I've read many an argument for both proponents and opponents of anthropogenic climate change.

My purpose here is to clear the air (pun intended) and offer real data and logical interpretations on climate effects that we are seeing today from deep in Earth's history.

You might know some of this already. Many arguments only touch the surface of this, or state it incorrectly. That's because it's a slightly complex series of events and nuances of those events.

Just in case anyone is wondering, my background is in geology, specifically paleontology, specifically the part of paleontology that studies past environments: Paleoecology.

Let's get started.

About 40 Million years ago (40 Mya) the continents of South America and Antarctica separated at Drake's Passage, which 1) put Antartica in it's polar position that it is in to this day, and 2) allowed for ocean circulation around Antarctica.

The current that flows around Antartica is the circumantarctic current/circumpolar current. What is powerful about this and the globe is there is land seated at the South Pole and this land is surrounded by a current, where one acts to cool the other, and cool it well. This circumantarctic current feeds into the rest of the ocean currents/ocean conveyor and cools down the rest of the planet.

When the planet is cold and a landmass at the poles is extremely cold, then ice forms there. When ice forms, one important thing happens to solar radiation that would normally be trapped by greenhouse gases, it bounces back into space due to albedo of ice.

This graph shows the drop in global temperature and first formation of glaciers on Antarctica.

So, we're cooling the globe by basically installing a refrigerator that is Antarctica at the pole and the current around it.

Now that we've seen a 65 My long temperature curve, let's see everyone's favorite temperature curve, The Hockey Stick model.

First off, I need harp on one very important point: For climatologists, the term "climate" is the 30 year average of weather. So, the Hockey Stick, spanning from 1000 to 2000 only has 33.3 real data points, and really only, from 1850-2000 just 5 data points in the most debated part of the model. It is important to think about this, because much of what we all need to consider here is scale. So, let's up the scale from 2000 years to 450,000.

This shows tmeperature data for the undulating Ice Ages we've had for the last 2-3 million years. Note here that at 0 years, now, there is very little ice volume compared to just before, which was the most ice volume and coldest temperature for that particular cycle. Reading a glacial cycle from left to right on this graph you should spot one interesting detail, every time there is a drastic rise in temperature (little ice volume) it is followed by a more gradual cooling down to high glacier cover, or an Ice Age.

The most important thing to get from this is that every time there is a warming period during this state in Earth's history where Antarctica is at the South Pole with a cooling current surrounding it, warming causes the planet to shift into a cooling state.

How does this happen? Well think about it: How do you increase ice volume? Add snow. How do you add snow, increase precipitation. How do you increase precipitation? Increase evaporation. How do you increase evaporation? Increase temperature.

When the Earth warms we increase precipitation, which increases ice volume, increased ice volume then leads to increased albedo. Remember, the more ice the more reflection of radiation, and the cooler it gets.

That is the model for how warming in an inter-glacial period can drive the globe into a glacial period.

What's going to happen next? The Hockey Stick says temps are increasing. Temperatures are going to do what they have done for the last few hundred thousand years, they will drop. The current warming trend will start us on the track of cooling to another Ice Age.

In fact it will continue to do this as long as A) Antarctica stays at it's polar position, and B) there's a current that's going around Antartica and bringing this cool water all over the globe.

Seeing as plate tectonics will be the only thing that can drive this, as it created it, then this will take millions of years to change.