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What is normal and what really were the "good ole days"?  As a geologist
I tend to see the world a bit differently than most people.  I think in
eons, not years or decades.  Global warming may happen, or it may not.
There is no absolute consensus in the scientific community that it
really is happening.  There are some arguments that we are entering the
next ice age, rather than global warming (sorry, I don't have any solid
references at the moment).  In our less than miniscule lifetimes, we
can't see what's happening, we can really only take, at best, an
educated guess.

If we are going into global warming, who says it's a bad thing?  The
earth has seen it all before, and the beauty of it is there are chain
reactions and mechanisms constantly changing and "fixing" the planet.
We are merely caught in the cycle of it all, where ever it leads.  I'm
not saying we aren't influencing the earth - of course we are - but
who's to say dinosaur farts (much like the theory of methane pollution
from cow farts) didn't have a greater impact.  They were around a lot
longer than we have been and it was consistently a lot hotter then than
it is now.  My god, half of the North American continent was covered
with an ocean!  When Sue (the famously expensive T-Rex in the Chicago
Museum - I'd love to see her someday!) was prowling the North American
west, mosasaurs and massive species of sharks were prowling the seas
over Kansas.

One of the greatest beauties of knowing the earth as a geologist (IMHO)
is knowing that life will persist, even if we humans don't.  We are a
highly adaptable species though, so we should be around for quite some
time.  This is all part of my educationally biased and "not as humble as
it should be" opinion.  Thanks.

Karen E. Franklin
Project Geologist

"So, oft in geologic wars the diputants, I ween, rail on in utter
ignorance of what each other mean, and prate about an elephant not one
of them has seen!"
-John Godfrey Saxe, from "The Blind Men and the Elephant"

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