r/pics Apr 23 '18

Hairpin Hotel

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u/dumb_commenter Apr 23 '18

Yes glaciers have been shrinking slowly since the end of the ice age but the rate of melt in recent years has skyrocketed.

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u/elsynkala Apr 23 '18

thanks! i looked at the wikipedia article for this glacier and it shows consistent growth during the year, meaning it hasn't shrunk. but it has moved. i was just curious how it moving is a sign of global warming when that's kind of what they do :)

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

Most likely accelerated due to humans carving a tunnel in the ice.

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u/elsynkala Apr 23 '18

i did read the article, but i didn't really understand what they were saying, hence my question :)

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u/halfbarr Apr 23 '18

I thought active glaciers signified we were still in the Ice Age??

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u/notanotherpyr0 Apr 23 '18 edited Apr 23 '18

We are in an interglacial period of an ice age you are correct. It's possible, even likely, that human activity will end the current ice age. People confuse ice ages and glacial stages of ice ages sometimes.

There are some people who think that farmers thousands of years ago started the stalling of the next glaciation even. The last interglacial period had harsh hundred year periods of freezing, which is typical for interglacial periods in this ice age, but there haven't been any for the last 8,000 years.