Hard Cover Maps reveal no shinking Arctic Ice Sheet

I have just checked this link to a BBC article that claims that Arctic ice coverage is still receding.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4290340.stm

"September 2005 will set a new record minimum in the amount of Arctic sea ice cover," said Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder, Colorado.
"It's the least sea ice we've seen in the satellite record, and continues a pattern of extreme low extents of sea ice which we've now seen for the last four years," he told BBC News.

The map showing the change from 1979 to 2000 appears to show incontrovertable evidence that the ice sheet is shrinking. But, luckily, I was able to check the 1960 edition of the Readers Digest World Atlas, prepared under the direction of Frank Debenham, OBE, MA, DSC(hon) Emeritus Professor of Geography at Cambridge, that has plotted the extent of this ice sheet 20 years prior to the first satellite scan.

And surprise, surprise, the large tongues of ice that in 1979 were protruding between Novaya Zemla and Severnaya Zemla, and on the Eastern side of Severnaya Zemla, that is not there today, were also not there in the 1960's.

The BBC map is not clear enough to be certain but it appears that there may have actually been some minimal expansion in the ice limit between Svalbard and Severnaya Zemla. The only portion that does appear to have receded is a small section in the East Siberian Sea.

So while a short, totally inadequate, sample period may indicate a receding Arctic ice sheet, the evidence over a 40 year interval makes it clear that THERE IS NOT THE SLIGHTEST ROOM FOR DOUBT THAT THIS CLAIMED RECEDING TREND IS INTIRELY WITHIN THE RECENT HISTORICAL RANGE OF VARIATION.

Once again, we have so called "highly respected scientific teams" being caught out making extrapolations from limited data sets. It is not only incompetent but downright lazy to limit one's inquiry to the most convenient data sources. But when this is done in relation to a key evidentiary plank in the "Gullible Warming" debate it is inexcusable.