I have a B.A. Geology University of Rhode Island, then oddly, worked as a Petroleum Geophysicist for Gulf Oil for 2 1/2 years. I liked it, and they liked me, but Chevron was taking over Gulf, my French girlfriend was in France, so I quit and got a 1 year Masters-like degree called a D.E.A. at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) in geology. The next year I got married and lived in Netherlands and was unemployed, so I took some intensive Dutch, sat in on a geophysics class, and skated on canals (speed skates) and played hockey. The price of oil fell sharply that year (1986) from >$30 barrel to $10, barrel, so I figured I would never get a job in earth science (this turned out to be true if by "job" you mean "salary"). So I went to Georgia Tech in atmospheric science. The summer before I started taking more math classes and took a lot of math at Georgia Tech. But, I did not do well and switched back to geology-geophysics...I did a little project on fracturing in an area of reservoir-induced seismicity.

I got a Masters without thesis there and then went to University of California, Santa Barbara, where after a long time I got a Ph.D. in Geology.

I have a reasonable amount of publications in major journals. These tend to be on faulting and folding, and paleo-climate. I'm working on paleo-climate-related work in Ross Sea nolw, although maybe later today I'll go back to the long-suffering manuscript on Palos Verdes area structure and stratigraphy.

I started posting here over a decade ago in part because I was open to different ideas. However, I no longer am as open to some of those ideas. I keep kind of half hoping some amateur will appear here who has something really impressive on short-term prediction, but it has not happened and I'm nlot holding my breath.
EQF, I would not get carried away thinking I agree with you on science: I don't on most things. Politics maybe, but not science.

Chris