Agence France-Presse: The arctic ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate in mid-2007, losing an area of ice the size of the state of Alaska, US scientists said at a conference this week. "The average rate of loss of sea ice every summer year to year up to 2006 was equal to an area the size of West Virginia," or about 62,800 square kilometers (24,250 square miles), said Michael Steele, the senior oceanographer at the University of Washington in Seattle. However the decrease in ice between …