Warm Climates in Earth History

Abstract

Global warming and global environmental change are two key, inter‐related topics that receive near‐constant attention in the international press. Why? Because the political agencies that direct national and international economies are reluctant to admit that we may be conducting our own global scale experiment in atmospheric pollution. Perhaps they are right to do so. However, the arguments can only be tested properly by carefully documenting the natural climate system and by comparing recent and predicted future regional and global climate change with high‐resolution geologic records of past changes and reorganization in response to climatic forcing. Geologic records on their own, though, are limited in their regional and global application and can only be properly applied to understanding the global climate system by integration with computer models and simulations.