A long-term study into Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) that has been going on since 2018 has just been published in Science Journal. The research was a combined effort of the University of Arizona, UC Davis, University of Bristol, and the Smithsonian. They studied temperature marker elements and compounds in rocks going back 485 million years, collected over 150,000 data points, and ran over 800 models.

Ever since my first column, readers of a certain bent have been trying to goad me into the "Climate Change" fight. Normally I don't cover things like voodoo, chemtrails or Bigfoot, but you insisted. I am sure it is some kind of litmus test for some of you. Whatever. This column is the first of a three-part series (repeated from June 2023), because the subject is a bit too complex for one column. I fully expect pushback for whatever I say, since the "Climate Cabal" is much more like "political science" than actual science, and people get very passionate about their politics these days. So, here we go - gird your loins. As we have learned from modern politics, armor is crucial.

As a geologist, of course I believe in a changing climate. The climate has been changing since our planet was born. Geologists study the rock record, which goes back billions of years, with demonstrable evidence of the climate through depositional characteristics, plants and animals, chemical capture, etc. Geologists see that our planet has experienced much larger and faster temperature changes than what we are currently seeing, and it all happened before the modern industrial revolution, which accelerated the burning of petroleum and coal. In fact, natural processes drive climate much more than anything man does, but I will come back to that later.