Is continental drift a cause or effect of climate change and why?
My understanding is that Ice ages are caused, in part, by the fact that most of the land is in the northern hemisphere. When cycles related to long term changes in the earths’ orbit (Milankovitch cycles) combine to produce colder weather in this hemisphere, summer temperatures are not sufficient to melt the snow from the previous winter. As more snow accumulates, it reflects more sunlight, this causing further cooling and the rapid onset of an ice age. Presumably then, as a result of Continental drift, there were times, hundreds of millions of years ago, when the land masses were distributed differently and the cycle of ice ages that we are in now was less severe or didn’t occur at all. So, while the answer to your question is that continental drift is a cause of climate change over very long timescales, it has no relevance to the current debate over man-made climate change. http://www.enviroped
