Cycling

Not the sport. Rather, our Earth's atmosphere, its global climate, its weather patterns. In cycle mode. Not in terms of our human lifespans. But known to modern-day scientists through the fossil record, and through the historical written record. That every one hundred thousand years the globe we inhabit undergoes a massive, cataclysmic (to all living organisms) temperature reversal. Perhaps not quite a reversal. Our Earth is prone to relatively sudden lapses into Ice Ages.

There are the aeons-long Ice Ages of which there could not possibly be any written or oral record, given the immense time-space quotient, and which the fossil record can attest to. And then there are the mini, but yet still environmentally brutal Little Ice Ages that occur within a ten-thousand-year band of livable weather. Which is to say, between those immensely brutal cooling periods of a hundred thousand years (each) there are ten-thousand-year intervals, interrupted by brief (relatively speaking) Little Ice Ages.

Modern humanity has enjoyed a prolonged period of liveable atmospheres on this Globe. There have been periods that have succeeded Little Ice Ages where the atmosphere has been generally warmer, and when that has occurred, geographies that were formerly barely arable, suddenly became breadbaskets, where even fruits normally grown in warm-weather locales could be grown, and food became plentiful and life ease-full.

Knowledge of Little Ice Ages, surfaced, memorialized in ancient written histories and story-telling around the time of Christ and Julius Caesar (followed by The Roman Warm Period), again in the Dark ages; 400 AD to 900 AD, followed by the Medieval Warm Period. Our current period is known by climatologists as the Modern Warm Period. Which permitted humankind to advance technology, achieve cultural milestones, and live longer lives through everything that prosperity brings with it.

Climate scientists have been predicting for decades the imminent and probable arrival of a new Little Ice Age. Noting that the warming of the Planet came to an end a decade ago. The result of which has been a cooling planet. Of course that comes into direct disagreement with the current alarms over Global Warming. Which term is not heard quite so often of late. Rather, it is Climate Change we have become accustomed to hearing about.

Environmental alarmists - or realists, take your pick - warn of sudden (relatively) dire changes in the direction of the Earth's environment. Characterized by abruptly plunging temperatures, uncharacteristically extreme weather.

Cripes!