While looking across the Dillon Reservoir appreciating the beautiful clouds and distant lightning, guess who called me — it was Mother Nature. 

“Greetings,” she proclaimed. “Quit trying to fool me. It’s not nice. You can’t control my climate, which I self-regulate. It’s my axis tilt, orbit and the sun. I get less than a billionth of the sun’s radiated energy! These fluctuate a lot, giving me hot and cold cycles. It’s complicated.”

She continued, “I’ve prepared myself for human occupation of my delicate thin crust. In a past warm period I grew a tropical rain forest in North America. I did this for the dinosaurs, but mostly to create fossil fuels for humans to use to raise drastically their standard of living.”

She continued, “I was able to melt North America’s glaciers about 12,000 years ago, and I’ve been warming myself ever since, preparing for The Coming Ice Age. Burning of fossil fuels has helped a little, although I expect to get less help as more electric vehicles are brought online.

“Those molten metals in my core have a mind of their own and have reversed my North and South poles every 300,000 years or so. My last reversal was about 780,000 years ago, so it’s long over due. I’m sorry that this will really mess up salmon migration and your GPS. 

“I do have one request for you: In operating the massive power grid required to support the fleet of EVs, I’ll ask that all electrical current in the grid and all EVs travel in one direction for several days. Their magnetic fields will mitigate the effects of my pole reversal at the peak of transition. This will be a big help. Stay warm for now and goodbye.”

And that was it. I thought, “Wow! It is complicated.”