Well it is interesting to know the Thames has a very European origin as a tributary of the Rhine. Apparently the profile of the river course can tell much about the age of the river – the merandering Thames is over 30 million years old.

Some wiki facts:

“The English name of the Rhine derives from Old English Rīn, which descends from Proto-Germanic *Rīnaz. This is also the source of the name in the other Germanic languages such as Dutch Rijn (formerly also Rhijn), German Rhein, Romansh Rain (via German) and also French Rhin and Spanish Rin, which came into the language through Old Frankish. This in turn derives from Indo-European *Reynos, from the root *rey- “to flow, to run”, which is also the root of words like river and run. The Celtic/Gaulish name for the Rhine is Rēnos, which derives from the same Indo-European source as the Germanic name.”

The initial source of the river is known to all people and pupils in Grisons and Switzerland as lying north of Lai da Tuma (Tomasee) on Vorderrhein…

There are a number of videos about the Druk White Lotus School:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPjaAcvqmpw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uI9j4FK50U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_LfwX4pShY

It is also mentioned in Arup’s (very good) promotional video
http://video.arup.com/?v=1_350wi7io

And YES the Thames is still shifting its course, for anthropogenic reasons in the short term and for geomorophological reasons in the longer term – which will make the impact of man trivial.

Do you know if the course of the Thames is still shifting?

The Druk White Lotus School is my favourite example of sustainable design. In a very cold and very sunny climate it is able to provide heating and ventilation by passive solar gain.They use thick walls, with trapdoors, and double-glazed panels outside the walls.
http://www.dwls.org/sustainability.html
http://www.solaripedia.com/files/639.pdf

An alternative or complement to the punkah-wallah is passive energy design for the built environment.

The science is above, and below, my head. But my conclusions are (1) global warming has been in progress for 20,000 years – and continues (2) natural causes are overwhelmingly the primary cause, but humans have exacerbated and accelerated the process (3) we should take the opportunity which arises from the media feeding frenzy to constrain energy consumption and develop renewable sources of energy (4) everyone who possibly can should commute by bike, grow some of their own food and try to take their house off-grid (5) in cold countries, thermal clothing should be taught at school (6) in hot countries, punkah-wallah’s should be eligible for the minimum wage

Just when you thought is it safe to worry only about global warming due to increases in atmospheric carbon along came the sulphate…Robert J. Charlson’s paper on Sulphate Aerosol and Global Warming [ http://www.washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1969e.html ].

Here is a blog that discusses the interaction of Natural and Anthropogenic sources of sulphate emissions.[ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/antrhopogenic-global-cooling/ ]

Lastly, it is to be hoped that the UK project talked about in this blog is any early April Fool’s Day joke. [ http://www.naturalnews.com/033638_climate_science_global_cooling.html ] If not, Tom, lets hope they read the first paper by Charlson more carefully before proceeding!

The ‘trigger’ I have heard most about is the North Atlantic Drift Current, which may cause a freeze up in North Europe. But if the global climate becomes cooler I am going to think that the cause Natural, not Anthropogenic.

As Jon points out the interaction of the two types of warming depends largely on trigger mechanisms and how they are effected.