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Nature Geoscience 1, 289–290 (1 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/ngeo194

Carbon cycle: Checking the thermostat

David Archer

The carbon cycle plays both sides of the street in the Earth's climate, stabilizing the climate on some timescales but amplifying variability on others. Natural climate evolution on timescales of millions of years — progression from hothouse to icehouse — is driven by changes in the relative strengths of the CO2 inputs from volcanoes and metamorphic alteration of rock and sinks due to weathering and ocean uptake (Fig.