Serpent At The End Of Precession

The Serpent at the End of Precession by Michael W.Weir

When the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change drafted the Kyoto Protocol and presented it in 1997 to world governments as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to curb global warming, an international consensus was made to turn away from earlier concerns over evidence of a looming ice age. Growing recognition to the failures of science to adequately define the causes of ice age cycles has left an appropriate lack of concern by those who are in positions to set a social policy of awareness. As ex-vice president Al Gore took on the role of self appointed guru for public awareness on global warming with his movie An Inconvenient Truth, the resulting public acceptance of global warming as the new burden of guilt cemented the focus away from the real threat facing modern society. According to Al Gore global warming is a blame game: “We are melting the North Polar ice cap. . . .We are destabilizing the massive mound of ice on Greenland . . .” and “We are dumping so much carbon dioxide into the Earth’s environment that we have literally changed the relationship between the Earth and the Sun.” (1) Without denying the changes taking place with global weather patterns and the very real human contribution to the greenhouse gas CO2, there are other forces involved that are affecting Earth’s weather that we can not be blamed for nor can we prevent. Buried in the ash of past Yellowstone eruptions lies an unrecognized cycle of Earth’s geologic history that directly threatens modern society. This cycle reveals a new frequency of occurrence regarding each passage of the solar system through the galactic plane and its link to the duration and definition of glacial cycles. Understanding this missing cycle should lead to a better awareness of the reality behind the next impending ice age and the political agenda behind the global warming scheme. Stimulated by evidence of changing weather patterns, a 1973 report from the CIA concluded “a global climatic change is taking place and that we will not soon return to the climate patterns of the recent past.” (2) This was soon followed by the 1975 First Miami Conference on Isotope Climatology and Paleoclimatology where Nobel laureate Willard R. Libby warned “Ice ages have been the normal condition during the last several million years, with temperate climates enduring only five percent of the time . . .Because the global food supply depends primarily on climate, current understanding of climate must be vastly improved…” (3) Nearly thirty years later in a report released in 2004 the Pentagon was still expressing grave concern over the changing climate and, while opting for either a scenario similar to the climate change 8,200 years ago when the weather decayed for only one hundred years or the Younger Dryas event of 12,800-11,500 BP that cooled earth over one thousand

years, the report still found in the projected future “a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s environment.” (4). Even within the stability of our present interglacial period, variability of sun spot activity or unpredicted changes in the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation can cause severe agricultural disruptions as seen in the Little Ice Age (LIA) that occurred between the thirteenth and mid seventeenth century. At the coldest point of the LIA little to no sunspot activity was noticed and frost was often to be expected in July throughout parts of Europe and North America. What effect high atmospheric concentrations of CO2 could have on a period of sunspot minimum is undetermined though the threat is real enough and possibly soon to be realized, as solar cycle 25, which begins in the year 2013, is expected to be one of the most inactive sunspot cycle in centuries. (5) The impending cooling of solar cycle 25 could very well be responsible for fueling the hopeful speculation that global warming may possibly delay the onset of the next ice age. (6) The beauty of the Milankovitch Theory (MT) of ice ages is its mathematical predictability and linear gradualism. All three predicted cycles happen over extended lengths of time – the shortest cycle, precession, being a mere 23,000 years. Certainly this may seem enough time to put off concern of climate change for further generations or, if we happen to be the generation that has to deal with it, plenty of time to come up with a means to social and economic adaptability before the situation became severe. Only the MT doesn’t explain enough. This is why our government is so concerned over improvements in understanding current climate change. Milutin Milankovitch came up with his theory over eighty years ago and, as nice as it looks on paper, it is failing more field tests and ultimately lacks explanation for periods of severe climate reversals. According to the MT we are in the best position for the shorter precession cycle, winter falling in the northern hemisphere while the earth is closest to the sun (perihelion), along with earth’s cycle of obliquity, both presently optimum – just the right amount of sun for a stable climate for both hemispheres, and there’s no indication of a looming ecliptic shift or orbital stretch. Yet, amidst a crescendo of global warming soothsayers and a scramble to create carbon exchange proposals for CO2 emitting corporations there’s at least one geologist saying “our time looks about up” before this warm interglacial period comes to an abrupt termination. (7) Sixteen years ago science got a big clue to the shortcomings of the MT. Based on isotopic analysis overlaid on the Milankovitch orbital cycles, discoveries in 1992 at Devil’s Hole, Nevada, showed cycles in climate fluctuations that are not in sync with the Milankovitch Theory. Orbital-forced insolation (cooling by increased distance from the sun) increases could not explain it. (8)

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With a chart that shows three million years of temperature fluctuations based on oxygen isotope profiles, University of California, Berkeley professor Richard A. Muller points out problematic discrepancies with Milankovitch. In the last 650,000 years the ice age is dominated by only the 100,000 year glacial cycle while the previous two million years has a predominant 41,000 year cycle and then about three million years ago there were no strong ice age cycles at all.

This problem, the problem being the lack of a dominating MT of orbital forcing, has lead Muller to believe “that the driving force is astronomical.”(9) In other words, orbital variations as a major mechanism for global cooling seem less likely than some other factor beyond earth such as interplanetary or galactic dust clouds. A different chart of temperature compilation going back only 420,000 years illustrates how short the warming periods are between glacial building events of the last ice age cycle. Even though these warming events may comprise 10% or more of the preceding glacial period, in Muller’s words, “such interglacials are very brief”. (10) By this reckoning we are way past the ten percent grace of the last 100,000 year glacial maximum.

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What historians determine to be the total length of time it took for modern civilization to develop is all within our present interglacial period. Sharp spikes in the graph not only illustrate how quickly ice ages can end, but also how quickly they can begin. “This data should frighten you . . . the next ice age is about to hit us,” warns Professor Muller. (11)

How fast global climate can change was pointed out by Jeffrey Severinghaus, head of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, when, after analyzing ice core samples from both Greenland and Antarctica, he found climate reversals to be noticed in as little as three years, in one sample an incredible nine degree temperature change happened within a decade. (12) A large part of the failure of climatologists to find a better explanation for ice ages is the application of the spinning top model for earth. A spinning top implies a single given momentum and a drag or torque against the axis of the spin. This is a misleading image of earth’s rotational relationship to its orbital plane. A gyroscopic effect model is closer to the real model and even this can give the wrong image of earth’s stability. Due to the presence of the moon, earth’s obliquity can not go past the twenty three degrees of the lunar orbit. What a gyroscopic model does best is illustrate the relationship of the moon to the earth’s equatorial bulge, a suggestion of the lunar tidal drag against earth’s speed of rotation, and the cyclical changes in the moon’s own orbital plane which in turn controls the degree of earth’s obliquity. But again, unlike a spinning top, Earth’s tilt pivots on the solar plane that dissects earth’s equator, not its bottom axis. The torque against the axis that a spinning top will experience is not a proper representation of what is happening to earth. The only torque on earth’s spin is caused by the moon’s influence against earth’s equator, an influence that absorbs and modifies additional influences by both the sun and Jupiter. (13)

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Even with known cyclical variations affecting this planet, earth is very stable, it’s ‘original spin’ maintained by a solid, magnetically charged core which is surrounded by a significant molten mantle. This liquid interior creates a strong and stable centrifugal force against the equator that is kept steady by the presence of the moon, with the moon subsequently acting as a climate regulator for the earth. (14) With the pivoting of the axis centered in the middle of the planet some degree of polar wandering (axial tilt due to surface imbalances) is possible but would be restricted within earth’s obliquity imposed upon the planet by the moon. Any suggestion that earth could have turned on its side would suggest a point in time when earth didn’t have a moon. Common to all sides of the debate about the origins of the moon is the assumption that it found it’s orbit early. There is no reason for this assumption. One of the problems in the theory of a “snowball earth” during the Precambrian past is evidence of sand wedges found in geological strata in Australia. Sand wedges show seasonal temperature fluctuations. For Australian geologist George Williams the best explanation for the ice/thaw repetition that would cause sand wedges at the equator is an obliquity nearly a quarter circle. (15) This would imply a Precambrian earth without the moon. The snowball earth theory, rather than be challenged by Williams’ findings, would not be contested by the evidence of equatorial sand wedges since an absence of the moon would have sent earth into periods of extreme elliptical orbiting around the sun while allowing obliquity to reach a maximum of ninety degrees, creating conditions best supporting periodic snowball earth conditions. The best evidence for the geologically recent capture of the moon is the Cambrian explosion. Something happened that not only permanently ended the cycle of the chilling conditions found on earth’s surface at the time, but also put earth into a stable orbit closer to the sun and brought to an end the devastating swings in severe tilting. Mass extinction of Precambrian fauna is found at the boundary of the Cambrian and was determined to be caused by sudden environmental change. (16) Just prior to the time period that earth was to experience the Cambrian trauma, something passed close enough to Venus that the object’s gravitational force tore the Venusian crust so severely subsequent magma flows completely resurfaced all of Venus, a force so strong it possibly pulled the planet into rotating in opposition to the other planets. (17) A similar crust tearing event happened on earth at around the same time, creating the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary and resulted in the birth of the Pacific Basin. Earth was luckier than Venus, being further from the sun and covered with ice, surface temperatures of this event were absorbed by the ice, the rapid melt-water able to cool the hot scarring, the resulting steam creating an atmosphere that allowed complex life to explode in genesis.

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The Earth, being more dense and of a stronger magnetic field than Venus, eventually held on to this object that we now call our moon. Other questions concerning the origins of Venus in reference to the clockwise rotation of the planet has led to a belief Venus may have been a comet that was recorded in Egyptian history as terrorizing earth thousands of years ago. Though science may question the validity of Venus being a captured comet, credible witnesses have recorded Venus as once having a moon, which it does not have now, including Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini when, in 1672, he first sighted the anomaly then waited for further multiple sightings of the satellite before finally recording it in his journal in 1686. (19) What that body was, where it came from, and where it went highlights questions concerning Venus and possibly explains the confusion regarding Venus as a comet: perhaps the comet wasn’t Venus but was the object later captured by Venus making the planet appear suspect. There is other evidence to show that our solar system has had other acts of planetary instability. Mercury has recently been confirmed to have a molten core. By the laws of astrophysics and thermodynamics this is not possible as any body forming that close to the sun would not have the available elements, sulfur in particular, to maintain a molten core. (18) Most people are familiar with the claim that Mars once had shallow oceans and there is undeniable evidence to verify this. Yet, this seems to be impossible in the location it is in now. It is also questionable that Mars could hold on to an atmosphere that would support a hydrological cycle considering the very weak magnetic field Mars currently has and the lack of active vulcanism. Mars as half of a dual planetary system or the moon of another larger planet seems the best answer to Mars’ anomalies. Then there is, again, Earth. Earth’s beginning comes with a contradiction called the Faint Early Sun Paradox. It has been determined that early earth was warm and had a methane atmosphere, normally an impossibility with earth this close to the sun since sunlight readily destroys methane. So scientists estimated the young sun would have also been cooler, a reduction of 30% intensity, which they thought was enough to allow earth to maintain a methane atmosphere. (20) Only the methanogens, that could have produced the known methane, need darkness (such as what is found in the stomach of a goat or horse today) and a temperature above 80 F. A dim sun is not dark enough nor, by contrast, could it produce enough heat for methanogens to survive. (21)

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Today, if we look at Mars and realize it gets up to 40% less luminescence from the sun as earth currently does, which is much less than earth would have received in the faint early sun paradox theory of a methane atmosphere, and Mars is still too close to the sun to maintain the methane it is somehow currently producing, Earth, by comparison, has always been too close to the sun to have had a methane atmosphere. Early earth’s warm but dark atmosphere could be better explained if earth had been a satellite of a young and hot Jupiter. Astronomers have recently been able to view other solar systems and the majority of them contain young, hot Jupiter-sized planets too close to their sun to do anything but capture or consume smaller planet sized bodies before moving into a more distant location. (22) In this more likely scenario Earth stayed as a moon of Jupiter until dislodged from its orbit, this movement indicated at that point when the atmosphere changed from methane to water ice. Accepting the idea of a solar system that plays billiards with its planets demands a mechanism by which any satellite or planet could be loosened from an established orbit. Passing through the galactic plane, something the solar system does repeatedly, and the subsequent though temporary collapse of planetary magnetic fields, would give rise to gravitational influences that could pose this possibility, at the very least threaten the dislodgement of comets from the Oort Cloud. (23) In 1994 astronomers discovered a new galaxy that was very close to the Milky Way galaxy. Subsequent analysis showed the Milky Way to be devouring this smaller galaxy now known as Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sag DEG). Significantly, it intersects the Milky Way at the precise angle our solar system is tilted to the galactic plane. (24) This coincidence would be less significant if our solar system wasn’t also moving at this same angle through the galaxy. It is acknowledged that our solar system passes through the galactic plane, usually described as a bobbing motion that takes anywhere from 33 million to 55 million years. There is no reference for this conjectured time limit or bobbing motion other than an attempt to match the movement of the solar system to known periods of surface cratering or known extinction events. (25) Considering the angle of the solar system and its given momentum it is unlikely that the solar system bobs in any way in reference to the galactic plane. If the solar system was actually oriented relative to the galactic plane it would be easier to accept a bobbing of the solar system along the galactic plane like the skipping of a rock on a ponds surface, but this is not the angular momentum the sun is known to have. A simple observation some summer night when the sky is clear is to go out and look up towards the southern sky and find the Milky Way. You will notice it is tilted somewhere around 70 degrees to the horizon. In actuality, it is our solar system that is tilted 70 degrees to the galactic plane of the Milky Way.

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Whether or not our solar system comes from Sag DEG, though it seems most likely, the sun would have long ago passed through the Milky Way and just kept going if our solar system’s journey had not been somehow captured, resulting in a galactic orbit that apparently takes the solar system through both galactic hemispheres in its full orbital cycle. Defining the length of this solar/galactic orbit leads back to the ice age cycle. Even though each warming period between glacial events is called an interglacial period, technically, they are not since an ice age cycle takes 650,000 years to complete. There are warming flux events (not the short interstadial periods) in between glacial advancement but they are not the true interglacial periods. We are not at the end of a glacial flux event currently, but in an interglacial period that falls between a total ice age cycle and lasts only 13 ky (thousand years) or one half of the precession cycle. When Libby said that temperate climates only fall within 5% of an ice age he was almost right. A real interglacial period, a length of time not between ice flux cycles but between a total ice age, occupies about 3% of the total cycle, while a warming period between glacial maximum events can be 10% or more of that cycle’s duration. Another look at Muller’s three million years of climate graph will show that each glacial period associated with noticeable changes from the previous age is approximately 650,000 years. Al Gore only took his illustrations of CO2 concentrations back this far in his movie for a reason. The interglacial period that occurred beyond this point was so warm there were hippopotamuses and hyenas in England. (26) Between each ice age cycle of 650 ky, polarity reversals cause continental shifting that eventually lead to changes in ocean currents that affect the duration and severity of glacial build up for the following glacial period. Only a persistent flow of warm ocean

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water into an open Arctic ocean would give enough evaporation to fuel the constant hunger of the growing glacial sheets.

The signature event that takes place like clockwork at the same 650 ky period of time is the Yellowstone eruption. Yellowstone is not random in its most violent eruption cycle and has marked the starting point for at least each of the last five ice ages. The apparent lack of sufficient gas and particulates in ice core samples show that it is only associated with the start of each glacial period and not the cause of it. Curiously, as large as the Yellowstone eruptions are, the bulk of the ash fall seems to be confined to the North American continent. In a distribution pattern that does not correlate to any similar recorded weather pattern today, accumulations of Yellowstone ash may stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the California Pacific, having been confined to the continent by an extremely anomalous weather pattern occurring at the time of eruption.

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Yellowstone eruptions are very often associated with a significant jolt of the North American continent. The caldera itself doesn’t move, but the plate over it does. This continental shift is sudden and reveals a repetition in the direction the continental interior has been moving for at least the last thirteen million years.

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Deformation in the earth’s crust prior to a polarity reversal is the reason Yellowstone can set the signature for each ice age cycle. As the solar system approaches the galactic plane where magnetic fields collapse before reversing, the magnetic field on earth must similarly collapse before reversing. A noticeable flattening of the poles was noticed in 2002 by scientists who could not arrive at an appropriate explanation, citing post-glacial-rebound, global warming induced weather alterations or changes in gravity (!) as possible causes. (27) Fluctuations in the strength of the magnetic field of the core allows centrifugal forces of molten magma to bulge more at the equator resulting in a flattening of the planet at the poles, creating tremendous stresses for the lower and mid latitudes as they bear the brunt of crust misshaping. Yellowstone, being near the forty five degree latitude, is in essence right on the fold of crust deformity. Since 2004, magma under Yellowstone has been rising from a chamber 30 miles beneath the surface to another chamber only six miles from the surface at a rate three times faster than previously recorded. (28) As the solar system moves through space and from our vantage point of looking towards the galactic center, the solar system is known to be moving to the right and heading up through the galactic plane into the top or northern galactic hemisphere. (29)(30) Each hemisphere of the galaxy is magnetically charged like a bar magnet, very much like earth. Our solar system has been in the southern hemisphere for the last 13,000 years and under a negative polarity. An alignment between the earth, sun, and galactic center is due to take place on December 21, 2012. According to author John Major Jenkins this alignment also takes place while the solar plane passes through the galactic equator. (31)

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When the polarity of the solar system and its heliosphere reverses due to the change of galactic polarity, the magnetic polarity of earth will too. Having a strong magnetic field bathed in a sea of charged ions, earth is very susceptible to electromagnetic disturbances. Like an electric drill, just by reversing the polarity of the charge (feed) you reverse the direction of rotation. Even if the idea of pinpointing a specific date to a polarity reversal seems hard to accept, the fact that earth is experiencing the collapse of its magnetic field is undeniable. Some research shows the strength of earth’s magnetic field to have been weakening for at least the last four thousand years while the measurement of earth’s magnetic field for the last thirty years shows field strength decline to be gaining momentum. At the point where the degrading magnetic pole falls into sync with the rotating pole of the axis the gyroscopic model collapses into a spinning top model and a polarity reversal will follow. In a true interglacial period, that which lasts only thirteen thousand years and of which we are now in, continental glacial sheets melt, earth tilts to the obliquity set by the angle of the moon’s orbit, seasons begin, and the planet spins counter-clockwise as a negative polarity dictates. Precession, being a result of earth’s obliquity, lasts only during this time. At the start of the next ice age precession will end. Voltaire’s Great Year (Plato knew nothing of precession) only ends up being a summer vacation. Once earth reverses its polarity from the one it has now and is rotating clockwise against the moon’s orbit, it will lose the moon’s influence of obliquity and become perpendicular. Clockwise rotation also results in pulling the moon into a closer orbit, reversing the slow drift away from earth. (32) Eliminating the wobble of the barycenter caused by the moon’s current eccentricity as it orbits earth will allow earth to move into a slightly larger, more circular orbit around the sun. In this perpendicular position of earth’s axis, the pole star sits in the Draco constellation. All prehistoric people above the equator were overseen by the presence of this serpent during the ice age. Early star watchers could have easily associated themselves with this dragon and used it as a sign of wisdom and awakening. Being perpendicular would put earth into a constant state of equinox (equal night), where night and day hours are the same from the poles to the equator. Charted seasonal insolation values shows how this perpetual state of spring/fall insolation, as shown by the readings in March and September, could support glacial build up in the upper mid- and higher latitudes without a Milankovitch-style stretch of the ellipse.

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A clockwise rotation for earth would also reverse the oceanic currents, most significantly the Atlantic Ocean, which would now flow directly up the coast of Africa into the Arctic Ocean. This change in ocean currents would saturate the polar Hadley cell with moisture while creating a temperate climate in the Arctic. The Hadley cell would then carry and release its moisture in the mid-latitudes, below the northern jet stream. On a world that doesn’t spin, hot air at the equator would rise and flow toward the cooler Polar Regions where it will sink and flow along the ground until it reaches the equator where the cycle begins all over again. Since our world does turn, this cycle of rising and sinking air is dragged across the irregularities of the surface and broken into three cells of rising and sinking air like the stripes of Jupiter. The cells that start at the equator and extend out thirty degrees on either side are called tropical Hadley cells, discovered and named by George Hadley in 1753. Between thirty and sixty degrees are the Ferrel cells named after William Ferrel who discovered them in 1856. Ferrel cells are defined by the jet streams that flow at both the southern and northern boundaries. Above the Ferrel cell is the polar Hadley cell. Sitting directly on top of the polar region is a constant wind called the polar vortex that stays fixed above each pole. Interestingly enough, the Pleistocene glacial sheets in America stop just below the northern jet stream, almost in a line across North America with an allowable dip to the west of the Great Lakes due to lake effect snow. This is indicative of two things: a saturated jet stream and a lack of seasonal variation in the weather. To grow as large as ice sheets as were found during the duration of the Pleistocene, massive evaporation had to take place. This is the ignored conundrum of the ice age cycle. If glacial sheets were to creep down from the frozen Polar Regions, how did moisture get to the polar Hadley cells that fed the mid-latitude and northern glaciers? If the earth’s climate was to cool down by orbital stretch (insolation) in the obliquity it is in now glacial sheets would build and advance along the backs of the Appalachian,

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Rocky, and Sierra Nevada Mountains in the U.S.A. That didn’t happen during the ice age. Long, cold winters as we know them today did not occur under the mid-latitude Ferrel cells, just a slightly cooler, general weather pattern. By a detailed study of ancient wind patterns patterns, Dartmouth College professor and lead author of a report released in 2007, Xiahong Feng has suggested the dominant winds across North America during the Pleistocene as coming from the east. Analysis of ancient cellulose show oxygen and hydrogen isotope levels highest on the East Coast while decreasing to the West Coast – completely opposite of how the winds blow today, but exactly what would be expected with a clockwise rotation of the planet and a reversal of the present ocean currents. (33) Spinning clockwise and perpendicular, earth now acts like a spinning top and as such the build up of glacial sheets in the northern hemisphere along with declining sea levels in the southern hemisphere would make the planet respond in this imbalance in the same way a spinning top would. With a top heavy torque or drag against the rate of rotation, the weight of glacial sheets in the northern hemisphere could induce a pivoting of earth on it’s southern pole or axis, causing earth to respond with a slight bias toward the center of it’s orbit, the sun. This would not result in a return to precession as the pivoting of the bottom axis would leave earth tilted toward the sun in an annual continuity, not seasonally, the top- heavy northern landmasses leaning toward the sun only by a few degrees, bathed in perpetual light for thousand of years until the glaciers receded enough to refill the oceans and start the process over again. It would be in the temperate climate of this dimly lit far north that neotenous changes caused by pineal/pituitary over-stimulation would give rise to our genetic ancestors. In this environment changes would have been generational and rapid, as it would be with any changes in the endocrine system, leaving most anatomical evidence now under ice and water. Illustrations from ancient Egypt showing earth to have the cardinal points reversed may suggest knowledge of a polarity reversal and not necessarily earth turning over. Astronomical charts in the chamber of Hatshepsut’s architect Senmuth, show this, as does the documents from the Harris, Ipuwer, and the Hermitage Papyri. (34) This clockwise rotation will change the length of the year, month, and day. Eliminating the wobble of the barycenter caused by the moon reduces the tidal drag generated by the barycenter causing earth to speed up slightly. A calendar of this solar galactic orbit is found in the ancient tarot card system. Olney H. Richmond, a Grand Master of the Inner Temple of the Ancient Order of the Magi back in 1893, placed the origins of the tarot in Atlantis. It was the “crystallization of ages upon ages of observation of the stars and planets, coupled with observations of the actions of mankind as known in that day.” (35)

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The oldest known examples of tarot were carved on ivory plates and located in the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad but appear to be missing now after the looting that occurred at the time of the United States invasion of Iraq. (36) Tarot cards are divided into two distinct sets, one of the Sun (Major) and the other of the Moon (Minor). The 22 Major Arcana cards (21 cards plus the Sol or Fool card makes 22 total) illustrate the hours (between 21 and 22 hours) of the ice age day, the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana represent how many weeks the year consisted of and is further divided into a set of 14 cards representing the number of lunar months in a year, further segmented between two suits of 14 black cards of a waning moon and two suits of 14 red cards symbolizing the waxing moon. The black cards were also laid out in a way to show the dark half of the year, when earth was behind the sun and galactic center, and the light half of the year when earth was between the sun and the eye of the Milky Way. With the Minor Arcana cards laid out in a circle and the Sol/Sun card in the middle, the first seven cards of the Major Arcana, which represent the seven planets (according to the Tarot sequence of influence: Earth, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn) seen by the naked eye, could be displayed in their known astronomical position, representing any day of the year or any day to be forcasted in the future or past. However, the most common circular spread was geocentric. In this type of spread the moon played a larger role that amplified astronomical influences that could be interpreted for the best times of conception, astronomical/astrological birth charts, crop planting or harvesting, fishing and hunting, and for war. This alternate comparison of time to contemporary calendar length is confirmed by fossilized tidal patterns of Pichi Richi where geologist George Williams determined that the solar year at the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary lasted thirteen months and a day just under twenty two hours. (37) Our current ways of keeping time are astronomically anomalous and the survivors of the Pleistocene termination put a lot of effort into identifying and adapting the changes to the societies they tried to rebuild after the last polarity reversal. Removing one card from each suit of the Minor Arcana set reflected a readjustment of the number of lunar months and total weeks in the new calendar year, our common playing cards today, while totally remaking the symbolisms for the changes in the hours of the day was harder for the Major Arcana and didn’t show up until the creation of the 24 Elder Futhark runes. Rune researcher Audrey Fletcher argues that the Elder Futhark has ancient Egyptian origins and records the discovery of precession. In order to properly interpret the true meaning of the 24 runes they must be arranged and read, contrary to the tarot’s Major Arcana, in a counterclockwise direction. (38)

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The 56 Aubrey holes of Stonehenge may also reflect outdated calculations and a need for the establishment of a more permanent monument for the new age of precession. The dramatic astronomical and geographical changes that took place at the end of the Pleistocene took millennia to recover from, leaving few educated survivors left to understand and determine that the changes in the skies were not going to return to the way they once were. There would have had to be transitional signs, such as the Aubrey holes, where the familiar calendar of yore had to be compared to the new movement of the stars, moon, and sun to determine exactly what had changed and how to measure it.

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Polarity reversal could also illustrate a predictable forecast for continental drift. Against the scar of earth’s capture of the moon, a lithosphere rupture from 60 degrees latitude north to 60 degrees south and still visible off the coast of North America, continuing down the East Pacific Rise off the west coast of South America, the clockwise spread of the Pacific basin pushed and buckled the torn crust until it formed one giant landmass against the eastern edge of the tear. At each reversal the western edge of the spreading Pacific basin pushed against the conglomerate landmass until it fractured and the pieces began to spread, pulled along the orbital path of the counterclockwise moon, in a northeasterly and southeasterly direction, away from the leading edge of the spreading Pacific. In time, the continents will settle permanently at each pole as the ocean circles the earth like a belt. The pivoting of Earth on its southern axis will preclude, however, the Arctic basin from ever containing a large continent-sized landmass. The defined and persistent arrowhead shapes of South America, Africa, and India shows the power of the moon as it orbits counterclockwise against the clockwise earth, shaping and spreading the continents within the restriction of it’s orbit, best illustrated by the severe belly shape of the west coast of South America to the great continental collision that produced the Himalayan mountain range. At the termination of the last ice age, ice sheets had been the biggest yet. The domination of the 100,000 year periods of glacial building removed so much water from the world oceans that sea levels dropped to an approximate 300 feet at the equator and up to 400 feet in the Arctic. The lowered levels of the Arctic Ocean left great expanses of field and forest for millions of ice age fauna to graze, browse, and dig. The lack of permafrost during this time needs to be addressed scientifically, considering the flora pollen and tree fragments found in association with the frozen remains of these various Pleistocene mammals, birds, and insects, all found embedded in or under and not on top of the permafrost, indicating a phenomenon that buried its victims suddenly. (39)(40) A catastrophic and unrecognized weather phenomenon occurred at the moment of the pole shift and reversed within the length of a day the temperate arctic landscape of the Pleistocene into the frozen one we know today. Whitley Streiber first coined the term “global superstorm” in the book The Coming Global Superstorm, co-authored with Art Bell. It is a term he used to describe the fictional scenario of the collapse of the North Atlantic oceanic current resulting in extremely frigid air rushing out of the Arctic, causing tremendous storms world wide as a result.

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The idea is based on a real event that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene when the Atlantic conveyor collapsed (thermohaline circulation shutdown) in association with a change in tropical winds which plunged parts of Europe and North America into an extended period of cooling, in essence extending the effects of the ice age that had just ended, until a reorganization of ocean circulation could be established. (41) This incident known by geologists as the Younger Dryas period did not create a global winter. It only delayed glacial melting for over a thousand years and impacted mainly northern Europe and parts of North America. (42) A real global superstorm, as Whitley envisioned, would involve a rare event unrecognized by modern science and unprecedented in the history of modern meteorology. Above each pole, north and south, far above the swirling winds of the polar vortex is a pocket of extremely frigid air in the layer of atmosphere known as the mesosphere. Here, allowing for seasonal variations, temperatures can range from –90 C to –125 C (-130 F to -193 F). (43) As hard as it is to study this layer of atmosphere, being too low for satellite analysis and too high for weather balloons or planes, information gained with the help of a lidar system (laser-radar) shows an annual accumulative drop in mesospheric temperatures. (44) Cooling at an estimate of one degree per year over the last thirty years the mesopause, the ceiling of the mesosphere, has also dropped eight kilometers in its height, and is predicted to drop another twenty kilometers within the next century. Oddly enough, the increased chilling of the mesosphere is found to be related to increases in greenhouse gases which block the warmth that would otherwise modify the temperature of the mesosphere. (45) A descent of this frigid mesospheric temperature to the surface happens when the Hadley and Ferrel cells collapse at the time earth stops and reverses rotation; a truly global superstorm finally realized. Even modified by polar surface temperatures, a descending mesosphere will bring temperatures to earth’s surface in excess of –100 F. The glacial sheets that existed at the end of the Pleistocene in the northern hemisphere would have kept much of the force of this disaster within the confines of the Arctic arena though gaps at Beringia and the Norwegian basin would have allowed some of these cold winds to flow down to lower latitudes in modified fashion. Initial descent of the mesosphere at the end of the last ice age would have resulted in extreme differences in pressure gradients and created winds beyond our current defined hurricane parameters, with a force that would have and did disarticulate much of what it swept up as evidence shows in parts of the Alaskan and Siberian landscape. (46)(47)

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Today, a superstorm will not be confined by one and two mile high glaciers circumventing the northern latitude. Passage through the galactic plane at the end of a interglacial period is far more destructive than at the end of a glacial period. Truly, a global superstorm of unimaginable terror will make this next reversal and launch of the next ice age something of a challenge for our whole species. If this arrival of the new ice age is anything like the ending of the last one, then the modern human species, as unprepared as it is for this event, seems most likely to follow the same path as the woolly mammoth.

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References and Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Gore, A., An Inconvenient Truth, Rodale books, NY, 2006, p.10 Tompkins, P. & Bird, C., Secrets of the Soil, Earthpulse Press, 1998, p.179 ibid. Schwartz, P. & Randall, D., An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for the United Stated National Security, October 2003, available from http://www.gbd.com/GBNDDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2623&url=/Upload DocumentDisplayServlet.srv?id=28566 5. Solar Cycle 25 peaking around 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries, Science @ NASA, http://www.science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10maylongrange.htm 6. Next Ice Age Delayed By Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels, ScienceDaily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829193436.htm 7. Muller, R. A., A Brief Introduction to the History of Climate, http://www.muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html 8. Broecker, W. S., Upset for Milankovitch Theory, Nature 359, October 29, 1992 9. Muller, op.cit. 10. ibid. 11. ibid. 12. Severinghaus, J., Climate Change Science: Abrupt Climate Change, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, IGCC Policy Briefs, 1999 13. The Earth’s Orbit, Life in the Universe, http://www.lifeinuniverse.org/noflash/Earthorbit-05-03-02.html 14. Laskar, J., Joutel, F., Robutel, P., Stabilization of the Earth’s obliquity by the Moon, Nature 361, February 18, 1993 15. Walker, G., Snowball Earth, Three Rivers Press, NY, p.165 16. Ward, P. D., Brownlee, D., Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, Copernicus Books, NY, p.178 17. No Shortages of Mysteries on Venus, European Space Agency, http://www.esa.int/essaCP/ESAHRH7798D-index-0.html 18. Schlyter, P., Appendix 7: Hypothetical Planets, Nine Planets.org, http://www.nineplanets.org/hypo.html 19. Than Ker, Surprise Slosh! Mercury’s Core is Liquid, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070503-mercury-core.html 20. Kasting, J., When Methane Made Climate, Scientific American 291, July 2004 21. ibid.

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22. Mathiesen, B., ‘Hot Jupiter’ Systems may Harbor Earth-like Planets, PhysOrg.com, http://www.physorg./printnews.php?newsid=11909 23. Rampino, M.R., Stothers, R.B., Terrestrial mass extinctions, cometary impacts and the Sun’s motion perpendicular to the galactic plane, Nature 308, April 19, 1984, pp.709-712 24. Eden, D., Scientists Now Know: We’re Not From Here!, Viewzone, http://www.viewzone.com/milkyway.html This is a hot topic and I encourage the reader to do further research. See coverage at http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2003/milky-sept-24-2003.html and http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/galaxy_gobble_030924.html The desperate rebuttal "Is the Sun From Another Galaxy?" is at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/06/27/is-the-sun-fromanother-galaxy/ . Then see some great pictures and animation of the Milky Way cannibalising Sag DEG at http://www.solstation.com/xobjects/sag-deg.htm where astrophysicist Rosemary Wyse of Johns Hopkins University estimates that as much as 10 per cent of the stars in the Milky Way halo come from other dwarf galaxies. 25. Bahcall, J. & Bahcall, S., The Sun’s motion Perpendicular to the Galactic Plane, Nature 316, August 22, 1985 26. “When giant hippos roamed Britain”, CNN.com, July 1, 2004, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/ 07/01/uk.gainthippos/index.html 27. Britt, R., Mysterious Shift in Earth’s Gravity Suggests Equator is Bulging, Space.com, http://space.com/scienceastronomy/equator-bulge-020801.html 28. Thompson, A., Yellowstone Volcano Rises at Unprecedented Rate, Live Science, http://livescience.com/environment/071108-yellowstone-volcano.html 29. Lallement, R., et. al., Deflection of the Interstellar Neutral Hydrogen Flow Across the Heliosphere Interface, Science 307, March 4, 2005 30. McKee, M., Life Waxes and Wanes with Bobbing of the Solar System, New Scientist.com, http://www.newscientist.com/articles.ns?id=dn8923&print=true 31. Jenkins, J.M., What is the Galactic Alignment?, http://www.alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm 32. Ward, op.cit. 33. Feng, X., et al, The Changes in North America atmospheric circulation patterns indicated by wood cellulose, Geology, vol. 35, February 2007, p.163 34. Bushby, T., Secrets in the Bible, Joshua Books, Australia, 2003, pp.48-49; for further information on this statement there is “The Earth Turned Upside Down” at http://sunnyokanagan.com/joshua/upsidedown.html or Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision, (Macmillan,London, 1950) chapter five. Fingerprints of the Gods (Three Rivers Press, New York, 1995) by Graham Hancock, chapters 24-31, also refers to ancient texts and mythology concerning earth either being upside down or with a clockwise rotation. 35. Richmond, O., H., The Mystic Test Book, The Temple Publishing Company, 1893, reprinted by Health Research, 1965, p.13 36. David, J., M., ATS #11 – Iraqi Archeological Remnants and possible influences on the Tarot, Association of Tarot Studies, http://www.association.tarotstudies.com/newsletter/news11.html

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37. Walker, op.cit. 38. Fletcher, A., Ancient Egyptians and the Futhark Alphabet, http://geocities.com/futhark_runes/Ancient-Egyptians-and-the-FutharkAlphabet.html 39. Badger, T.A., Tunnels Bare Ancient Past, Arctic Council, April 5, 2000, http://www.arctic-council.org/perma.asp 40. Broecker, W.S., Was the Younger Dryas Triggered by a Flood?, Science 312, May 26, 2006, pp.1146-47 41. Perkins, S., Fertile Ground: Snippets of DNA persist in soil for Millenia, Science News 163, April 19, 2003 42. Christiane, S., et.al., Evidence Against a Significant Younger Dryas Cooling Event in New Zealand, Science 281, August 1998 43. Kloeppel, J., Frigid South Pole atmosphere reveals flaw in global circulation models, Light Science, http://www.light-science.com/globalmodel.html 44. Kloeppel, J., Harvey, L., Temperature in upper atmosphere measured at North and South poles, News Bureau, http://www.news.uiuc.edu/scitips/01/04poles.html 45. Pearce, F., Chill in the Air, New Scientist 162, May I, 1999 46. Leonard, C., Paleontological Testimony: The Pleistocene Extinction, http://www.atlantisquest.com/Paleontology.html,. This is a relatively good source for a list of references to pursue this subject. Science can not explain it so it is largely ignored. Investigation will take the reader to older written works of people who either recorded first hand accounts or were first hand witnesses. 47. Badger, op.cit. No one asks why all these bones, flesh, bugs, and plants are all mixed together at one spot. And few seem to be whole, articulate specimens.

Credits Illus. 1, Muller, R.A., MacDonald, G.J., Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes, Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2000 Illus. 2, Muller, ibid Illus. 3, Muller, ibid Illus. 4, courtesy of http://www.viewzone.com/milkyway.html Illus. 5, Muller, enhanced by author Illus. 6, courtesy of, http://solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm Illus. 7, courtesy of John Mayor Jenkins, http://alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm Illus. 8, http://www.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/e_nmpole.html Illus. 9, Pidwirny, Michael, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6i.html Illus.10, courtesy of http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/continents/ Illus.11, Pennick, N., Complete Illustrated Guide to Runes, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002 Illus.12, Hawkins, G., Stonehenge Decoded, Dell Publishing, 1965

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