With August looming, the Northwest Passage is still blocked by ice

Geo Quiz | PRI's The World

Cameron Dueck wants to see how climate change is affecting Arctic communities. So he set sail in June from Vancouver with a crew of three others… headed all the way for Halifax, Nova Scotia. [Interview MP3]

Around the 5:50 mark, Dueck admits there is "a little bit more ice than last year" and says he's talked to people who say "certainly you're going to be running into more ice than you would have last year".

[On this map, the Northwest Passage still appears to be blocked by ice]

The interviewer above incorrectly claims that the Northwest Passage opened up "for the first time" a couple of years ago

Since 1905, according to the BBC, about 110 boats have been through the Northwest Passage (four of them in 2007). Thirty of the 110 were recreational boats.

The Northwest Passage was successfully navigated in 1906, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1988, and 2000 (and probably in other years as well).