It's definitely striking, I can't deny that. I crossed the last remnants of an almost-extinct glacier last year that my guide guessed would be gone in 1-3 years: at the beginning of his career it was a real glacer with non-trivial extents, crevasses, etc.
This researcher's account is interesting to see comparisons of EU glaciers over the last 100 years or so. https://bsky.app/profile/subfossilguy.bsky.social
And this blog: https://glacierchange.blog/
That must have been maddening for the people who showed up and tried to make sense of it with only Cook's maps.
https://maevethornberry.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Mer-de... https://drdirtbag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/athabasca36...
Many climate change deniers I know have moved from "it isn't real" to "so what?" Or, perhaps more charitably, to "addressing climate change is not in the national interest."
I don't think people who want to drill in national parks, privatize and raze old growth preserves, or exhaust fisheries without limits are going to be moved by seeing glaciers melt. They fundamentally have different values and place other interests over preservation and conservation.
The people worried about melting glaciers are not laminating the loss of pretty ice. They are worried about where this extra energy will go once there is no more ice to change phase and absorb it.
The mass of ice on the earth's poles has also led to the shape of the planet via tectonics over thousands of millennia. As that mass melts and redistributes from a solid to a liquid spreading around the globe our spheroid will begin to rebound. We have sensors everywhere, even in space, so the resulting effects will not be a surprise to some when the 'mass'ive shift begins. As those tectonic events increase in frequency so too will volcanic activity so I ask if anyone else has been checking on such data?
We do not know what we do not know however we act like we know everything yet learn new things about the planet daily. The things the survivors are going to learn about the changes that are setting in will be the last thing those that did not survive experienced from those cataclysmic moments.
It's not like people aren't exposed to the changes.