[sapienthomo]

We are still in this ice age, technically speaking, but it is waning. At the peak of this ice age the ice was 2-3 miles high across much of North America. But human population exploded during this interglacial period, which is clearly favorable to us. The population of humans on earth has increased 20x in the last 1000 years, a rate of increase that relies in large part on fossil water. When the ice age ends and the glaciers are gone what are all those people going to drink? Humanity faces a monumental technical challenge in providing for themselves that which nature has heretofore provided, else it faces a significant reduction in population.

[sliverstorm]

Another important function is modulation of flows. Even if you're not drinking fossil water, glaciers & permanent snowfields act as reservoirs and even the flow out over the year. Without them, you get spring floods and summer droughts.

[stale2002]

Lol, wut. You do know that most people do not get their drinking water from glaciers, right?

Water is fairly cheap, in the modern era. And even if those "cheap" sources of water disappear, all we have to do is look at how current water sparse areas get their water.

Perhaps water prices might double in the next 100 years, but that really isn't a big deal because our economy is growing much quicker than that.

This is also completely missing the point that human consumption of water is a very small proportion of water use. Major city centers are never going to literally run out of water to drink.

Very worse case scenario, we'll have to reduce the amount of meat that we consume a bit, as meat prices go up due to the water price increase. (most water is consumed by farming applications).

[sapienthomo]

Hundreds of millions of people rely on Himalayan glacier melt for their water. These nations also happen to be the least-able to diplomatically handle international river resource disputes.