That is some bad analysis. You've got to work hard to misread the BBC article that badly. They explicitly stated that the 2013 date was much earlier than other predictions. The analysis uses the term 'baseless' for the BBC article, that's a flat lie. It was based on a peer reviewed study, albeit an outlier.
I the bigger picture, the insinuation that sea ice is recovering, one thing that should have jumped out at people was why 2012 is referenced. That's the lowest value ever recorded. Which is probably a very safe bet for the lowest value for potentially thousands of years as finding the arctic that bare of ice would have been recorded. 2024 is only the sixth or seventh worst year ever. 'Only' is doing a lot of work there. What sort of idiot looks at that trend and starts celebrating the return of sea ice?
The worst 18 years have all been in the last 18 years. Who wants to put a bet that next year will be outside the worst 19?