Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00313)

Brothers and Sisters, 
 
Does the former U. S. vice-president Al Gore say things on climate change which are fundamentally the same as those William Q. Judge said more than 110 years ago?  
 
In a text posted yesterday,  we saw W.Q. Judge's words about the cataclyms  which occur at  the  beginning and end of great cycles.  After mentioning earthquakes, floods and fire, Judge writes on ice:
 
“Ice cataclysms come on not only from the sudden alteration of the poles but also from  lowered temperature due to the alteration of  the warm fluid currents in the sea and the hot magnetic currents in the earth, the first being known to science, the latter not. The lower stratum of moisture is suddenly frozen,  and vast tracts of land covered in a night with many feet of ice. This can easily happen to the British Isles if the warm currents of the ocean are diverted from its shores.” (1) 
 
Let’s compare this to what Al Gore thinks  in 2006,  about the same subject.  Gore is a long-time ecologist  and has been studying  these matters since the 1980s. In his recent film and book “An Inconvenient Truth”,  he describes the process of heating  now taking place at the globe due to the famous ‘greenhouse effect’, caused by the now rapidly growing excess of carbon  dioxide in the atmosphere.   
 
Gore scientifically describes  the process, already started,  of advanced ice-melting in the planetary poles. 
 
As any student of Theosophy can see,  ice-melting in the poles may be directly linked to the periodical  Polar Shifts in our planet,  mentioned by HPB and the esoteric doctrine. The melting alterates the whole ‘distribution and balance of weight’ along the planet’s surface and thus can affect the poles orientation with regard to the Sun.  The geological matter of our planet is much more plastic and fluid, and much less “solid” than one would think at first sight.  Hard rocks are the exception; fluidity is the rule. 
 
The warming temperatures and the large scale melting of glaciers in the poles are in fact but the initial effects of a much wider change in the physiology of the planet.  Al Gore writes: 
 
“Melting the Arctict could profoundly change the planet’s entire climate pattern.  Scientists call the global climate a ‘non-linear system,’ which is just a fancy way the scientists have of saying the changes are not gradual. Some of them can, and have in the past, come suddenly, in big jumps.”
 
He proceeds: 
 
“These scientists say the  world’s climate  is best understood as a kind of engine for redistributing heat from the Equator and the tropics into the poles. Much more solar energy is absorbed by the Earth between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn because the Sun is directly overhead everyday all year long.”
 
On the poles, we have the opposite: 
 
“By contrast, the Sun’s rays strike only glancing blows at the North Pole and the South Pole.  Each receives the sunlight for only half the year, during which the other is completely in darkness. The redistribution of heat from the Equator to the poles drives the wind and ocean currents – like the Gulf Stream and the jet stream. These currents have followed much the same pattern since the end of  the last ice  age 10,000 years ago, since before the first human cities were built. Disrupting them would have incalculable consequences for all  of  civilization. And yet, the climate crisis is gaining the potential to do just that.”  (...)
 
In the lines above, Gore mentions the well known fact that we were “back from an ice age” some 10,000 years ago.  
 
It is interesting to note that, according to “The Mahatma Letters”,  some 11,500 years ago Poseidonis, the last  (and large)  island of Atlantis, “went down with a crash” (2).  Was it because of a flood,  and a flood  caused by a sudden large scale ice-melting?  Most likely so. 
 
The paradox is that a  warming leads to an ice-melting, which leads to a new ice age,  which lasts sometimes 1,000 years.  As to duration of  the ice age, one should see the end of p. 149, near the greater map in Gore’s book.   
 
Thus the  “melting” which sunk Atlantis 11,500 years ago could have been linked to the starting point of an ice age.  Dates seem to fit  as broadly speaking,  some 10,000 years ago we had the end of the ice age.  But you will see  that Gore is talking about 10,000 years with much flexibility: this could have been the time either  of the start,  or of the end of  the most recent and “short” ice age.  
 
Let’s come back to what is happening right now. Gore proceeds: 
 
“And so all those wind and ocean current patterns that formed during the last ice age, which have been relatively stable ever since, are now up in the air. Our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely  similar to this. Today’s climate pasttern has existed throughout the entire history of human civilization. Every place – every city, every farm – is located or has been developed on the basis of the same climate patterns we have always known.”
 
What about the ocean currents mentioned by William Judge?  
 
The former U.S. vice-president says:  
 
“According to scientists, one surprisingly fragile component of the global climate system is in the North Atlantic, where the Gulf Stream encounters the cold winds coming off the Arctic and across G reenland. (...) The currents of  the ocean are all linked (...) in a loop called ‘The Global Ocean Conveyor Belt’.”
 
He then adds, referring to some drawings in the world map:  
 
“The red parts of the loop below represent the warm surfaces, the best known of which is the Gulf stream, which flows along the east coast of America. The blue portions of the loop represent the deep cold-water currents flowing in the opposite direction. (...) Around 10,000 years ago, something happened that the scientists are worried could happen again. When the last glacial ice sheet in North America melted, it formed a giant pool of fresh water.  The Great Lakes are the remnant of that huge freshwater lake, which was held in place on its eastern boundary by an enormous ice dam. Then one day the ice dam  broke and the fresh water rushed out into the North Atlantic.  (...) The Gulf Stream virtually stopped. So Western Europe no longer received all of that heat from the evaporating Gulf Stream. Consequently, Europe went back into an ice age for another 900 to 1,000 years. And the transition happened fairly quickly. Some scientists are seriously worried about the possibility of  this phenomenon recurring.” (3) 
 
Please compare this to that paragraph by Judge.  
 
Of course, the issue deserves more study and research.  It is not difficult to see that Theosophy  and its doctrine of cycles can help us better understand the present moment of our civilization.  And this will help us better understand ourselves and  the “dharma” of present human generation, that is, our duty and the  opportunities we have, or may create, in order to act in a correct way in the years ahead.       
 
Best regards,   Carlos. 
 
 
 
NOTES:
 
(1)  “The  Ocean of Theosophy” William Q. Judge, Theosophy Company, 1987, 172 pp., see p. 124. 
 
(2) “The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett”, TUP, Pasadena, California, USA, 1992, 494 pp.  See all of the letter XXIII-B (93-B in the Philippines TPH Chronological edition), and more especially the answer to question  4.  The specific mention to Atlantis’ dates is at p.  155 (TUP edition) or 313 (Chronological edition). There, the Master also gives the pages in which the “partially veiled” story of Atlantis is narrated,  in “Isis Unveiled”. 
 
(3) “An Inconvenient Truth”, by Al Gore, published by Rodale, Inc., PA, USA, 2006, 328 pp. See pp. 148-151. 
 
 
oooooooooooooooooo
 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]