The Climate is Changing

The climate is changing; it's happened before;
And no-one can prophesy what is in store,
For ice ages come and then ice ages go,
Their arrival quite quick or sometimes quite slow.
It's only a matter of twelve thousand years,
Since Europe was one of the ice-covered spheres.
Then the ice melted; the European scene
Changed very quickly from white into  green.
Rainfall can vary; each few hundred years
A world beating storm without warning appears,
Whole districts are flooded and millions may drown,
Before the high levels of water go down.
It happened in China not too long ago,
And dealt the whole country a terrible blow.
Europe has also seen terrible storms,
Which deviate far from the continent's norms.
North Africa once was the source of the grain,
Which fed southern Europe; but here yet again,
The climate has changed, and a desert now stands
In place of what used to be prime fertile lands.
The famed North West Passage was in the past  free
Of the ice that now covers that cold Arctic sea.
England was once so much warmer than now,
With summers that up in the north would allow
The grapes to all ripen, producing good wines,
But nowadays the climate is too cold for vines.
Droughts have occurred throughout history and so
It's nothing unusual if rivers don't flow
Since rain hasn't fallen for many a year
And most of the land of all grass is now clear.
The truth is that climate's not static at all,
Temperatures rise and then temperatures fall;
So with the rainfall, the sunshine and snow,
The storms and the winds which so regularly blow.
They've done so for thousands of years in the past,
So today's climate can't be expected to last.
But will certainly change, though today we can't know
The direction in which all the changes will go.