[StainlessSteelCynic]

You know, despite being one of those people who did my final year of schooling in the early 1980s i.e. well before the climate change concept had become as well known as it is now (or the last two decades for that matter), I had always accepted that the climate was going to change because of numerous things I'd been taught in school.
The most important thing that was being taught was that we were living in the tail end of the last ice age and it was expected that the climate would gradually get warmer. I need no convincing to believe that human activity has contributed to climate change but even with the expectation of climate change I don't think any of us then comprehended the potential for messing with civilization that the change could bring.

One of the more frightening aspects is the potential for glacier regions to break down and release their stores of water. They essentially form a dam, holding back millions of litres of albeit largely frozen water but once it starts to thaw, there's going to be a hell of a lot of water and ice heading downstream. So aside from scouring clean every trace of civilization in it's path, I think part of the concern was what happens to ocean currents if those millions of litres of fresh, cold water hits the ocean?