“I once knew a 17-year old boy. He was a natural sportsman and did very well academically too. His future was rosy. Then, just before his ‘A' levels he developed ME-like symptoms so bad that for weeks he couldn't even get out of bed to make it to the bathroom, and for the next three months he could hardly move.

“Over the next two decades he continued to struggle against this recurring debilitating illness with its frequent malaria-like fevers, and the artfully concealed depression that lived in its shadow.

“Yet all the time, he nursed a dream to do something – something very particular. But to his intense frustration he didn't know what it was then.

"However he never gave up searching - and he never gave up hope. This young man went on to achieve his dream. And it happened that his dream came to involve doing something so extreme, so absolute, and so pure that he - and his peers - would know he had won through his illness, achieved something noteworthy, and fulfilled his potential. In fact it was to be something that pushed back the boundaries - in a very small way – of what was known to be humanly possible …

… That boy stands before you now.

“… I'm not six-foot six tall, I haven't got the physique of a body-builder, I'm not even particularly clever – as some of you will have already surmised. In fact I have no obvious God-given talents, except for one, just one thing. You cannot see it, but I have it, and I have it in spades …it's the determination to make the most of what little I've got. And it all starts – and ends - with what goes on in my head. And a head I do have … and, more to the point, so do you. So we've all got what it takes to achieve whatever it is we want to achieve …

“… If I had to reduce down to just three words all the things I've learned - the hardest of ways - through my polar endeavours about how to maximise the chances of achieving a goal, they'd be these: Planning; Progression; and Perseverance. Let me illustrate …

"I used to say that my grandmother's generation went from the use of horse-drawn carts to man walking on the moon.  Our children are going to experience the vanishing of the Arctic ice cap. This is a major feature that you and I have been brought up to view as a central feature of our planet.

"The sight of a mother and her young first year cub just three miles from the northern geographic pole was by my understanding a very unusual sighting.  Seals are not present in any useful number where there are insufficient waterways for them to come up to breathe.

"Therefore if a mother bear feels it is safe to take her cubs so far north the implication is there are more waterways.

"We should not mistake such anecdotal evidence for hard, scientific evidence of climate change, but for me it was one example of a biological indicator of the thinning of the Arctic ice cap…

"Since the 1960s we have lost around 30 per cent of the thickness of the Arctic ice cap. In recent years the northern sea route has become a viable commercial sea route. In the summer ships are regularly making the trip without ice-breakers. At the moment the Arctic ice cap is a huge reflective lid.

"The snow and ice reflect around 85 per cent of the solar radiation that hits it. If you take this lid off, only about 15 per cent of the solar radiation will be reflected, so that energy will be absorbed into the oceans which will lead to major changes to our weather systems."

“Within less than 50 years, the thinning of the ice could lead to a north-west passage route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, through the Arctic archipelago of Canada, becoming viable for commercial shipping and all the implications that has, both for the financial world and for the indigenous population of the high Arctic…