It seems like whenever I start a game with the climate as cold I start out next to palm trees and desert. This is not because there is no cold climate in the map but because I always start off in the south but not south far enought for it to be cold. I am starting to think it may not be a reoccuring fluke but a bug. I have started at least 5 games with cold climate and all of them had this problem.

I wonder if it's because of that thing that always tries to start every civ next to a few resources / fresh water source? You could always open the editor and manually move yourself to a cold climate but then you kinda know what the map looks like and it takes away from the game :p