I think you’re missing multiple points here. It doesn’t matter. It is highly likely that we’ll lose a large number of glaciers within our lifetimes, just based

I think you’re missing multiple points here. It doesn’t matter. It is highly likely that we’ll lose a large number of glaciers within our lifetimes, just based on trends you can measure with your own eyeball if you wanted. Sure seems like we’re on the tail end of a long process that humans just accelerated. Whether or not you agree with the last point (though it’s odd to me for someone to look at the sheer scale of human industry and think it has no impact on the global ecosystem), loss of glaciers will certainly have a big impact on those areas. These mountainous regions will have less and less snowmelt in the summer, which means less water everywhere downstream of them, which impacts every living thing in those regions. When change happens quickly, it is harder for the ecosystem or evolution to balance it out. The long term trend is, indeed, quite worrisome, even if you want to toss out the short term graph. All that aside: the problem is that humans are accustomed to some normal, predictable climate trends to live our lives. It is very disruptive when those change in unpredictable ways. And the climate will obviously be unpredictable when a glacier disappears from a region that always had one, or when the El Niño event is the hottest ever. Our predictions are based on similar past events, so what happens when we don’t actually have a similar past event to compare to?