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Naturally, I’ll respectfully disagree — there’s no possible cause for massive glaciation apart from big impacts from space. Literally nothing else will cause it. I appreciate the deep-seated desire that there’s some kind of classifiable, predictable, cyclical cause, but there just isn’t one.

Even if the crustal displacement or pole shift models had been plausible (most recent advocates of the former are the Flem-Aths, basing their work on that of Charles Hapgood), they amount to trying to tame down catastrophes — look, a way for landmasses to shift into other latitudes with nary a shake or shimmy, barely rattling the dishes in the cupboard.

That said, there’s clearly an altitude shift, such as isostatic rebound when large ice masses melt back into the seas, but the ice didn’t get there gradually over centuries or thousands of years.

I do agree that large impacts have and will continue to affect the earth’s geology and biosphere. IMO though, it would take a pretty large or multiple impacts to have the same effect as thousands of underwater and above ground volcanoes erupting. Some climate researchers support the theory: all that is needed is enough moisture in the atmosphere, and we’ll have another age of ice. Warm up the oceans and you should see a rise in atmospheric moisture content.

Ice core data supports the theory that the earth’s normal climate is much colder than what we’re seeing today, and that we’re currently at the end of a typical 12K year warm period which themselves occur approximately every 100K years or so in the recent past (from 800K years of ice core data).

If we go with the theory that impacts cause glacial periods, we have to address the following:

First, is ice core data accurate and reliable?

If so, what causes the earth to warm up for 12K years after the 100K year cold period? The climate hardly knows when the asteroids/comets are due to return.

What causes the warming? Does the sun somehow “know” it’s time to warm up the planets through some yet unknown force or through transitioning certain areas of space periodically?

What are the orbits of 100K year impactors or does the solar system transition fields of periodically?

Why does the ice core data show an increase in CO2 prior to and post colder ice age entries?

One thing I have been considering: the possibility of comet ISON breaking up as it swings around the sun next year, if it makes it that far. Depending upon where a possible breakup might occur, the earth could wind up in the path of some of the debris.

It's ALL interesting food for thought! :)