Apparently pre-historic man's switch from hunting and gathering to farming turned the tide of the ice age. If it weren't for them, we'd all be ice cubes by now.

Ancient man saved the world from a new Ice Age. That is the startling conclusion of climate researchers who say man-made global warming is not a modern phenomenon and has been going on for thousands of years.

Prehistoric farmers who slashed down trees and laid out the first rice paddies and wheatfields triggered major alterations to levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they say.

As a result, global temperatures - which were slowly falling around 8,000 years ago - began to rise. 'Current temperatures would be well on the way toward typical glacial temperatures, had it not been for the greenhouse gas contributions from early farming practices,' says Professor William Ruddiman of Virginia University.

Dammit there's that pesky ice age again. For some reason the Global Warming anti-capitalists never want to discuss the ice age. That's because glaciers and ice caps haven't just been melting for the last 100 years (which coincidentally corresponds with the industrial revolution), and instead have been receding over the last 20,000 years. Not to mention the fact that solar output (where all of our energy comes from to begin with) is higher now than it has been in the past 1100 years.