Remember the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka? I distinctly remember people making jokes about how they’d find a way to blame the whole catastrophe on global warming. Note to self: climate change hype is beyond parody:

Unlike most apparently intractable problems, which have a tendency to go away when examined closely and analytically, the climate change predicament just seems to get bigger and scarier the more we learn about it.

Now we discover that not only are the oceans and the atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms, floods and ever-climbing sea levels, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too.

Looking back to other periods in our planet’s history when the climate was swinging about wildly, most notably during the last ice age, it appears that far more than the weather was affected. The solid earth also became restless, with an increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, giant submarine landslides and tsunamis. At the rate climate change is accelerating, there is every prospect that we will see a similar response from the planet, heralding not just a warmer future but also a fiery one.

Note that the title of this article is “The Earth Fights Back.” That’s right – humanity is about to get punched in the face by an enraged anthropomorphic planet that spits fire and crumbles beneath our feet out of spite.

Now that we’ve heard from the panic button crowd, allow me to serve up a nice shot of anti-panic from your friend and mine, Michael Crichton:

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

And furthermore, the consensus of scientists has frequently been wrong. As they were wrong when they believed, earlier in my lifetime, that the continents did not move. So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

That link is worth a read in full, if only to enjoy the cool, calming effects of reasonable discourse.

UPDATE: It turns out that Jay mented on this article as well over at Planet Gore…