The arctic ice meltdown was big news in 2007. There was a massive drop in the summer arctic ice minimum. The news in 2012 is much worse, blowing all records for the melt out of the water. Ice maps taken in 5-year intervals tell part of the story, but since the ice is also thinning, graphs of average ice volumes are even more illuminating. You don't have to extrapolate very far into the future, perhaps as few as 5-8 years from now, to see an arctic that is nearly ice free for perhaps as long as two months in late summer.

Unfortunately, the so-called "alarmist" climate modellers have been getting the rate of arctic ice melt wrong all right: they were all way too conservative.