Every Temperature change during the past 50 million years, with temperature going up and down rapidly corresponds to a change in albedo due to changes in Clouds and rain and snow. Every warm time is a time that resulted from a Cold time that had less clouds and rain and snow. Every Cold time is a time that resulted from a Warm time that had more clouds and rain and snow.
Look at the warm and wonderful times in human history. They were warm and wonderful because there are more clouds and rain and snow and CO2 during warm times. Look at the cold and awful times in human history. They were cold and awful because there are less clouds and rain and snow and CO2 during cold times.
Settlements of people did always did do better in warm times and did do worse in cold times. The worst major droughts in history, that wiped out settlements of people, occurred during the coldest of times.
On the next chart, the top of every cycle, big or little, is a time of relative warmer temperature that came from and returned to a relative colder time. These are all the same Polar Ice Cycles, just operating in different bounds due to differences in the ocean levels, ocean currents and the availability of or lack of availability of warm oceans in the Polar Regions that do thaw and freeze to turn cooling on and off.
A major ice age occurs after a major warm period with higher oceans and more open oceans to provide more moisture for clouds and rain and much more snow. The snow falls and builds up, not out initially, during the warm times. When ice volume and thickness starts increasing, ice extent is still decreasing, and earth is still warming, for a while, The ice advances after it builds up and that does increase Albedo and that does make earth colder. The ice advances and causes the cold. It does not get cold first to cause the ice advance. The ice is always melting at the edges of ice sheets and at the tails of glaciers. The ice volume and weight determine if it advances faster or slower than it is breaking off and melting at the edges and tails. This is true for ice fields and for Greenland and the Antarctica and for glaciers. The ice donut around Antarctica is partly ice shelves that have advanced from the land and partly frozen oceans. The sun sees more ice during a Little Ice Age and less during a Medieval Warn Period. This causes the Albedo Change that does regulate temperature.
A major ice age lasts a long time because it takes a long time to melt a huge amount of ice. The ice does melt and a major ice age does end because of the lack of moisture for clouds and snow to replace ice that melts every summer.
The cycles of the past ten thousand years are in the current bounds because the ocean level and ocean currents support the current cycles. The cycles were getting larger and larger, for a million years and then the ocean level got just right, and just at the right time, during the last major warming, between twenty to ten thousand years ago, melted ice water entered the oceans and put the oceans at the perfect level for the modern cycles. This is the new natural variability that will be in place in the future, until something happens to change sea level or ocean currents.
In Polar Regions and beyond, we get more clouds and rain and snow when we need cooling.
In Polar Regions and beyond, we get less clouds and rain and snow when we do not need cooling.
In Tropic Regions, we get more clouds and rain when we need cooling.
In Tropic Regions, we get less clouds and rain and when we do not need cooling.