Actually, in Alaska for the past century most glaciers have been receeding, but a few have been growing. And I won't address the "galloping" or "surge" glaciers. If I remember my arctic geography class correctly, glacier length is determined more by the amount of snowfall at the top, than the melting at the bottom. The more weight on top, the faster they move, so the longer they get. Since arctic regions tend to get more snow during warmer winters, they're really a questionable indicator of temperature, like tree rings. Besiides, over all the glaciers have been slowly receeding since the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago.
Coincidently, one of the theories I've heard on the ice age cycle maintains that warmer temperatures trigger the next ice age. The theory goes that as temperatures increase, polar region snowfall also increases, more and more water get locked up in ice. Eventually the ocean levels drop to a point where polar precipitation exceeds tropical evaporation and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere begins to drop. Since water vapor is responsible for 95% of the earth's green house effect temperatures drop very rapidly into the next ice age.
Incidently, the recently completed Antartic coring reports showed some very interesting things. One is that the warm periods between ice ages always correspond with higher CO2 levels, but points out that the cause/effect relation isn't clear since warmer temps produce greater natural CO2 production. Also of interest is that Ice ages always last 60 to 70 thousand years, while the warm periods between only last 10,000 years. With one exception, there was one temerate period in the study that lasted 28,000 years. It corresponded with the earth's axis relative to the sun the same as it is currently. If that wasn't the case, we'd have plunged into the next ice age about 2,000 years ago. Imagine for a min. what that would have done to modern civilization.
Phil