UPDATE: My apology. The original post was wrong.
What I did (in a hurry) was post the Extent for day 290, not the mean of the extent up to day 290.
Sorry.
The correct data is:
The mean for 2012 up to day 290 = 10.5267 million sq km
The mean for 2007 up to day 290 = 10.52817million sq km
2012 is still lower than 2007, but only by 1,468.4 sq km. A statistical tie.
If I had waited one more day and had done it right, the conclusion of my original post would have been right.
But it wasn’t.
However, the mean for 2011 up to day 290 is 10.522 million sq km.
Which means 2012 has now averaged 4,633.3 sq km more ice than 2011 thanks to normal extent earlier in the year.
Original Post Starts Here:
Using NSIDC data (to day 290):
The mean of Arctic Sea Ice Extent for 2012 = 5.78274 million sq km
The mean of Arctic Sea Ice Extent for 2007 = 5.74562 million sq km
sunshine hours 
I won’t hold my breathe waiting for mainstream media to print this !!!
Sad isn’t it. Once upon a time controversial debates sold newspapers. Now papers compete to be as one-sided as possible as their readership disappears.