>>1619868That's a question many scientists are still examining. Some glaciers are still growing. The number of those that are growing are much less than those that are melting. One of the major problems is a lack of precipitation in those areas. One major contributor to melting of European glaciers is aerosols traveling in air currents.
We've experienced a much more rapid loss of ice since 1970. If glacial ice loss simply represented the restoration of equilibrium after the Last Ice Age, glacial ice loss would gradually slow as it approached that equilibrium. Hence, the recent very rapid ice loss shows clearly that the cause is a recent warming in many localized areas rather than the warming that accompanied the end of the LIA.
Often overlooked is the brief accumulation of glacial ice from 1950-1970. Global temperatures actually cooled slightly during that interval, primarily due to the rapid accumulation of sulphate (SO4) in the atmosphere from the burning of coal. The important factor here, however, is that that brief cooling could not have resulted in an overall gain in glacial ice unless the glacial ice was very close to equilibrium.
TL;DR
It's not a global problem that's spinning out of control, but it is many localized problems that need further examination on the causes of loss of percipitation, air currents carrying aerosols, etc. If many regions suffering expeditional ice loss could find a way to add SO4 to the atmosphere, you would see global COOLING happen again.
Eating bugs isn't going to help regional precipitation problems, though.
