That 60% figure is bogus in several ways. Increases or decreases in Arctic sea ice extent are measured by comparing ice extents at their minimum which occurs in September. Some denier cult propagandists noticed that ice extents were (quite predictably) increasing over the 2012 record low extent and compared the figures in August instead of September. Arctic sea ice extent reached its minimum on Sept 13th this year at 1.97 million square miles. Comparing that to the record minimum of 1.32 m.sq.miles reached on Sept 16th last year, there was a growth in extent of only 49%. In addition, Arctic ice volume has continued to decline steeply so the actual amount of Arctic ice, compared to just the extent, was much less than 49% more than last year's amount.
In reality, the Arctic ice is in steep decline. In 2012, Arctic sea ice extent was 3.29 million square kilometers (1.27 million square miles)
below the 1979 to 2000 average, which set a new record low, under the previous record low set in 2007. In 2007,
"Arctic sea ice plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979. The average sea ice extent for the month of September was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles), the lowest September on record, shattering the previous record for the month, set in 2005, by 23 percent. At the end of the melt season, September 2007 sea ice was 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000. If ship and aircraft records from before the satellite era are taken into account, sea ice may have fallen by as much as 50 percent from the 1950s." (
NSIDC)
Natural variability caused the ice extent to go up again slightly after the 2007 record low, just like it did after the record low in 2005, but that did not mean the ice cap was recovering and warming was over. It just took a few years for the ongoing warming trend caused by increased CO2 levels to set a new record low extent in 2012. Similarly, the ice extent has rebounded a bit since that record low in 2012 but it will hit another record low within a few years. Ice extent this year is still around a million square kilometers, or 432,000 sq. miles, below the average extent for the period from 1981 to 2010, which was itself lower than the averages from earlier in the twentieth century. This years ice extent is the sixth lowest on record. In comparison, in the 1950s, Arctic ice extent was around 4.25 million square miles and it was much thicker in most places than it is today.