ice ages

I think I will start to close down comments on some of the guide articles as the comment threads get too long and meandering, and instead direct people from there to dedicated "open threads". So consider this the first implementation of that idea for the article "CO2 Lags, not leads". Comments there are now closed. The main reason I want to do this article first, aside from the recent explosion of unproductive comments, is because I would like to make a correction and a couple of clarifications based on what came out there. The majority of the comments fall squarely in the "completely…

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: The CO2 concentration lags behind temperature by centuries in the glacial-interglacial cycles, so clearly CO2 does not cause temperatures to rise, temperatures cause CO2 to rise. Answer: A close examination of the CH4, CO2 and temperature fluctuations recorded in the Antarctic ice core records does in fact reveal that yes, the temperature moved first in what is, when viewed coarsely, a very tight correlation. But what it is not correct,…