I've been thinking about your observation that geology resists models of catastrophism; and, I may have to think about it some more. But here are the thoughts I have so far.

When geology really became a scientific discipline on its own, more than just natural philosophers musing over curious fossils or miners just following the strata for the ore, it was up against the biblical myth of the flood, the original model of catastrophism. With this theological view, everything could be explained by the Noachian Deluge. What are these marine fossils doing on top of this mountain? The Flood. Why are there sandstones covering England? Flood. Yet when Hutton and others started saying "Wait a minute, hold my beer, maybe that's not what happened," catastrophism got a bad rap. No, they said, the world was built in the long hard slog of Uniformitarianism. There was no need for a forty-day flood when forty-million years does the same thing.

Geology is a young science. Much has been discovered and changed the science within my lifetime. And while geology, like other scientific pursuits, can be resistant to change the orthodoxy, once the evidence is clear, it turns on a dime.

Alverez and his crew found such evidence with a centimeter thin layer of shale at the base of a cliff on a dusty hillside. The iridium spike was un-deniable. It was there and could only come from one source. It was elsewhere too. Once they knew the stratigraphy to look for, it was all over the place. The discovery of the Chicxulub crater sealed the deal. Only it didn't. The general consensus now is that the asteroid did happen but it's role in the extinction of the large terrestrial dinosaurs is still debated. Were they already on the way out due to just the inexorable march of evolution and slowly changing climate and ecosystems due to plate tectonics? That the impact was just the final nail in their cretaceous coffin?

Then there are the long cataclysms. Flood basalts erupting for millions of years changing the atmosphere and killing 90 percent of species on earth is a mere linewidth on a time chart at the end of the Permian. The slow building of atmospheric oxygen during the Proterozoic changed the planet forever; but took a billion years.

For me, I favor Gould's punctuated equilibrium model. Geologic history is like war. 99% boredom and 1% terror.

What I was failing to express in the other thread was my dislike of fear merchants. Don't get me wrong, I can come up with a half dozen horrifying geologic possibilities (probabilities) off the top of my head before breakfast. But every time there is an earthquake swarm under Yellowstone or a volcano in the Canary Islands or a near miss by an asteroid, I find myself having to sooth nerves. It's all about the odds. I know people who worry about Yellowstone, or shifting magnetic poles, who don't want to get flood insurance while living in a flood plain.

A final thought. When all is said and done, and some geologist a million years in the future looks upon puzzling strata of humans on earth, it will be as thin as the iridium rich layer at the base of a butte in Southern Colorado. And at that scale it will look instantaneous.