In Help Desk world, many other words often spring to mind, and they, too, have their story.
In the good old bad old days – tens of millions of years ago, deep time they call it – there were reptilian types strolling around the colder regions. Not because they had access to beautiful Cornelius furs and could rug up, grasshopper, but because the polar regions were little greenhouses back then.
Check out this article about ye olde climatic conditions, taken from an essay in the New Scientist, if I’m not mistaken, but you don’t have to subscribe to this one to read it. It’s very interesting, and a little scary. What more could you desire, my dears?
When I return for holidays on Earth, the first place I visit is the South Pole, mainly because I usually run into Sir David Attenborough filming a documentary there, not to mention everywhere else. And also, it’s melting – the Earth in general – and I don’t want to get my paws wet unnecessarily, not for the sake of a few days of glacier-calving anyway.
When are you coming to Mars, Sir David? When? Just because we have no discernible native creatures yet ready for your toney movietone newsy/doco thingys is no reason to shun us. Something is bound to turn up in the dust eventually, and eventually you’ll all be heading this way, won’t you, as the water laps your galoshes? Eventually.
There’s an upside to climate change. I’m sure there is. Is there? No? Well then, to paraphrase one of my favourites, we might as well keep dancing, at least while the ice holds.
On such a momentous day (the 2016 US Pestilential, sorry, Presidential election), perhaps we could all benefit from cooling off down south with our Antarctic friends (and a polar bear visiting from the Arctic), however misguided they may be in the matter of parental origins. Enjoy it now, friends, because the times are truly changing.
