Dan Bull - Glaciers lyrics

The closer to the poles of the Earth you go
Or ascend heights, the temperature turns low
Ten thousand years ago
The world was colder than it is today
Britain immersed in snow
Glaciation changed the face
Of the countryside
To become more like the Earth we know
Working slowly, giant hunks of ice
Cut and slide then push aside tons of stone
Signs say at the time of the ice age
A third of the Earth's
Surface totally snowed over
Then the Fahrenheit rose
Polar caps and ice flows
Capsized, and shrank in size loads
Today the only glaciers remain
On high latitudes or low altitude terrain
So though only a tenth
Of the globe's glaciated
There's occassional formations close
The the equator
See the way that they're made
In this how-to guide
Snowflakes accumulate in mountainsides
The weight creates pressure
Making a firm and dense substance that's
Termed by the name of firn
If the ice stays frozen as snow falls
Then it snowballs, grows and grows more
And as the mass increases
Gradually gravity grabs massive pieces
And releases them
Woe betide anything in the way
As they slowly slide lower and erode it away
With an amazing grace
Glaciers patiently changed the landscape
On a grand scale

Glaciers, how long will they stay here?
Glaciers, how long will they stay here?

Two major stages make up glacier formation
And they're named accumulation and ablation
Accumulation happens in the winter
It gets bigger while ablation is the inverse
It shrinks year to year every summer
Then returns
And that's the basic annual changes
That happen to a glacier
But on a grander timescale
The average size fails to remain the same
And changes at a snail's pace
Now I don't wanna get too technical
So let me just explain the basics
And then I'll change the subject
If you take away ablation from accumulation
Then the data you remain with
Is the glacial budget
If the figure's bigger than zero
It's advancing but, if it's less than
It's a negative regime
The level will decrease
Until everything retreats
And all we're left with is a petty little
Piece of what it used to be
Experts agree that greenhouse gas
Such as CFCs
Mean the atmosphere's heat's increasing
Leading to deeper seas, the decline in ice
Causing rising tides on shorelines worldwide

Glaciers, how long will they stay here?
Glaciers, how long will they stay here?