Why are the glaciers melting? Global warming or something else?

Question

I can't sleep so I decided to gain some knowledge by viewing KPBS. There was a documentary about glaciers formings in northern idaho. To make things short they mentioned somehting about how glaciers can melt from super cool water trap in small sections inside and that gets out through small crevices creating friction therefore melting the glaciers. Can create great flloods. happened in Iceland in the 90's.

I was thinking could this mean that the earth its not going through global warming but a cooling of the poles therefore more super cool water melting glaciers. I have read that the south pole is getting colder. Maybe the melting of glaciers centuries ago created great floods of freezing water which explains why dinosaurs remains have been found with food in their stomachs as if they had died or freezed instanly....I don't maybe i need to sleep..what you guys think? is global warming really happeing?

Answer 1

Actually all glaciers melt.  There is a continuous balance of accumulating precipitation and melting.  If they accumulate ice faster than it melts, then the glacier advances.  If it doesn't, it recedes.  Too many people look at a glacier and see it receding and panic.  The truth is that in warm or dry times, glaciers recede and cold or wet times, they advance.  10,000 years ago we had glaciers thousands of feet thick where Chicago is.  Fortunately it warmed since then.  

I have read, don't know the link, that the suspicion that the water significantly decreases friction and increases glacial flow was not indicated by additional study.

As a geologist, I tend to look at bigger scales than most.  I would say that it has warmed since the LIttle Ice Age 300 years ago, and certainly since 10,000 years ago but I doubt that man had much of an influence.

Answer 2

Y_E_S__Y_E_S

Answer 3

The glaciers began melting at the end of the deep cycle of the last ice age.  It happens when warm air meets ice.  And remember, the last ice age wasn't the first, we know that there was at least one other before it at some point in the distant past.

We still don't really know what killed off the dinosaurs and I've heard that their remains were found with food in their stomachs.  That would indicate a sudden wipe-out, wouldn't it?  Maybe the ice age did, perhaps a meteor, maybe something we haven't thought of.

Answer 4

global warming is happening because of the lack of pollution.at least,  much of it..when i was a kid, we used to burn our trash in 50 gallon barrels in the ally...there as black particulate matter over all our cites, smog and so forth, and it was much cooler because of all that soot,..now, we've cleaned up the air by a factor of 1000 times and it's getting warmer simply because more of the suns rays are getting through...this phenomenon is now being estimated by climate change scientist as accounting for at least 10 percent of the warming we are now experiencing.  you might say that this is indeed "man made climate change" we could reverse it if we started burning our trash again, but that was kinda nasty and didn't look or smell too good, but it would drop the temps....the remaining 90 percent they are not sure about...it may be coming from sun spot activity, but man is now less to blame than we were just a few years ago...celebrate this, don't lament it..

Answer 5

Most glaciers are melting, some are advancing.

Most have been melting on and off since the last Ice Age.

Archaeologists are discovering artefects from past civilizations in the paths of some retreating glaciers.

That would seem to validate the conclusion that there were earlier, similar warm periods, obviously not caused by man, though within human history.