instance, that the polar cars were melting clean away.

I promised Ross I’d post something to ease his children’s fears - this update on the ice melt at the North Pole, which global warming scientists early this year claimed could well melt completely this summer. Here is the statellite picture from Thursday (right), and from the same day a year ago: