Yes, it seems the polar ice is melting again. Is this "normal"? It happens. I found an interesting story from 2000. I do not know if this theory has been disproved. Snippets of article:
"Hearty has come to the cliffs searching for a distinctive limestone band from 400,000 years ago, a warm interlude known as stage 11. For decades, coastal geologists such as Hearty have been finding scattered hints of greatly elevated sea levels during stage 11.
For much of the past million years, Earth has shuddered through a series of ice ages, each lasting close to 100,000 years. Punctuating these chills are relatively brief interglacial periods like the current time. In the 1950s, when oceanographers first discovered signs of this glacial cycle recorded in deep-sea sediments, they named the various epochs going backward, starting with the present interglacial as stage 1. Four separate glacial periods separate modern times from the epoch known as stage 11.
The presence of relatively modern algae indicates that much or all of West Antarctica must have melted sometime within the past million years, leaving open ocean in its place.
Scientists base the comparison on features of Earth's orbit. Every 400,000 years, the shape of the orbit varies from a squashed circle to a more nearly perfect one. This shape alters the amount of summer sunlight hitting the Northern Hemisphere—the factor believed to push Earth into and out of ice ages. "
Full article here:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000226/bob10.asp
Now another instance of possible climate change is the sunspot cycle. There are links to increased sunspot activity causing heating on the earth, and the lack of sunspots causing cooling. There is still much debate. One article here:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sunspot_record_041027.html
How can sunspots be linked to climate changes? Maybe because of the solar flares associated with them.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solar_flares_031103.html
A solar flare results in temporary enhancement of radiation at wavelengths including x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, and radio. The brightest parts visible in the movie
http://www.sunspot.noao.edu/sunspot/pr/flare.html probably reached a temperature of about 20 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius), while the visible surface of the Sun has a temperature of about 11,000 degrees F (6,000 degrees C).
There have been a number of huge x-class solar flares over the last 5 years.
Another article (and links) I was reading over pointed out some evidence of rapid changes in tempatures. A much harder read for sure:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm
Now I am no expert on such things for sure. Thoughts?
