This essay, written succinctly in layman's language, presents an overview of the Earth's climate history during the past 2.6 billion years; describes the factors that stabilized climate or changed it over this long history; and summarizes the development of the multiple streams of climate research that began almost 200 years ago. The author prepared this essay based on the research he conducted while creating a 600-document collection on the history of climate, a collection of similar quality to (but much smaller than) the 3,500 document "Wenner Collection of the History of Physics" that now resides at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics. The second and final edition of the author's 800-page book titled "History of Physics: The Wenner Collection" is also available for purchase on Lulu.com.