Sorry Machanick, although the Australia went overboard in claiming an ice age was coming, it did have a point. Both greenhouse and skeptic scientists now agree, more or less, that the next few years will feature cooling temperatures. The greenhousers say that after then the real warming will kick in. Whatever. It is also now clear that the sun is going towards a minimum - the sunspots aren't coming back as they should for the next cycle. We are getting perhaps three at the most at any one time and then they go again, and there is now an acknowledged link between solar magnetic activity and climate. However, the agreement noted above has more to do with the oceanic cycles than solar activity.
Now go and look at your graphs. the periods they cover are quite small and, although ice coverage is an indicator of temperatures, it seems to be a lagging indicator.
As we already have direct satellite measurements of global temperatures there is then no point in bothering with ice coverage.
Whatever scientists may conclude about the link between CO2 concentrations and climate it will certainly be far more complicated than first thought. This article is just green agit-prop, adding nothing to the debate.

What a sorry state for a researcher to be in.
Carbon dioxide is causing the planet to overheat? It is a pollutant? Where is your science to prove that?
I wrote to the IPCC asking them for the reference to the science that proves that CO2 is a pollutant and they advised that there is nothing noted in their records.
Refer to Dr Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts and their research into how the temperature raw data has been manipulated.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html
Also Dr Long's findings that rural temps have been artificially increased five fold.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Rate_of_Temp_Change_Raw_and_Adjusted_NCDC_Data.pdf
Then have a look at how 30% of the IPCC AR4 Report is not peer reviewed http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/ and
http://www.noconsensus.org:80/ipcc-audit/findings-main-page.ph

Where is all the ice going? It is going to Antarctica, as your readers could have seen for themselves if you had been honest enough to include the companion chart to the one shown in your article:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png

This shows that sea ice coverage in Antarctica has exceeded last year's figures and is now well above the long-term average.

Here's a tip: to be 'global', warming is supposed to apply to the whole planet. If it only affects the northern hemisphere -- which is where most of the action has been in the last couple of decades -- it's not 'global'.

Strange isn't it, just last week, the US navy, you know them, they're the blokes who sail their subs under the arctic, were saying there is much more ice than there has been for years. Don't you think they would know? After all, they hide a few of those nuclear subs under there, as part of the US global defence program.

Phil, the only thin green line I've been able to find anywhere is the one that the greenies are trying to use to garrotte western civilisation.

Like your claimed FACTS, you may be looking in the wrong place, & finding bullsh1t.

The CSIRO says that Australia is getting hotter, with a probable record hottest year to be recorded very soon. CSIRO scientists seem to think that the global warming is accelerated by man.

Even if the CSIRO is wrong, what is wrong with taking initiatives to lessen possible climate change?

The concluding sentence of the article "A big swing to the Greens..." is hilarious given the record of the Greens in the Senate - particularly in opposing the ETS and in going soft on over-population (siding with the Liberals for a review AFTER the election). For grandstanding, game-playing and time-wasting to exasperate elected governments, sure, vote for the watermelons.

Instead of unquestionably accepting what the warmists preach, why does not the author carry out some genuine research by studying what the climate realists have to say about anthropogenic global warming.
The warmists falsely assume that the atmospheric greenhouse effect is real, and consequently CO2 emissions must be capped. The simple truth is that the greenhouse effect only exists in a greenhouse because convective cooling is eliminated, whereas convection is the major process of heat transfer in the earth's atmosphere.
There is no scientific evidence that proves the supposed relationship between CO2 concentration and air temperature in the earth's atmosphere. Such a relationship only exists in the minds of those who have reached political consensus regarding acceptance of environmentalist ideology. Scientific experiments prove the lack of effect that CO2 content has on atmospheric air temperature.
Without the atmospheric greenhouse effect, there is no anthropogenic global warming and, consequently, no need to cap CO2 emissions.