So, when climate change scientists talk about dangers to the existence of civilization they do not mean that the population of human beings as a species is going to become extinct.
In other words, the human species would live on even if civilization ended.
For example, Greenland alone has enough ice that if that ice was to melt it would raise the world's ocean level by 21 feet (7 meters).
That alone would destroy the ocean-port cities of the civilized world, and thereby destroy world civilization by destroying its primary commerce.
But if you add Antarctica to the equation, much more than just the coastal ports would be lost, because the ocean level would rise beyond belief.
Scientists have not been worried about Antarctica before 2006 when it was shown that some of its western ice sheet was getting a bit shaky.
The eastern ice sheet, however, was considered to be "inviolate", meaning "not to worry", nothing will ever happen to it.
But like many things climate scientists considered to be "inviolate", the eastern ice sheet of Antarctica is now going somewhere:
(Science Daily). I am really sorry if that scares Barbie and Ken, but we must keep in touch with reality if we are to do anything about it.
Using gravity measurement data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin has found that the East Antarctic ice sheet-home to about 90 percent of Earth's solid fresh water and previously considered stable-may have begun to lose ice.
"While we are seeing a trend of accelerating ice loss in Antarctica, we had considered East Antarctica to be inviolate," said lead author and Senior Research Scientist Jianli Chen of the university's Center for Space Research. "But if it is losing mass, as our data indicate, it may be an indication the state of East Antarctica has changed. Since it's the biggest ice sheet on Earth, ice loss there can have a large impact on global sea level rise in the future."
Write your congress people and the president to let them know you do not want this trend to continue one second longer than it has to.
Otherwise we will be giving new meaning to "Atlantis" some day if our descendants live far inland from what is now considered to be the coastline.
They would live in a society that would be much like the society now living in the mountain regions of Afghanistan and Tibet.
Space exploration as we now know it would be ended to await the development of a new civilization which would again have to resume what humanity must do in order to survive the demise of the Sun.