>A fundamental aspect of climate change is the potential shifts in flowering phenology and pollen initiation associated with milder winters and warmer seasonal air temperature. 

Climate change has always been with us.   While some areas are warming, others seem to be cooling.  The bias over time has been to warming and the periods of human advancement have been coincident with the warming periods and the setbacks with cooling.  10,000 years ago evidence suggests that there were glaciers covering what are now well populated areas.

Looking back over history, as best we can observe it, there have always been periods of unusual warmth and unusual cold, and local changes in climate due to shifts in ocean currents and air masses. 

In Alberta, we have had unusually cold and long winters with far more snow and prolonged spells of extreme cold than we have seen in previous decades.  Last year, the jet stream remained unusually farther south and also we have observed an unusual sun spot cycle.  Some associate it with what we observe on Earth, some do not.

Humans have always associated climate change with human activity and when the climate turned against us, we have always turned to sacrifice in an attempt to appease forces which we associated with our gods at the time.  Sometimes it has seemed to work.  Other times it has seemed to fail.

Whatever else is to be expected, we can count on continuing continetal drift, changes in sun activity and a changing climate.  

It is hard to get a good grasp on what is actually occuring, since observation points change over time, as do the observers.  What were rural locations are now in the middle of cities.  Also, observations tend to be made at convenient locations and even if the observations are accurate, a weighting must be assigned and meaning deduced.  I suspect it is at that stage where objectivity is lost in the search for a moral for a story with no plot.  

Humanity finds it hard to accept that we are on a wild ride on a rock hurtling through space and struggle to assert control.  If we cannot achieve it in fact, we can achieve it in our myths. 

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