" ... the first time in human history ..."? Really? Have the people at "The Independent" got some sort of time machine to verify this? What a sloppy lead-in for an article.

Heck, I say it's a good thing -- for tourism. Maybe there will be some high-priced cruises to the north pole and somebody will cash in on it.

Well I imagine that they have been able to measure the ice and sample it. I am no expert but there are ways to determine the age of that ice, correlating the amount of CO2 with what is measured in other core samples must allow scientists to determine the age of the ice on the north pole. There may well be other means to determine that. Meaning this is probably not a careless claim they are making, it's rather a disturbing fact that over shadows any potential added revenue for any irrelevant cruise lines that may decide to offer trips to the pole. Frankly who cares about travelling there if climate change is so harsh that it wipes us out in the end.