Civilisation is on the path to insane climate suicide. Arctic ice reduction is an earth climate system tipping point. The behaviour of the climate system has changed from here on. Computer models will need to be re-adjusted to keep up.

The thirty year ice free estimate is an old one, and is very likely to be beaten, as global carbon emissions are still rising. To get back before the tipping point, atmosphere green house gases need to be reduced, not merely slowed or halted. And just how is this Greenhouse gas reduction going to be possible, with carbon corrupt governments supporting even more carbon intensive extreme extraction from coal seam gas and tar sands?

Carbon dioxide trend - http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Methane trend - http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/methane-update/

The rising methane is a worry, and may be the next consequence of the arctic melt tipping point. If US President Obama approves the Keystone pipeline, he can be known in the short term future as the man who pulled the final suicide lever.  Similar epitaph can go to the NSW government if it allows more Coal Seam Gas mining.

And where is the methane coming from?  Maybe some of it is coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which contains large stores of frozen methane at shallow depths.

Here is a link to an interview with a lead scientist, Natalia Shakhova. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD8hU-lbqpE on Arctic shelf methane.  Watch the hands.

I can just imagine the Coal Seam Gas companies using this to argue their methane contributions are becoming less signficant because Nature is adding much more.   It certainly reduces the safe limits of anthropogenic methane and carbon emission budgets.

". . . a continuation of the recent trend in sea ice loss may triple Arctic warming, causing large emissions in carbon dioxide and methane from the tundra this century. . . ."

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/03/04/205600/science-nsf-tundra-permafrost-methane-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-venting/

And here is the graph that trends to 2015 as being the achievement of ice free summer. "The death spiral graph" .  This is an exponential trend. Its too late for the Arctic now, nothing can stop this, but the time to start preventing worse climate insults is now.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/07/313873/arctic-death-spiral-continues-sea-ice-volume-hits-record-low-for-second-straight-year/

Why do I never see this graph in newspapers ?