why does it matter if the ice caps are melting. Aren’t we coming out of an ice age? I don’t get it
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short anwser: we, and everything currently alive, are evolved to deal with the conditions of the world as it was, and significant changes threaten us and the ecosystem that supports us
for example, ice caps melting causes the oceans to warm up, which affects the fish that live in them, which affects our ability to harvest and eat those fish. it also causes sea levels rises, which causes flooding in coastal areas, displacing tens of millions of people and turning a LOT of high quality farmland into shallow coastal waters.
also, the temperature rise will affect the temperature based currents in the ocean, which affects the climate of many places. For example, London is significantly further north than Toronto, but the latter has much colder winters due to the Gulf Stream warming the waters around the UK. the ices caps melting disrupts that and would mean much colder weather in the UK, and significant issues with rebuilding all the infrastructure to cope with this worse weather.
in short, Life in GENERAL can and will survive the melting of the ice caps, as it has many times before, but OUR lives might not, and won’t survive without significant AVOIDABLE disruption and damage to our way of life and living standards.
https://xkcd.com/1732/ This might give you sense of scale how fast it’s going, another post already explained your question
Yes you’re right, there are times with ice on the planet and times without. Normally we would stay in an ice filled world for much longer, but since we’re causing climate change we are melting the ice. However, there will come a natural occurring climate change which would melt the ice, but it’s already gone and the world just warms even more.
Something else not mentioned is that if the oceans get warmer they release more methane which is trapped in ice under the surface of the ocean. That methane impacts the air and how much oxygen is in the air. (As well as other things) which makes it harder for us. Most of earths oxygen is produced in the ocean by keep and sea grass. If the water gets warmer those plants die and we loose oxygen.
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