One doesn't have to know too much about the planet we live on to realise that the greatest biodiversity is in the tropics and the further one goes in a poleward direction the less is the biodiverstiy. Andrew Glikson knows that very well but somehow he is able to postulate that if the planet as a whole gets warmer we will see extinctions presumably reversing the latitudinal gradient that has characterised biodiversity for a billion years. He quotes refences in support of his case but as usual they are very selective. So maybe I can redress the balance. Douglas Erwin's paper "Climate as a Driver of Evolutionary Change"(2009) states "Some of the best evidence for a link between biodiversity and climate comes from latitudinal gradients in diversity, which provide an avenue to explore the more general relationship between climate and evolution. Among the wide range of biotic hypotheses, those with the greatest empirical support indicate that warmer climates have provided the energetic foundation for increased biodiversity by fostering greater population size and thus increased extinction resistance; have increased metabolic scope; have allowed more species to exploit specialized niches as a result of greater available energy; and generated faster speciation and/or lower extinction rates". There is much more research that suggests great uncertainty regarding the effects of past climates on diversity and evolution and it would be good to see Andrew concede this in place of the biblical certitude that characterises his words. Even his favourite PETM of 55 mya which he has written about many times and says caused extinctions, others say was a time of diversification, including new mammal groups which appeared during this brief 170,000 year period.

Mark, Lockwood doesn't "allege" that the effects of changing solar activity (magnetic flux, total irradiance or any other measure) cannot explain warming (or even solar contribution to warming) after 1985, he demonstrates it. If you think that Lockwood said the magnetic solar field "dictates" climate (or even past climate), or that Glikson thinks that CO2 "dictated" warming in past climates, then I guess that's your interpretation and yours alone. I accept Lockwood's words that solar irradiance etc. have effects on climate (as well as GHGs, even in past climates), but yours are a distortion. A word of advice, run this interpretation of what he says by Lockwood himself before you go publishing it in a non-peer reviewed opus.

malrob,
Lockwood also goes on to say in the next line
"We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect."

Hmm, and?

Oh and malrob, if you truly understand what is involved in periods of mass extinction/speciation/diversification events, you wouldn't be so quick to paint a glowing picture of them. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live through one of these periods.

Give me a nice long period of stabilising selection any day.

bugsy 1
My comment clearly relates to Europe and doesn't suggest otherwise.
bugsy2
Individuals at the time know nothing of or incur no disadavantage from speciation or diversification. And I suggest that any individual experiences only its own impending death and no such individual has ever known it is the last of its species. And anyway, isn't extinction a wonderful thing? 99.9% of all species that ever existed are extinct and without it none of us would be here writing this stuff.

qanda is caught up in a conspiracy theory that there is a conspiracy theory.

Skeptics don't organize quite the way you seem to think they do, hence your conspiracy theory that skeptics conspire.

Just accept that some people are at each end of the bell curve and many more are in the middle, here's a phrase that might be meaningful to you "that's normal".

You crack me up.

Andrew, qanda, Bugsy. It is only recently that Prof. Phil Jones was completely exonerated of any wrong doing or fraud. This is a powerful endorsement of his views and you must accept he is right. The fact that his views are now contrary to yours is something you have to deal with.