The Earth is over 4.5 billion years old, and in that entire time, the climate has been in a state of constant change. It would be ludicrous to think that the climate will now stop changing. Let's look at this more deeply, though, since this affects everything living on the earth.

The very beginning of our planet saw it as a molten ball of liquid rock. It took a great deal of time to cool down enough that the outer layer turned solid, which in effect holds the planetary heat inside. Gradually, oceans formed. This part is pretty basic, but it is important in this discussion.

Roughly three quarters of the earth's crust is now covered by water, and has been for at least half of its' lifetime. This is what makes all life on earth possible, but not only as a constituent of the plants and animals. The water acts as a giant temperature regulator. Without it, the planet would be a frozen ball, unable to retain heat. We need to remember that water vapor makes up well over three fourths of the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, and without the greenhouse gases, the average global temperature would be well below freezing.

Water also allows for the distribution of heat, from warmer areas to colder areas. This is largely due to currents in the oceans, but also because of winds that are created by uneven solar heating. Heat from the tropics flows toward the poles, both above and below the surface of the oceans.

Let me pause here while you grab another cup of caffeine, as I don't want you falling to sleep on me. Better? Good, let's move on.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, there was a single land mass. This allowed the water and wind currents to carry the heat to the poles virtually unimpeded. The result was that the polar areas were nearly as warm as it was at the equator. Read that to mean, no ice caps and probably little ice even on the highest mountain tops, of which there would have been very few.

Then something happened in a process that isn't well understood. The land mass started breaking up, with each floating on a tectonic plate, creating the continents as we know them today, though not in the same locations. As these land masses moved, over millions of years, the flow from the equator to the poles was disrupted, because the water, and even the wind, couldn't flow directly to the polar regions if a land mass was in the way.

Temperatures increased in the equator region and dropped in the polar region. Though the whole process

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