From an article quoted by Candidasa the other day:

Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the periods between glaciations and warmer times in North America, Europe, and North Asia were gradual.
…
(however) It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren’t part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch, which is off as you gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point threshold or “breakover point” where suddenly the state is flipped from off to on and the light comes on.

And now this, just in via Time magazine:

Climate observers announced a huge surprise yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference, in St. Louis: the glaciers of Greenland, which carry ice from the interior out to the sea, have gone on a tear. They’re flowing, on average, about twice as fast as they were a decade ago — and even back then, says glacier expert Julian Dowdeswell, of the University of Cambridge, “I was telling my students that they were among the fastest-flowing glaciers on Earth.”

Whether it is due to human industry, accelerated by human industry, or a recurring historical natural process unrelated to human industry, the point is moot. Practically speaking: It’s here.

Here are a couple of funny videos about global warming, for your viewing pleasure:

One about George Bush by comedian Will Ferrell, and a lively song and dance routine about Exxon called “Toast the Earth”.

The focus of these types of exposition have been to say that politicians and industry have been ignoring and covering up their possible contribution to the situation by ignoring the situation itself.

The Exxon one wants to pin some blame on Exxon for it. I think that the time for that angle is behind us. It’s much more dangerous than we originally thought. From what the scientists are saying, it looks like it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon that repeats cyclicly. Right now, whether industry contributes to it or not is really irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it is upon us.

I don’t want to sound like a doomsday prophet, but I’m with Kim Stanley Robinson on this one - we really do need to start packaging up human civilization to survive the long winter. It’s not about technology, because that will not survive. The industrial base of human society is about to cumble. It’s about knowledge and culture. As he put it: “All the knowledge of human society should be preserved in books that will last through the winter night”.

The Vedic knowledge is the body of knowledge of human civilisation that has survived these winter nights before. Transmitted by word of mouth across generations, it tells the history of the universe over millions of generations, recounting significant events to highlight the mission and purpose of this universe, and the human form of life.

Archaeological evidence is erased by the shifting sands and winds of time, but the Vedic knowledge, handed from one to another - parampara, travels over millennia to reach us now - perfectly preserved in essence if not in detail.