Be forewarned... Global Warming!

(Pict Courtesy - http://alternative-energy.everything-fine.com/)

I watched the National Geographic documentary series Six Degrees Could Change the World. Like everything else in Nat Geo this was very graphic and reached out to me at a personal level like nothing else I have read or seen about Global Warming ever did.
On the first episode I watched the melting ice in Greenland.. slowly melting away and if the global temperature increases they could start melting at a faster pace! Later that week I watched another documentary on Antarctica. (I can't seem to remember on which channel that was) In the documentary a researcher on the base station in Antarctica spoke in a matter-of fact tone .. "When I came here a few years ago, there was Ice everywhere and I could not imagine a ship coming here " (Pointing to the ship that brought in the explorers - oh yes an antarctic expedition no less). "Choppers landed where the ship stands today he said". This was like a Deja Vu for me.. and fear gripped my heart!
I also watched the part about the Australian corals getting bleached.. no more Great Barrier Reef.. and this is true too.. In 2002 the Great Barrier Reef experienced the worst coral bleaching on record.. about 60% in Australia alone.. The cause a rise in the water temperature ..the result of global warming.
Today it was talk about a disappearing Ganges... the sacred Indian glacier.. The Glacier Gaumukh above the Gangotri where the Ganges starts has receded by about a kilometer in the past 20 years or so... So what happens if the glaciers disappear? What happens if Ganges disappears.. will this mean an end to the Spirituality of India as we know it? Ganges is believed to flow from Lord Shiva's head after all.. in an effort to stem the force of her flow from heaven to earth. So what will happen to the culture that stems from this belief?
Ever wonder what happened to the Dinosaurs? The end of the cretaceous era .. Either by a meteorite or huge volcanic eruptions..resulting in global warming, acid rains, reduced sunlight and finally ice age! How did the earth bounce back? All the carbon from the atmosphere was absorbed by the oceans and the plants and the soil. And the air was good to breathe again. The irony? We burn the very same fossil fuels today and start the cycle yet again!

Do watch the series Six Degrees Could Change the World on National Geographic. This is based on the book by Mark Lynas - Six Degrees. Its alarming to say the least and hopefully will awaken us to the effects of Global Warming.. What can we do to help? Recycle, burn less fuel.. car pool, walk, cycle... and lend your hand!

Like the trailer says "Global Warming isn't out of control but it soon could be. Warning signs are all around us. " It is up to us to take notice and be forewarned!

Drawing Parallels

We are so advanced in comparison to our co-inhabitors on this planet. We are the six-sensed human beings. And how do we have foresight and hindsight as we so call it. By a beautiful thing we do, called pattern matching. We love to pattern match and derive/ extrapolate from these matching patterns. Hence we predict anything from weather and catastrophes.

I recently watched heart in mouth this series on Nat Geo called Six Degrees. National Geography does have its way of keeping us in constant fear of the perils we are bound to face in the future! And they do this by extrapolation. All statements start with "With the rate at which the ice is melting...", "With the rate at which the global warming happens ..." and so on.

But that is science for you and we all accept it, as it seems very rational to us ,this analysis.

Now I ask you, what do you think of astrology? Astrology is the art of studying the position of the celestial bodies at the time of one's birth. Further with the movement of these celestial bodies and the patterns they take, the person's fate is predicted.

This to me seems to be pattern matching again. How did the astrologers know that certain celestial patterns/ movements characterize certain behavioral patterns/ events in the person. Because over the years they have pattern matched and extrapolate these learnings to come up with a science called Astrology.

So why do we believe one when we reject another?