CURT STAGER is an ecologist, a paleoclimatologist and a science writer with a PhD in biology and geology from Duke University. He has published more than three dozen climate- and ecology-related articles and co-hosts a weekly science program on a local radio station. He teaches at Paul Smith s College in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and holds a research associate post at the University of Maine s Climate Change Institute, where he investigates the long-term history of climate in Africa, South America and the polar regions. Visit him online at www.curtstager.com.