A rare sight at the foot of Nelson's column in Trafalgar square this morning – a big ginger woolly mammoth. Oblivious to the lions, the beastie basked in the unseasonable weather. Its Mahout Chris Stringer, Research Leader in Human Origins at the Natural History Museum had brought it out of the museum to help him plug his new book Homo Britannicus: the incredible story of human life in Britain, in which he warns of the imminent dangers of climate change: baking summers and freezing winters,
The message of the mammoth is climate change. There have been natural cycles of climate change in the past, but now we are responsible for the next change in the climate. No one can now doubt this.
Pity the mammoth looked a bit like a moth-eaten Mr Snuffleupagus – a very Homo Britannicus launch, not at all Homo Al Goricannus, still, saved on all that air pollution, and the tourists didn't know what the hell was going on.
