This is the introductory chapter of the book, which presents the story of climate change as revealed by the geological record of the past 450 million years (450 Ma). It is a story of curiosity about how the world works and of ingenuity in tackling the almost unimaginably large challenge of understanding climate change. The task is complicated by the erratic nature of the geological record. The book describes a voyage of discovery by scientists obsessed with exposing the deepest secrets of our changing climate through time. Information about the climate of the past is referred to as ‘palaeoclimate data‘. The book shows how the climate record of past times is the key to understanding the natural variability of our climate, and explains why that knowledge is a necessary complement to what we learn from meteorologists and modern climatologists focusing on the instrumental records of the past 150 years. climate change; climatologists; geological record; meteorologists; palaeoclimate data
