MIND EXPERIMENT:
Ice Age Weather Systems and their impact on the Human Race
I was just about to present my CAT or Clever Alternative Theory about meteor strikes and sedimentary rock formation at the tail end of the last official Ice Age about 12,000 years ago aka the Younger Dryas when I suddenly thought, "If a lot of the Earth's water is stored in the hyper-swollen ice caps, would there be enough water for the sort of intense electrical storms my CAT propounds?"
And the answer has to be YES, right?
The Younger Dryas is marked by a massive increase in the Earth's average temperature over a few decades. You're not going to get that from a bit of volcanic activity (the ash cloud would present the opposite i.e. further cooling). You're not going to get that from meteor strikes (they're over in a second and you get the added bonus of more crap in the atmosphere i.e. further cooling).
In fact, the only model that can consistenly HEAT the Earth for decades or more has to involve a massive upsurge (ignore the pun) of Electrical Storms. Sedimentary rock formation will still happen in less turbulent times but in my CAT model megatsunamis or storm surges were far more important to sedimentary rock formation i.e. rocks are much younger than we currently believe. There's also a connection between solar activity and seismic shifts... but that's still to be resolved. Asteroid or meteor strikes still happen but in my CAT model discharge from these insanely active electrical storms made many of the craters we are still able to find - imagine Younger Dryas cultures shuddering away their existence in deep dark tunnels and cave systems to avoid the electric skies.
But then that leaves us with a problem, the fuel to drive these electric-strike crater-forming and mega-tsunami sedimentary rock-forming storms would have parched the land... cataclysmic desert and ice age in the same era. Lack of water and flooding deluges in the same model-space.