The Wall Street Journal, not known for its balanced reporting of climate change, has published an article roundly acknowledging the phenononum, and pointing out its many  opportunities:

"The Northern Hemisphere's largest expanses of ice have thawed faster and more extensively this year than scientists have previously recorded. And the summer isn't over.

Studies suggest that more of the massive Greenland ice cap has melted than at any time since satellite monitoring began 33 years ago, while the Arctic sea's ice is shrinking to its smallest size in modern times.
This year's melting season is a Goliath," said geophysicist Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at City University of New York. "The ice is being lost at a very strong pace.

Scientists monitor the annual thaw closely because changes in the ice of the far North can raise sea levels and affect weather throughout the hemisphere by altering wind currents, heat distribution and precipitation.

Shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice since 2006, for instance, helped lead to seasons of severe snow across Europe, China and North America, researchers at Columbia University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported earlier this year."

However on the up side the piece notes that "As the seasonal ice abates more each year, new polar shipping lanes also open up, as do opportunities for mineral exploration. By some estimates, as much as 25% of the world's oil and natural-gas reserves are under the Arctic seafloor. Russia, Denmark, Norway and Canada are vying to control these assets."

it gets better "By Wednesday (5th Sept 2012), the Arctic sea ice had shrunk to 1.54 million square miles, about 70,000 square miles smaller than the previous modern low set in September 2007, according to the satellite readings compiled by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. By that measure, the six lowest Arctic sea ice levels on record all occurred in the past six years."

And with all that new shipping and newly available oil and gas, it can only get better....