"...it isn't actually true..."
I couldn't agree more, though I think we may have subtle epistemological differences in worldview.
I think it isn't true because I'm a nihilist and I'm unconvinced that our senses, instruments, or reasoning can even ascertain the objective noumenal reality.
Essentially I think true-ness is far more elusive than it's treatment in common parlance, perhaps to the point of being completely inaccessible. Basic examples of what I mean can be found in questions of determinism in ethics, the hard problem of consciousness, and the problem of induction in science.
Here is another external link to a much shorter paper (with much less math) that deconstructs the idea of knowledge as justified true belief.
Though Gettier treats truth as ascertainable, he does demonstrate the trickiness of knowing which seems to me deeply related to issues of truth.
You do realise it is possible to just start with the basics and find real world evidence?
For example, when I have visited a particular glacier three times over the past 25 years and taken photos of it, I have real world evidence of it getting much bigger which indicates the temperature is cooling.
And when I see "news" reports saying that the very same glacier is melting, but they are reversing the order of their photos, that is evidence of another kind.
And when people avoid refuting any statements I make by talking in circles around the subjects, that is revealing a lot as well
I suspect your series of photographs is in no way a precise measurement, unless you happen to be employing surveying techniques.
Whatever the case, even were it an exercise in geometry, that is not an indication of temperature. At best it could be a correlate, because the glacial systems are governed by far more than just temperature. For instance they move through gravity alone without need for the intercession of temperature change.
A motion could easily be perceived as a change in size, and such motion may well be visible over a 25 year span.
Also I'm less interested in exploring the simple direct facts of your assertions than the attitudes and axioms that surround them, hence my tangential approach.
We could go back and forth simply contradicting each other, but that doesn't seem so amusing or illuminating to me as a dialectic analysis of the philosophy these propositions are swimming in.
Holy cow, can you avoid addressing facts better than anyone in the universe?
My series of photos does not need precise measurements, we are talking hundreds of meters here, not a few centimetres!
I live next to the sea. The high tide mark has dropped over the past 100 years...
But I guess that is just an artificial perception of meaningless marks on rocks...
"...that is just an artificial perception of meaningless marks on rocks..."
Perhaps. Various geologic factors could raise or lower whatever the mark is being made on over time, via subduction for example.
As for the photos, hundreds of meters difference over 25 years seems to be consistent with the rates of glacial movement yielded from a cursory search.
Just because the face of a glacier advances, or more of the glacier is seen from the photography vantage point(s) now than before, does not necessarily mean the volume of the glacier has changed.
Just because distances are relatively long doesn't mean the inspection would not benefit from precise measurements or modeling.
I'm saying the glacier is not everywhere seen. It doesn't seem to me even measured in any dimension by your description, though I could obviously misunderstand given my limited faculties. However without measurement of some kind the notion that it is bigger seems to me lacking gravitas. Maybe it is growing, but maybe your perception could be validly explained using different theory such as glacial motion or even something unknown.
That's a microcosm of my more general posture of uncertainty. The universe is obstinately chaotic, and our minds aren't designed to uncover truth if it's out there at all. Even if they were the limited scope of our existence in scale and time chokes our efforts to gather data to fuel reasoning, setting aside the issue of whether that reasoning is logically sound and valid in the first place.
You have special powers. Looking at glaciers is calming. Your thoughts could cause global warming. Take a deep breath and just look!