The Geneal Geologist

African megafauna thrived in the Thames Valley during the last Eemian warm interglacial. Global temperatures were almost tropical and it was 2°C warmer; yet CO₂ levels were 150 ppm lower. Arctic summers were mainly ice-free, and forests stretched to the poles. There were no mass extinctions or runaway warming; Earth's ecosystems simply adapted. Today, we live in the warm Holocene interglacial period and temperatures are 2°C cooler than the Eemian. The past 11,700 years represent a warm recovery from a glacial period that had dominated Earth for nearly 100,000 years. The Eemian is just one of around 50 interglacial cycles spanning the 2.58 million years of the Quaternary glaciation. Across the Northern Hemisphere, northern Eurasia and North America still bear the scars of mile-thick ice sheets grinding down the surface rock — and carving out features like the Canadian Great Lakes. Earth has emerged from frequent glacial maximums with a remarkably consistent pattern; roughly 5–6°C of warming every 100,000 years. The Antarctic ice-core record is unequivocal (from EPICA Dome C and Vostok). Temperatures rise several hundred to a thousand years before atmospheric CO₂ rises. This lead–lag relationship has been settled science for over two decades (Caillon et al 2003, Pedro et al 2012, Parrenin et al 2013). CO₂ does not trigger the end of the ice ages. Deglaciation is initiated by Milankovitch orbital cycles, followed by ice-sheet retreat, falling albedo and shifts in ocean circulation. Only after the oceans — particularly the Southern Ocean — have warmed for centuries does dissolved CO₂ outgas from the deep ocean, slowly raising atmospheric concentrations from 180 ppm to 280 ppm over 5,000 to 10,000 years. IMAGE: The last Glacial Extreme, illustrating sea-level fluctuations over the past 140,000 years. The Eemian peaks around 120–130 ka matching or exceeding modern zero levels, before plunging back into glacial extremes.

World temperatures were almost 2°C higher than today and sea levels 6–9 meters higher during the Eemian interglacial, 129,000–116,000 years ago. This protracted warmth was not driven by carbon dioxide; a paradox that exposes the fiction of treating the pre-industrial CO₂ baseline of 280 ppm as a planetary thermostat. If CO₂ were truly the climate control knob, the Eemian could not have been significantly warmer than our current era of 420 ppm. Tectonic movements, ocean currents and orbital cycles are the ruling heavyweights of climate. Current UN policy continues to distort the atmospheric properties of CO₂ by ignoring such rich lessons from the past. Historical warm periods — the Roman and Medieval climate optimums — occurred without carbon management, just as the 500 years of the Little Ice Age in Europe unfolded with virtually no change in CO₂. This contrasts sharply with the UN's 'Code Red' crisis mentality. Civilisation thrived during previous warm peaks without centralised UN oversight. Dismantling the 'CO₂ as primary lever' narrative highlights the natural variability that defines the Quaternary glaciation. History and physics did not just begin in 1850. We are 2.58 million years into the severe Quaternary glaciation, and our current warmth is simply a standard warm interglacial. The IPCC ignores these precedents because acknowledging them would render their centralised economic solutions irrelevant — like net zero. By 2050, this reasoning risks costing the world $275 trillion while achieving nothing for the planet — an indictment of a flawed climate ideology, designed to promote a UN led One World Government. IMAGE: The four most recent interglacials over the past 450,000 years (Antarctic temperature proxy and CO2, after R. Hannon 2017). MIS 1 (11.7 ka–present) – Holocene MIS 5 (130–115 ka) – Eemian (last interglacial) MIS 7 (243–191 ka) – Aveley MIS 9 (337–300 ka) – Purfleet MIS 11 (424–374 ka) – Hoxnian/Holstein