Imagine a world of wildly escalating temperatures, apocalyptic flooding, devastating storms and catastrophic sea level rise.  This might sound like a prediction for the future or the storyline of a new Hollywood blockbuster but it’s something quite different: it’s our past. 

In a day and age when where we’re bombarded with worrying forecasts for future climate, it seems hard to believe that such things could come to pass.  Yet almost everywhere we turn, the landscape is screaming out that the world is a capricious place. The problem is if we don’t tune in, the message is lost.  We need to decipher the past and learn from it.

This is a podcast of the Introduction to my book Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past.