Humans currently perceive glaciers as icons of a pristine high mountain landscape. Glaciers attract millions of visitors every year and add to building Alpine identity, but also provide ecosystem services. Using Austria's largest glacier as an example, we show that abundant water availability would allow artificial management to conserve the glacier under ongoing climate change, although costs in the order of euro10(8) per year exceed threefold related total visitor tourism revenues. While we present a theoretical experiment that due to economic reasons most likely never will be realized, we quantify (un-)feasibility and discuss potential environmental constraints.
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