Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about

Is Iceland on the global warming front line? You’d be forgiven for thinking so. We’ve all seen the documentaries where teary-eyed reporters stand perilously close to melting glaciers. In August, a funeral was even held for the first Icelandic glacier ‘lost to climate change’. Foreign dignitaries now hardly visit my country without taking a trip to witness the ‘horror’ of what is unfolding. They return home telling stories of how they have seen for themselves the effects of climate change. But the truth is this: Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about.

No, I’m not a climate change ‘denier’. It’s clear to me that rising carbon dioxide levels are having an effect on the planet. There was less ice cover in the Arctic last month than for any October since satellite records began 41 years ago. Our climate changes, but humans adapt. Instead of scaremongering, we should approach this situation on a scientific and rational basis.

Some fervent environmental organisations talk up the fear of damnation or the need to sacrifice the achievements of modern civilisation if we are to save the planet. Iceland shows this is nonsense. My home country is a young country; it was first settled just over 1,000 years ago. As a result, it offers unique insight into the relationship between man and nature, albeit not in the way commonly presented in the media.

Take Iceland’s melting glaciers. Troubling as a calving glacier might seem, such a phenomenon is by no means out of the ordinary. In fact, this process defines a glacier: they move. Glaciers shed ice at their edges as ice builds up closer to the centre. It is a spectacle we have witnessed in Iceland since the first settlers arrived in the ninth century.

What about the Ok glacier, the demise of which was publicly mourned over the summer? Ok was a relatively small mountain–top glacier that had been receding for decades.