Climate Variation

Just a thought - Could this be a reason for our weather extremes?

Climate Science: Investigating Climatic and Environmental ProcessesBeyond 100,000 Years (+105 Years)In general, much more is known about the Earth's history in the past 500 million years than the prior four billion years. In examining past climate changes, including intervals of glaciation and changes in the atmospheric composition, scientists have considered how plate tectonics-- interactions caused by the movement of lithospheric plates- have impacted the climate system.
The lithosphere-- the rigid outer shell of the Earth-- is now broken into a dozen major tectonic plates that over the past hundreds of millions of years have migrated around the planet. Using paleomagnetic data, scientists have been able to reconstruct where the various plates and continents were located at different times in the past. The figure to the left shows estimates of sea level over the course of more than half a billion years of geologic history. The causes of such changes in sea level are complex and are not always directly correlated with changes in global temperature, but generally higher sea levels reflect warmer temperatures. For example, 100 million years ago, the Earth's temperature was 20° - 40° Celsius warmer (or 36 ° - 72 ° F) in the polar regions, although only a few degrees warmer around the equator. Evidence suggests that during warm Cretaceous periods, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were high. (Barron, et. al., 1985.) Models indicate that carbon dioxide may have been four to six times the pre-industrial levels. (Otto-Bliesner, et. Al., 2001.)

MEDITATION

I have been meaning to take a closer look at meditation for some time and I mean for some years and at last got around doing so.
Starting my search (research) I thought to share what references I found and comments along the way of this exercise.
I used Google and entered 'Meditation' and the website what interested me was '-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation-' to give an overview.
It did make me realize that I have developed and used various meditation techniques over the years, many a one has becoming automatic.
However the delving continues – next I tried Google again but this time used the 'Scholarly papers' search engine, what a focus on health related matters, I suppose that's where the money is.
If I had to come up with with an opinion at this stage it would be that 'meditation' has taken of as a fashion, one could call it a fad and most of the mystique around it is not warranted.
In it's basic form it's dealing with yourself, understanding yourself and thinking processes. With that it's up to you what you want to do. Calm yourself down, remove anxieties, veg out (remove yourself from consciousness), alleviate pain, improve your health, the list goes on.
You can teach yourself any of the goals you want or use any of the plethora suggestions or means promoted.
If you do that be aware that as a result of the popularity of the 'meditation subject' many who are promoting a religion, a sect, a belief, a 'health' or whatever product use this as a tool.