Now have time for a longer reply. There are a few different phenomena. First is that "fear" and "anxiety" are indeed used by the news media or politicians to g

Now have time for a longer reply. There are a few different phenomena. First is that "fear" and "anxiety" are indeed used by the news media or politicians to get more attention. There I agree. It is cheap, unsustainable and harmful. But there's more to glaciers than news fearmongering. The second concept is "the planet doesn't care". George Carlin has his famous skit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c Of course life will continue on earth, after relatively large temperature swings or 10 kilometer asteroid hits etc. That doesn't mean we don't need to care about anything. His skit can be seen as a wake up call (which he might or might not have meant). Why would we do anything? Why would you recycle instead of dumping plastic bags in the river? Why would you put the safety on in your gun? The planet will be fine even if you blow your leg off. But you will be affected. It's the people that are f.... That's the punchline. But I also disagree about his "don't meddle with nature, let the species die". If we change something, let's say, dump cyanide or mercury in a river, it's not "natural" for animals to die downstream. It's not "nature doing its thing". It's our responsibility. It's an untenable philosophical position to do something and then act as if the consequences don't have anything to do with the deed. But that's not the core point of the skit. So about caring. If there was an asteroid headed towards earth, I'd care. Yes, it's happened before, and life has survived. But I still care. It would have great negative consequences for me and others. And there are others that care. There are programs to survey asteroids. To build technology to deflect them. Why do it? The asteroids are not our fault. They have struck before. They are "natural". Sure some news media might use them as scare tactics, to get attention. Those are all red herrings. It would matter, it would cause great suffering, that could be prevented. So let's prevent it. Let's not fall into apathy. The third is this attitude of shallow dismissal of large amounts of scientific enquiry, that was at the start of it all, in your first comment. I got the implication that the fossils show how stupid the scientists are, that everything will be fine. No, a massive amount of work has been performed studying glaciers, or climate change. We have ice penetrating radar to map the ground underneath. We track glacier flows. We measure sea temperatures at depth. Of course also paleoclimate has been studied. Paleoclimate was actually one of the great motivators for the CO2 theory, to show that climate can change drastically - more than what would be expected from the small insolation changes. If you really want to have a rational approach to glaciers, then don't follow some news talking heads but look at the science. Marine Ice Sheet Instability is the key word here.