Prime Trigger of Ice Ages is Milankovitch Cycles – forget CO2
The prime trigger for millions of years of ice age cycles are the Milankovitch cycles – not carbon dioxide. These cycles reveal how the Earth’s orbital engine overshadows the false trace gas narrative.
The shift from glacial to interglacial periods isn’t some random fluctuation caused by the trace gas CO₂; its a mechanical consequence of Earth’s positioning in space relative to the sun. These three anomalies are ‘eccentricity’ (the orbital shape), ‘obliquity’ (the Earth’s tilt), and ‘precession’ (a planetary wobble).
These cycles dictate the distribution of solar insolation flux (sunlight), particularly at 65°N, which acts as the kill switch for ice sheets. If orbital geometry provides the energy required to melt miles of ice, then CO₂ is at best a passenger or a faint secondary feedback in this process.
CO₂ is not the driver, nor does it initiate warming. There is an 800 to 1,100-year time lag from warming oceans to rising CO₂ levels. The oceans warm entirely due to natural variability—including the sun, landforms, orbital anomalies, oceanic currents, water vapor dispersion, prevailing winds, and storms. This ‘natural warming’ cycle releases soluble chemicals like CO₂ back into the atmosphere via Henry’s Law, based on a temperature-dependent equilibrium.
The oceans contain 86% of the world’s surface carbon, while the atmosphere is a carbon desert containing only 1-2%. This is why CO₂ is a trace gas; it makes scientific sense. Oceanic outgassing explains the physical chemistry: where warmer oceans hold less dissolved CO₂.
As the orbital cycles trigger initial warming, oceans release CO₂ centuries later. This is documented as a significant time gap in Vostok and EPICA ice cores. It is difficult, if not impossible, to accept the claim that rising CO₂ is the cause of the warming that caused the CO₂ to rise in the first place. This is further clouded by a smoothing distortion called the Firn Gap.
CO₂ isn’t trapped instantly in the ice; it circulates in the ‘firn’ (unconsolidated snow) for decades or centuries before the ice seals. Because of this, ice cores act as a low-pass filter, averaging out centuries of data into a single point. Comparing a 50-year spike from modern atmospheric readings to a 1,000-year average from an ice core is a mathematical mismatch—an apples to oranges comparison that artificially smooths the past to make the present look volatile.
This is why the claim of an ‘unprecedented’ CO₂ rise is a fabrication of data resolution.
PSI Editor’s comment – The article’s argument aligns with the central claim of Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory by emphasizing orbital forcing—originally described by Milutin Milankovitch—as the dominant mechanism behind glacial–interglacial transitions, portraying eccentricity, obliquity, and precession as the primary controls on high-latitude solar insolation and ice-sheet stability, while presenting atmospheric CO₂ as a delayed by-product of ocean warming rather than a causal driver; in this framing, ice-core observations of CO₂ increases following temperature rises, the large carbon reservoir in the oceans, temperature-dependent gas solubility (Henry’s Law), and diffusion effects in firn layers are interpreted as evidence that orbital geometry initiates climate shifts and that CO₂ changes function mainly as secondary feedbacks rather than the initiating force behind ice-age cycles.
Ken Hughes
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The ice core records clearly show that CO2 levels FOLLOW temperature rise. NOT the other way round. If the ocean temperatures increase they emit more CO2. Simple as that. They know this and the are lying in order to prop up their agenda, which is to make burning oil and gas for energy into another form of taxtion using carbon credits. This scheme is being run by private concerns to fill their pockets from the pockets of the general population.
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