Climate 'change' occurs quite suddenly, and without any linkage to Co2 as a causal factor. This research paper [link] does not present new data, but it is a good summary of just how violent and variable the climate truly is. Only the Church of the Holy Evolution and its cult members, along with the Church of Warm, believe that the earth's climate 'is stable', 'unchanging', and that evolution proceeds along some dialectical axis, in a world where the average yearly temperature is that of Malta [21C], and that the 'survival of the fittest', in this placid genteel climate-stable landscape, over hundreds of millions of years, leads of course to 'perfect species' like say the ostrich, or the horse whose heart is 1/3 of the size it should be, or the ape whose DNA has not changed in 37 million years, or the shark whose ancestors of 370 million years ago are exactly the same as those inhabiting the planet today, or the mass appearance of fully functioning life forms and then their mass disappearance; or the immediate arrival of angiosperms without any connection to previous flora life......the perfect 'science' of the cult of evolution and the cult of warm.

“Climate instability on the timescale of tens of thousands of years has been found in deep ocean and lake cores going back more than 40 Myr [millions of years ago] (e.g., Crowley and North, 1991). However, because these deeper records have a relatively poor time resolution, it is uncertain whether sudden decade-century timescale jumps in climate were common before the Quaternary Period (the last 2.4 Ma). Raymo et al. (1998) suggest that dramatic climate events were not confined to the last few large glacial-interglacial cycles. Looking at a relatively high-resolution ocean core in the North Atlantic, Raymo et al. found that all through the last 1.5 Myr, large sudden climate events (resembling Heinrich events and interstadials) occurred during the cooler parts of the climate cycles. This further suggests that dramatic instability is a 'normal' part of the Earth's climate system during this phase in its history, and that it is not merely confined to the extreme glacial-interglacial oscillations that have only operated for the last 900,000 years.”

and

“Other possibly sudden climate transitions since the start of the Holocene. Following the sudden start of the Holocene about 11,500 years ago, there have been a number of rapid, widespread climate changes recorded from the palaeoclimatic record around the world. The Greenland ice core data again show a clear record of these events (O'Brien et al., 1996; Mayewski et al., 1997).

At least in the North Atlantic region, these changes seem to have been paced according to approximately the same 1500-year rhythm as that found for the last glacial and earlier glacial periods, according to Atlantic sediment records (Bond et al. 1997; Campbell et al., 1998). Generally, at the coldest point of each 1500-year cycle surface temperatures of the North Atlantic were about 2 deg.C cooler than at the warmest part, representing a fairly substantial change in climate....”

And what of that toxin, the natural chemical Co2 necessary for life ?:

“A problem with invoking atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as a causal factor in sudden climate changes is that they seems to have varied too slowly, following on the timescale of millennia what often occurred on the timescale of decades- but the resolution of our records may not be good enough to resolve this question now. Methane, a less important greenhouse gas, was also 50% lower during glacial phases (e.g., Sowers et al., 1993), probably due to reduced biological activity on the colder, drier land surfaces (Meeker et al., 1997). However, it does seem to have increased rapidly in concentration in association with changes in climate, reaching its normal Holocene levels in around 150 years or less during the global climate warming at the end of the Younger Dryas, around 11,500 years ago (Taylor et al. 1997).”

Al Gore has gone on to Methane, surely that is the villain for 'dirty weather'?:

“Such sudden rises in atmospheric methane concentration were probably not important in affecting climate; the warming effect of a 50% change in methane would have been much less than an equivalent change in CO2, because methane is at such a low overall concentration in the atmosphere. It has been suggested that another mechanism, involving sudden and short-lived releases of massive amounts of methane from the ocean floors, could sometimes have resulted in rapid warming phases that do not leave any trace in terms of raised methane levels in the ice core data, where the trapped gas bubbles generally only indicate methane concentrations at a time resolution of centuries rather than the few years or decades that such a 'methane pulse' might last for. However, ice cores from areas where the ice sheet built up particularly rapidly (Chapellaz et al. 1993, Taylor et al. 1997) show detailed time resolution of the record of methane concentration in the atmosphere, and fail to show evidence of sudden 'bursts' of methane.”

Oh well. Sorry Al. So much for the trace chemicals. Wither water vapour ?

“Water vapour is a more important greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and as its atmospheric concentration can vary rapidly, it could have been a major trigger or amplifier in many sudden climate changes.....In a recent (1997) lecture presentation and an article in Atlantic Monthly (December 1997) the geologist W.S. Broecker suggested that water vapour may act as a global 'messenger', co-ordinating rapid climate changes, many of which seem to have occurred all around the world fairly simultaneously, or in close succession. Broecker notes the evidence for large changes in the water vapour content of the atmosphere in terms of changes in the 18O content of tropical high Andean ice cores (Thompson et al. 1995).”

In other words, we really don't understand climate, what changes it, and how it is affected by countless variables and patterns. Changing climate certainly has nothing to do with the hated [from the eco-fascist viewpoint], human, nor from Co2. There are one million plus variables in climate, with both global and local thermodynamics at work. Solar radiation, magnetic reversals, oceanic patterns, and volcanic activity are of prime important and almost immune to precise modelling. Given our lack of understanding it would be quite refreshing to have some humility from the cult of warm and the cult of evolution when discussing topics they know little about but profess to be experts in.

Full article.