So, who'll be the first to swim to the North Pole?

News from Science:

With its wreath of sea ice shrinking ever smaller over the last half-century, the Arctic has served as global warming's canary in the coal mine. By 2050 to 2100, according to climate model predictions, Arctic summers will be ice-free for the first time in about a million years. But new research reveals the ice has been vanishing about 3 times faster than the models have predicted, shifting the inevitable meltdown about 30 years ahead of schedule.