Did you know that, global warming notwithstanding (and it's a reality -- I'm not a denier) that almost all humanity's entire existence and development has occurred within what is known as an "interglacial" period?
That frighteningly means that the norm is not the balmy planet we envision has been all around us for four-odd-billion years, but more like long millennia of ice ages interspersed with (geologic-time-speaking) relatively brief periods of warmth.
Did you know that all it could take to plunge us into a 10,000-year ice age could be a single unseasonably cold year? The reasoning goes: cold year means that not as much ice melts. Remaining ice reflects heat from sun, resulting in another cold year, resulting in more ice. And so on.
Did you know that we just came out of what is known as a mini-ice age? You know all those Hans Christian Andersen tales about skating on canals . . . snow blanketing England? Well, that really happened. Can you imagine skating on a Holland canal this winter? Thought not. But it was that way for approximately 2-300 years. That's THREE CENTURIES.
They figure that if we moved North America and Europe three hundred miles to the north, it would precipitate a massive ice age lasting tens of thousands of years, due to the accumulated reflective blanket of snow instead of the blue of ocean.
Be careful of what you fear, flock. The opposite is incredibly likely to happen.
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