Whenever people stop to think about it, there can scarcely be a more obvious and common-sense idea or awareness than that humans, and all their activities, have a relation to climate. The clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the food we eat and where it is produced, our perceptions of the rest of the world and all its living creatures, of the changes in weather and of the seasons – all are influenced by, or are expressions of, the climate of our immediate surroundings and of the whole planet. Each of us, wherever she or he may live, ‘knows’, instinctively, and through experience, that the climate is a vital and sometimes dominant component of our environment. Also, through our family and collective memories, as well as by simple observation of the natural world around us, through the many stories that are parts of our cultures in most of our societies, and acceptance that there was in the past something called the ‘Ice Age’, most of us are aware that the climate in the past was somehow different from what we are experiencing today. But just what is the relationship between humans, as intelligent living beings on the dynamically changing planet on which we depend, and the climate which itself appears to be changing? How is the relationship expressed, and how do humans respond?