It's Getting Warmer, Time to Sharpen the Flint Tools

It has been a while since I wrote a blog entry about the weather.  This is no surprise because the weather is a very boring topic.  Hot, cold, wet, dry and that's pretty much it apart from the occasional hideous catastrophe that can be safely ignored for statistical purposes.  There is only so much you can write about the weather and very little of it is interesting.

So what has made me lift my unofficial ban on weather commentary?  In case you haven't noticed it has been freezing down our way lately.  And I know the cause, it's all Caitlin Rowlands fault.  Caitlin or Caito (it was years before I realised that was short for something) is a rather attractive young lady who works at a cafe I frequent.  Last Sunday I was speaking with her and I happened to mention that it was a lovely day (talking about the weather being the last refuge of those with poor social skills).  Caito agreed and sombrely noted the lack of "real" Winter weather and wondered if climate change might be responsible.  Since then its been so cold I've had to break the ice on my blood to encourage circulation.  Thanks Caito, not that it bothers her since she promptly jumped a plane to Bali.  I hope the weather there is lovely and completely bereft of blizzards and outbreaks of bubonic plague.  Meanwhile I'd appreciate a little global warming if it was focussed on my neighbourhood.

Although I might be out of luck in any event.  According to one theory it was warming that caused the last ice age.  The theory goes that some twenty thousand years ago Canada was the repository of a vast amount of icy cold fresh water (it still is but there was even more then).  This water was blocked from entering the ocean by a barrier of ice.  The world warmed somewhat, the ice melted and countless billions of litres of near freezing fresh water got dumped in the North Atlantic Ocean temporarily short circuiting the gulfstream and leading to a drop in temperatures all around the North Atlantic coast.  This then snowballed (to coin a phrase) into an ice age.

Conceptually I think that humans handle the idea of an ice age much better than they do the concept of actual warming.  I suspect this is because ice ages are a lot closer to us in time.  I won't claim we actually have a race memory to fall back on but the last ice age was only about twenty thousand years ago.  Humans were around at the time and somehow we got through it.  The last time the world encountered a runaway greenhouse event was tens of millions of years ago and our ancesters were too busy learing how to be mammals to pay it much attention.  If we think about the results of global warming our minds tend to wander to some combination of Mad Max and Tank Girl.  A handful of thirst crazed survivors (strangely dressed in leather and metal studded bikini tops) clawing at each other for the right to lick the sweat of a recently deceased comrade while mutant kangaroos sabotage the petrol supply in the background.  This is not something we are emotionally equipped to handle.  Ice ages by comparison are a doddle.  Its just a case of digging out the warmer of your fur lined bikinis (apparently its the ultimate survival clothing), knocking up some flint tools and checking the expiry date on that packet of mammoth repellant at the back of the cupboard.  Warming may throw us for a loop but Ice Ages?  We've got that sorted.