It's as if millions of hippies cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced:

Scientists have traditionally viewed the relative stability of the Earth's climate since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago as being due to natural causes, but there is evidence that changes in solar radiation and greenhouse gas concentrations should have driven the Earth towards glacial conditions over the last few thousand years.

What stopped it has been the activity of humans, both ancient and modern, argue the scientists.

As noted on another less puppy-friendly blog, this hypothesis has been floating around in Sci-Fi circles at least for quite some time. Nice to see some advanced climate modeling providing positive tests. See Joshua*... when ya reads sci-fi, ya learns things!

At least these climate models are simply trying to account for existing conditions, instead of trying to give chicken-littles a warm n' fuzzy by predicting future (and obviously tragic) ones. The former being, of course, far less sexy than the latter as it does not allow a small group of noisy luddites with unfortunate patchouli fetishes to impose their will on the rest of us.

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* Personal friend and multiple no-prize winner Joshua has a bit of an aversion to our favorite literary genre**. Apparently, though, he's signed up for a college class that will be giving him SF books to read as assignments. Why the boy refuses to believe in karma is beyond me...

** His fingers don't char, but I could've sworn I heard a faintly hissed "It burnss usss!!!" when he recently picked up what I'm currently reading. Maybe the paper wasn't acid free?