I was watching a show about the fall of the Egypt of the Pharoahs last weekend, and it turns out that it was because of climate change.  Specifically, a 100 year drought saw the Nile stop flowing towards its delta on the Mediterranean, and that did in the once-powerful empire.  More details about the discovery of this historical weather event can be found here.

Strangely, however, there were no coal-fired power plants or SUVs that caused this meteorological cataclysm.  Beware of the cum hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, I guess.  Also, it certainly brings perspective to the weather events of today from which so much is attempted to be derived; witness the shrieks from the usual suspects during this year’s American drought that global warming had now been proven.  As has been said many times before, however, there’s a word for just what we saw this summer:  weather.

Another interesting point from the show was the hypothesis that, just as climate change led to the demise of ancient Egypt, so did it lead to its rise.  It’s suspected that the desertification of north Africa, once a mix of grasslands and forests, and now called the Sahara, drove the inhabitants of that area over to the banks of the Nile.