5 Ways to Value a Glacier

Defined as "a moving body of ice that forms on land from the accumulation and compaction of snow," a glacier "flows downslope or outward due to gravity and the pressure of its own weight." As the gang at HowStuffWorks.com explains:

"All those prior ice ages and warming periods were caused by natural events, and they took thousands or millions of years to happen. Since the Industrial Revolution, we've been pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ourselves. The result seems to be an increase in the temperature of the Earth that's happening far more quickly than natural processes would suggest." Thus, they ask, "What does this mean for the world's glaciers? There's plenty of evidence to show that they're shrinking. The rate of ice loss in Antarctica is increasing as the glaciers there slide into the ocean more quickly. Antarctica has lost 75 percent more ice between 1996 and 2006 than it used to Ice caps in the Canadian Arctic have shrunk 50 percent in the last century, and could be gone completely within decades."

WATCH VIDEO: Planet 100: Top 5 Disappearing Glaciers

Reality Check: Glaciers Don't Exactly Dig Climate Change

5 Ways to Value a Glacier

1. Expendable

Since much of the industrial world is choosing a car-based culture and a meat-based diet, it would seem that glaciers being impacted by human-created climate change is just not a major priority.

2. Disappearing

If we don't change, glaciers won't endure. Already, coastal glaciers in Greenland thinning by three feet per year. At the rate we're going, there will be no glaciers left in Glacier National Park by 2030 and the Arctic region may have its first completely ice-free summer in 2040. Do we really wanna be the generation that allowed the glaciers to vanish?

3. Surfable

4. Influential

Glaciers have shaped the topography we call home. As Wise Geek details, "glaciers bear tremendous weight, crushing the land beneath them as they slowly flow downhill. They carve out pathways known as glacial valleys." These and many other glacial features remain thousands or millions of years after their initial formation.

5. Made of Frozen Water

It's kinda important to remember that ice is frozen water. Why? Well, let's say Greenland's massive ice sheet were to melt. Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson, gives us an idea of what that could mean: "The consequences would be catastrophic. Even with a small sea level rise, we're going to destroy whole nations and their cultures that have existed for thousands of years."

Links to Value
5 Ways to Value a Shark
5 Ways to Value a River