[Question_Assumptions]

I took a college-level climatology class between the time when we were entering the next ice age and global warming. One of the first things the professor said in the first class is that there is no such thing as a normal climate and it's all about averages. And as anyone who has looked at paleoclimatology can tell you, the Earth has ranged from ice nearly to the equator to no ice caps at all (the norm, actually) and the planet managed to survive and bounce back.

[Oberon]

...as anyone who has looked at paleoclimatology can tell you, the Earth has ranged from ice nearly to the equator to no ice caps at all (the norm, actually) and the planet managed to survive and bounce back.

I have always found it odd that the earth is mostly too cool for the life that inhabits it. Yes, plants and animals exist that have adaptations for every climatic condition available on earth, but I'm talking about a larger view.

As you consider different climates, you'll note that as the average temperature increases, the biodiversity, the number of individual organisms, and the total biomass all go up. A desert is not an exception to this rule; in a desert the limiting factor is not temperature, but water. In fact, there is no place on earth where, given sufficent water, the number, diversity, and sheer mass of plants and animals is limited by a too-hot climate.

Would this not seem to indicate that life on earth either evolved or was made (not getting into that argument) for a warmer earth than we have now?