Back in 2012 & 2013 Netflix featured a documentary called Chasing Ice. I used images from the documentary to make the following presentation for a community college class. The lesson is still very much applicable.

Chasing Ice

A healthy Earth should have an atmospheric CO2 level between 180 and 280 parts per million.

Fluctuations have occurred throughout Earth's long history, though they've been gradual changes.

Yet now with the Industrial Revolution, we've rapidly soared to 390ppm as of 2012

And 410ppm today and heading for 500ppm.

Increased CO2 levels directly increase global temperatures which in turn melt cryoconite holes quicker. The cryoconite holes contain soot and ash predominately from industrial plants and factories.

The effect of CO2 emissions on glaciers is a double whammy!

As cryoconite holes expand they eventually grow into a single larger hole.

Ultimately a moulin is formed.

Water flowing out to sea then erodes the bottom of the glacier.

Unsupported by any solid foundation huge chunks of glacier, land ice (the size of Manhattan!) slide off into the sea, namely glacier calving.

Source

But not only is land ice sliding off into the sea, it's also retreating.

And exponentially at that!

And to preemptively defend against the argument that some glaciers are increasing in size...

Yes some glaciers are in fact getting bigger.

Though even more have gone away!

And the rest have all gotten smaller...

So what do we do?

I don't have any definitive advise or a magical fix everything button. The least I can say is that whoever read this can't claim ignorance, and admitting we have a global problem is the first step to correcting it.

Thanks for reading :)