My first comment after reading with great interest for many months. I find the loss of the arctic ice deeply unnerving and refuse to participate in a guessing game about it's TOD. That being said, I sense that a hastened demise may well benefit us in several ways vis a vis our current woeful ambivalence. The NH weather is now becoming so extraordinarily chaotic that an ice free zone at the pole may have some sort of stabilizing effect. Perhaps the weather will become more predictable rather than less so. Of course, the disruptions to civilizations will be enormous but they're getting to be already. As if to declare the Arctic summer official launched, there is a major fire NE of Fairbanks AK. It is visible on Weather Underground satellite (wundermap). They'll be at or near record high temps (95F!) over the next three days there.