Abundant natural resources and
arable land suggest that Pickering originated as a farming community until the Norman Conquest in the eleventh century when a castle and church were built, around which the town grew.
Either the world will continue to heat up, or a complex series of climate changes could tip us over into a sudden new ice age - one so severe,
suggests Peter Schwartz, co-founder of the Global Business Network consultancy, that the planet's remaining
arable land would only be able to support a mere two billion people.