[cogitator]

Actually (d*mn) I screwed up. Memory is uncertain. The END of the Younger Dryas -- that abrupt warming I mention above -- is the start of the Holocene, the modern era. The Younger Dryas is the last sub-period of the Pleistocene.

Two examples of abrupt climate change

Sorry about that. Always check references before posting, I keep telling myself...

[gleeaikin]

See blam’s Comment 4, which posits the idea that a large boloid event in the north, threw us into a thousand year regression back into the Ice Age. If, in fact the Ice Age really started to end about 18 to 20 thousand years ago, then we are about due for another one. However, I wonder if some extraterrestrial periodic catastrophe has been the start of each of the great Ice Ages of the past? If so, our current troubles, are very little ones. Nothing like a bit of perspective to cheer one up these days.