I was fascinated with these Antarctic ice cores back when they were completed in 1998 and also the later 2003 European Project coring drilled 300 miles distant.
The Vostok coring was deeper but the European cores go back farther. Above the two data sets are overlayed with the European on top and the Vostok beneath. And below the Vostok core data is arrayed in the typical graph usually published.
What's remarkable are.....
- how closely the different cores correlate.
- the uniform height and depth of world temperature and C02 highs and lows.
- the uniform spacing of warming and ice ages.
- the appearance of cause-effect with geologic activity - C02 - temperature.
- that overlaying human activity shows the appearance of zero impact.
Modern man has been present on all continents for 30,000 years, and he and his more primitive predecessors have only used regular, controlled fire for cooking, agriculture and hunting for 50-100,000 years. Before that man-made fires date to 400,000 years, but it's questionable how numerous, regular and controlled they were. Certainly nothing remotely like the Cro Magnon era to today.
I'm hardly drawing conclusions that these are "proof" that temperature cycles are caused by geologic or solar phenomena and that man has zero impact, but they do raise questions about buying into a new religion on Anthropologic Climate Change.
““Perhaps then, you will say, ‘But where can one have a boat like that built today?’ And I will tell you that there are still some honest men who can sharpen a saw, plane, or adze...men (who) live and work in out of the way places, but that is lucky, for they can acquire materials for one third of city prices. Best, some of these gentlemen’s boatshops are in places where nothing but the occasional honk of a wild goose will distract them from their work.” -- L Francis Herreshoff