When the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth's orbit. The warming causes the oceans to release CO2. TheCO2 amplifies the warming and mixes through the atmosphere, spreading warming throughout the planet. So CO2 causes warming AND rising temperature causes CO2rise. Overall, about 90% of the global warming occurs after the CO2 increase. "An article in Science magazine illustrated that a rise in carbon dioxide did not precede a rise in temperatures, but actually lagged behind temperature rises by 200 to 1000 years. A rise in carbon dioxide levels could not have caused a rise in temperature if it followed the temperature." (Joe Barton)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
Carbon is not just stored in the oceans, much is on land as peat: see Yu et al, 2003, Carbon Sequestration in western Canadian Peat Highly Sensitive to Holocene Wet-Dry Climate Cycles at Millenial Timescales, The Holocene 13: 801-808. We demonstrated that millenial scale "wiggles" in CO2 in antarctic ice match wet-dry climate cycles and peat growth rate changes in western Canada (and presumably elsewhere as well).
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