Will the Arctic be Ice-free in my lifetime?

First became interested in global warming over twenty years ago (see Global Warming - to Australia in a Box) and I read the various reports in the scientific press with increasing gloom as we are trapped on a planet where the climate is changing due to our actions - and there is not a hope in hell of politician getting their heads together round the world to take sufficient action to do anything to halt the process. For instance as things get hotter and dryer in the U.S.A. I can see the demands to extract even more oil will go out in order to keep the air conditioning running.

This morning there was nothing further from my mind as I am trying to down-sized my library by selling off some books on ebay - until I picked up a copy of Tales of the Northern Seas, published in 1870 and came across this picture:

I shivered. It could only be a few years away that the North West passage will be ice free every summer. And while I will be 75 next year there seem to be a real possibility that the first summer when there is no ice cover over, or even near, the North Pole, will come before I die.