I was engaged in small talk with someone

that I really don't know, we are more like acquaintances. Anyhow in the course of our conversation I learned that the Earth has cooled for the 17th year in a row, that there are underground volcanoes in the south Pacific that may leak a little heat, that the ice in the south pole gets so thick it prevents adult penguins from returning to their nests after hunting and that all he knows is what he reads in the newspapers!