CO2 and the Ice Ages

In geologic history high concentrations of CO2 had no effect on the occurrence of ice ages. Available evidence shows that CO2 concentrations vary with global temperature with a lag time of several hundred years. "In ancient times, the CO2 concentration in the air has been significantly higher than today, with no dramatic impact on the temperature," writes Zbigniew Jaworowski. "In the Eocene period (50 million years ago), this concentration was 6 times larger than now, but the temperature was only 1.5°C higher. In the Cretaceous period (90 million years ago), the CO2 concentration was 7 times higher than today, and in the Carboniferous period (340 million years ago), the CO2 concentration was nearly 12 times higher.30 When the CO2 concentration was 18 times higher, 440 million years ago (during the Ordovician period), glaciers existed on the continents of both hemispheres."*

*See: The Ice Age is Coming - paper by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw.

It is evident from the above observations that the atmospheric concentration if CO2 is not a significant factor in affecting the global climate since they had apparently no effect the great glaciation periods of 450, 300, and 150 million years ago, which are all, by their deep cooling, associated with major mass extinction events of life on our planet. However, the CO2 concentration does play a significant role that becomes critically challenged during the deep glaciation periods.

Carbon is a critical element for all life. No life would exist on this planet without it. We ingest it with the food we eat, which invariably originates with plants. The plants in turn get a large potion of their carbon from the air by splitting the carbon dioxide molecule (CO2) into carbon and oxygen. The process is accomplished by the chlorophyll molecule that uses the electricity from solar electromagnetic radiation to sever the covalent bonds between the oxygen atom and carbon atoms that bind them into the CO2 gas. For this process to work, the CO2 concentration in the air has to be sufficiently dense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll

Greenhouse operators are well aware of this. If they let the CO2 concentration become depleted in their closed in facilities, the plant growth stops, and ultimate the plants die. The average cutoff point appears to be in 150 ppm (parts per million) range. The current global average concentration is in the 380 ppm range. Greenhouse operators have experienced that by merely doubling the CO2 concentration in their facilities, increased plant growth up to 50% can be achieved. Their experience is telling us that our world is currently operating in a biological starvation mode. During the era of the great dinosaurs, 200 million years ago, when the CO2 concentration was many times higher that it is today, the plant growth had evidently been immensely more vigorous than it is today to have supported the colossal creatures that the dinosaurs became. 

With our world being in a biological starvation mode at the present, the effect of the Ice Age glaciation becomes critical. Large amounts of atmospheric CO2 gets absorbed by the oceans in the cold polar regions where the oceans are teeming with life, while at the same time large amounts of CO2 become released from the oceans in the warm regions around the tropics that are radically leaner in ocean life. By the interplay of the cold water absorption and the warm water release, the global CO2 concentration remains essentially balanced. The balance however, is temperate sensitive. The oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 than the atmosphere does, so that lower rates of release during cooler climates in the tropics, significantly affects the balance between the oceans and the atmosphere. Ice core data from 'recent' indicate that the CO2 concentration dropped to much lower levels than we have today during the glaciation cycles. 

The corresponding loss of plant growth that results from lower CO2 levels, doesn't bode well for outdoor agriculture during the deep glaciation cycles, even if the agriculture was located in the tropics where the cold wouldn't affect it, so that indoor agriculture appears to be only viable solution for mankind to sustain itself during the coming Ice Age. 

It is possible that this plot is flawed by errors in the process of ice core analysis, so that the historic numbers were actually somewhat higher. The lower historic numbers appear to reflect the need to provide evidence in support of the global warming dogma of 1974 and thereafter. Professor Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski  warned about this as far back as 1997, in a paper on the difficulty in obtaining correct data, and later warned about the false assumptions based on the false data in 2004, in a letter to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

 Nevertheless the above illustration is useful to illustrate close coincidence of cooling trends with lower CO2 concentration, which has thereby been well established in the above Antarctic ice core samples. What is not shown in the long-term view above, is that the CO2 variations lag an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes. This means that any future CO2 deficiency won't be critical for roughly 800 years after the next glaciation cycle begins.