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I am definitely a climate change believing liberal whatever, but looking at this phenomena over a long term... haven't we had ice ages in the past where there w
by pm90 9y ago
I am definitely a climate change believing liberal whatever, but looking at this phenomena over a long term... haven't we had ice ages in the past where there were a lot more glaciers? I guess my question really is: is this something we should be sad about, or just accept as a part of the cycle of the earth (albeit this time being caused due to man-made causes)?
- myth_drannon 9y agonatural changes like ice ages take thousands of years. What we see now is a rapid in front of your eyes change.
- komaromy 9y agoI'm not so much sad about it as scared that it's going to cause a near-extinction of humanity. I'm confident that the biodiversity of the planet will recover in the long term.
- BurningFrog 9y agoI worry that well meaning "scare propaganda" makes some people think near-extinction of humanity is a real possible consequence of global warming. For one thing, I wonder if any extra suicides are caused by this?
- anvandare 9y agoThe passing of things is the way of all things, but it's a sad sensation still. I think this is what is called 'mono no aware' in Japanese.
- sapienthomo 9y agoWe are still in this ice age, technically speaking, but it is waning. At the peak of this ice age the ice was 2-3 miles high across much of North America. But human population exploded during this interglacial period, which is clearly favorable to us. The population of humans on earth has increased 20x in the last 1000 years, a rate of increase that relies in large part on fossil water. When the ice age ends and the glaciers are gone what are all those people going to drink? Humanity faces a monumental technical challenge in providing for themselves that which nature has heretofore provided, else it faces a significant reduction in population.
- stale2002 9y agoLol, wut. You do know that most people do not get their drinking water from glaciers, right? Water is fairly cheap, in the modern era. And even if those "cheap" sources of water disappear, all we have to do is look at how current water sparse areas get their water. Perhaps water prices might double in the next 100 years, but that really isn't a big deal because our economy is growing much quicker than that. This is also completely missing the point that human consumption of water is a very small proportion of water use. Major city centers are never going to literally run out of water to drink. Very worse case scenario, we'll have to reduce the amount of meat that we consume a bit, as meat prices go up due to the water price increase. (most water is consumed by farming applications).
- sapienthomo 9y agoHundreds of millions of people rely on Himalayan glacier melt for their water. These nations also happen to be the least-able to diplomatically handle international river resource disputes.
- sliverstorm 9y agoAnother important function is modulation of flows. Even if you're not drinking fossil water, glaciers & permanent snowfields act as reservoirs and even the flow out over the year. Without them, you get spring floods and summer droughts.
- _ph_ 9y agoIt is the change which is probably hurting us, especially its speed, which is causing changes which are going to hurt our society on the scale of decades to a hundred years.
- throwaway613834 9y agoYou should "just accept it as a part of the cycle of the earth" if you believe these cycles are supposed to happen on a period on the order of a century.
- trumpownsyou420 9y agothis is exactly what it is. please tell your other lib friends. thanks.