Now who are you going to believe

Some career politicians or some scientists who actually went there and measured it. From the Malta Business Daily:

Ban Ki-Moon appeals for action on climate change
United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, yesterday issued a dramatic call for global action on climate change following yesterday�s conferral ceremony during which he was invested as a Doctor Honoris Causa.

And a bit more:

Scientists were warning that glaciers and polar ice caps were melting far faster than expected just two years ago, he continued. �Worst case scenarios� in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were already being revised.

From MS/NBC:

Huge ice sheets melting faster, expert warns
The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have awakened and are melting faster than expected, a leading expert told peers ahead of a conference of ministers from nations with Arctic territory.

From The Canada Free Press:

North Pole Sea Ice twice as thick as expected
The research aircraft �Polar 5� today concluded its Arctic expedition in Canada. During the flight, researchers measured the current ice thickness at the North Pole and in areas that have never before been surveyed. The result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.

Normally, newly formed ice measures some two meters in thickness after two years. �Here, we measured ice thickness up to four meters,� said a spokesperson for Bremerhaven�s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. At present, this result contradicts the warming of the sea water, according to the scientists.

And from the Financial Post:

Thick Arctic ice surprises scientific expedition
Ice in the Arctic is often twice as thick as expected, report surprised scientists who returned last week from a major scientific expedition. The scientists - a 20-member contingent from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy - spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic. Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, "we measured ice thickness up to four metres," stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific organization.

The Alfred Wegener Institute is one of the six research organizations involved in the month-long expedition, called Pan-Arctic Measurements and Arctic Climate Model Inter Comparison Project. The other five include three from Canada (Environment Canada, University of Alberta, York University) one from the U.S. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and one from Italy (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.

The path-breaking project broke new ground by employing the Polar 5, a fixed-wing aircraft, rather than a helicopter with its more limited range. The Polar 5 not only landed in the Arctic ice, it towed a device called EM-Bird on an 80 metre-long rope 20 metres above the ice surface. The EM-Bird conducts electromagnetic (EM) induction sounding for ice thickness measurements.

The thickest ice that the expedition found was at Ellesmere Iceland, where thicknesses often exceeded 15 metres.

Like I said, who are you going to believe... More about the Polar 5 here: Research plane Polar 5 on Arctic campaign