Rivers of ice: Vanishing glaciers

yup,

same picture the world over.

The Athabasca glacier (Alberta) has receded since Victorian times from the east side of the Icefields Parkway to a few hundred metres to the west side of the Parkway. And a series of markers has been placed to mark where the face was at intervals between these dates.

The glacier on the north side of Mt Robson has likewise receded and again, markers show its greater extent when first seen by Victorian adventurers.

OTOH, it was possibly only when the icefields of the Canadian Shield started to recede c12,000 years ago, that the First Nation people managed to migrate south from Alaska and the Bearing Sea areas. So the interglacial period has been ongoing, and this time prolonged, for thousands of years.

I blame, in no particular order, the Milankovitch climate cycles, the human succession over Neanderthals, the human transition from hunter-gatherer to farming c.5,000 to 10,000 years ago, The Industrial Revolution in Europe c1750 onwards, the global population explosion in the 1900s and the economic expansion in China and India in the last 10 years.

Take yer pick.

Cheers

Don