On the contrary, this is quite normal. Ice caps expand and recede all the time and have been for centuries. As MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen pointed out in WSJ today, you're discarding a well-established understanding of the history of the planet by making that claim.
Promoting Lindzen can be counterproductive for climate change deniers:
"In November 2004, climate change skeptic Richard Lindzen was quoted saying he'd be willing to bet that the earth's climate will be cooler in 20 years than it is today. When British climate researcher James Annan contacted him, however, Lindzen would only agree to take the bet if Annan offered a 50-to-1 payout."
I also wonder how many who quote Lindzen on climate change also quote Lindzen on smoking?
R handles non-matrix data structures much, much better than Matlab does
This advantage is even larger for Python. Use the NumPy package for efficient array handling and basic linear algebra. Use SciPy for optimization and statistics. Use Matplotlib for amazingly powerful 2d graphics. And if you occasionally need R, which does have an wonderfully deep statistical library, you can access it with rpy.
It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like. -- Jackie Mason