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[THEME MUSIC]

New discoveries have overturned 150 years

of scientific thinking when it comes to us, to and me,

and the way we think about ourselves, about one another,

about the world, from undeniable evidence of advanced

civilizations.

They're now dating back into the last Ice Age

and even before to the way we think

about other people and their cultures, their religions,

their beliefs, and even the way we

view disease and immortality.

There is a new story that's emerging.

My name's Gregg Braden.

And I'd like to welcome you to this very special presentation

of "Missing Links: The Deep Truth of Our Origin, History,

Destiny, and Fate."

So here's my question to you.

How can we be resilient in a world that's growing

more volatile by the day?

How can we thrive in the new normal that's

already with us, it's already here,

unless we're honest with ourselves about that story

and what it's showing us?

"Missing Links: is all about the new discoveries.

Discoveries that you're just not seeing

in traditional mainstream media, textbooks, and classrooms.

What those discoveries are telling us

and what they mean in our lives, what's

causing these extremes in our world?

Why are they happening right now?

Well, it's all about cycles, cycles of time.

Scientists now recognize that we are living the rare convergence

of three massive cycles of change-- cycles of, climate

economic cycles, and cycles of human conflict.

And I want you to know these are natural cycles

and they follow natural rhythms that we can know,

we can predict, and we can calculate.

And they appear on a regular basis.

And that's what makes today so different.

All three of these cycles are appearing at the same time.

They're colliding right now.

And it's happening in our lifetime.

The primary source of information

about the history of our planet comes from the sea floor

sediments in the core samples that scientists

pull up out of the oceans.

It comes from the ancient tree ring data.

The problem is the tree rings only go back

a couple of thousand years.

And it comes from the ice cores that we

find in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.

So I'd like to zero in on those ice cores a little bit.

From the ice cores, tremendous amounts of information

can be detailed by scientists who

know how to read these ice cores like we

read the pages of a book.

Each year, when that new layer of ice is deposited,

that layer captures the information

of whatever was happening in the atmosphere.

If there was a volcanic eruption,

we've got volcanic dust particles.

If the wind has blown pollen grains into Antarctica

from Europe, then we know that.

In the ice cores we can tell how strong the magnetic fields have

been the past, how strong the sun is,

tremendous amount of information,

how high the sea levels were.

Here's the key.

We can tell what the temperatures were, as well.

What we're seeing now is the information

going back over 420,000 years into the history of the Earth.

1999, scientists, international scientists,

recognized that global warming was actually melting the ice

and destroying this library, this record that we

have in Antarctica.

And they said even though we don't know why the warming is

happening, let's drill through the thickest part of the ice

and we'll capture as much data as we can.

Then we can go back and figure out what's causing the warming.

Well even the scientists were absolutely

amazed because when they pulled that ice core up,

from an area that is called Vostok Lake in the very

famous Vostok ice core, they pulled up

over 420,000 layers of ice.

Each layer represents one year of the earth's history.

So all of a sudden, we've got 420,000 years of our past

to compare to today to see if something's wrong,

to see if Earth is broken, to see if there's something truly

anomalous happening right now.

You're seeing two different ice cores.

In blue is the EPICA ice core from another location

in Antarctica. $ And the green is the Vostok ice core.

And what I'd like to call your attention to-- just right

off even if you know nothing about how

to read this information-- you can see the cycles.

You can see the rhythms.

And it's not your imagination.

There are nested cycles, cycles within cycles.

There are 100,000 year cycles.

There are 41,000 year cycles.

There are 26,000 year cycles.

There are even 5,000 year long cycles.

So the way that we can read this graph,

the 420,000 years begins on the right hand side of this screen.

We're present day on the left at year zero.

And if you look at either the blue or the green ice cores,

what you can see is they tend to agree with one another.

There are times when the temperatures of the earth

have ebbed and flowed, when it's been warmer

and when it's been cooler, and when it happens in one place,

it happens in another place as well.

The red that you're seeing at the bottom of the graph

is the thickness of the ice as it correlates

to those temperatures.

So what is obvious when we look at this graph is that if you

look at year zero, today, we are a little bit

above the average temperature for what

you would expect Earth to be.

I would expect to see some global warming right now.

I'd be concerned if we didn't, because that is

what has happened in the past.

The question is how much warming is normal?

How much warming should we really be seeing?

Well the next graph that I'd like for you to see

is a graph that also comes from the ice core data and the sea

floor sediment data.

However, it does not contain the tree ring data.

And it's telling us something really, really interesting.

This graph begins at year zero-- we

would say-- at the time of Jesus--

just for point of reference-- and goes for 2,000 years

into the year 2000.

The green line that you're seeing

in the middle of this chart is the average temperature

for the Earth over these 2,000 years.

And the chart, the graph, is showing us

above and below that average where we have seen

the temperatures in the past.

So it's obvious.

Sometimes the temperatures are above normal.

Sometimes they're below normal.

Here's why this is so interesting.

If you look closely, where we are today, are we above normal?

Absolutely.

We're above the average normal for where

Earth has been in the past.

Are we warmer now than we have ever been?

Absolutely not.

Look at this.

If you go back into the years 1200-1300 in what

is called Common Era, CE, they're

using this notation now instead of AD and BC

to remove any religious implications.

So when I say CE, it means Common Era from the year zero

to now.

1200-1300 Common Era, the temperatures

were almost twice as warm as they are right now,

twice the anomaly that we're seeing right now.

And if you go back into the years 820-1040 Common Era,

look at this.

Three times above where the anomaly is right now.

And scientists know this because they

have a name they give to this period it's called MWP.

It means the Medieval Warming Period.

So the point of me sharing this with you

is to show that the warming does happen.

And I would expect that we would be in a warming cycle now.

And that the warming is not the warmest it's ever been.

And if you look closely, the warming, when it happens,

it's brief, it's intense.

And it's what comes right after the warming that

sometimes can be the problem.

It's the cooling that follows.

This is a very, very powerful graph.

And I'm going to walk through it slowly

so you can see exactly what Mother Earth is telling us.

And that is the value of looking at the information

from the Earth herself.

We're not seeing this interpreted

through the eyes of a corporation

or of a political or religious agenda.

This is the Earth telling us her story.

And this story is fascinating.

In this particular graph, the year

zero-- to the right hand side of the screen-- that's

us, that's where we are today.

I'm going to go back to the 420,000 years

from where the ice cores were in the previous graphs.

And if you'll notice, you're looking

at two colors, red and blue.

The red are the temperatures of the earth,

the average temperatures.

And the blue are the levels of greenhouse gases, particularly

carbon dioxide.

And I'm showing this because we're

being told that it is the carbon dioxide in the greenhouse gases

that is causing the temperatures of the earth to rise

and causing the concern.

The data in this graph doesn't support that theory.

And I want you to see precisely how this works.

So follow with me.

If we're moving from that 400,000

years toward the present, so we're

moving from the left to the right hand side of the graph.

What you see is that the red lines rise before the blue.

That means the temperature is rising before the greenhouse

gases.

And this is what's recorded in the ice cores in Antarctica

and in Greenland.

The temperatures rise first and then

the greenhouse gases, the carbon dioxide, follow.

And there is a lag time.

And it's not our imagination.

This is from peer reviewed science.

This is peer reviewed science that

was published in the very prestigious journal "Nature"

volume 329 in the year 1987.

Scientists knew this as far back as 1987.

So I'm going to zero in on what it is that they said.

And this is their language.

They said "when we are going from what's

called an interglacial condition--"

and that's where we are right now.

We're not in the glaciers, we're in between the time

when the glaciers appear.

So "when we're going from interglacial

into a glacial condition--" into a time when the earth cools--

"the change in the carbon dioxide actually

lags the change in the air temperature."

It lags.

And that lag time is usually 400, to 500, 600, 700, maybe

800 years.

So there is that lag time.

So this is from peer reviewed science

in the journal "Nature."

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Here's an example of a core that goes back

some 100,000 to 200,000 years.

And the sediments within this show clear differences,

visually, which have been caused by different seasons climate.

And you can see here a whiter carbonate ooze and here

a red brown clay.

These carbonate oozes meant is laid down

during interglacial periods, warmer periods.

And these red clays have been laid down

during the glacial period, cooler periods.

[END PLAYBACK]

Now I want to go back and take a closer look at this

chart because it's telling us even something more profound.

If you look closely, when the carbon dioxide levels

do increase when they go up, the temperatures actually drop.

The stronger the carbon dioxide levels,

the cooler the temperatures on the Earth become.

Now why is that important?

Because it is a fact we have thrown

tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

We have now created more of a carbon dioxide burden

in the Earth's atmosphere than we

have in the 420,000 years that we have the history for.

We've never seen this much CO2 in the atmosphere.

So if in the past, higher levels of CO2

have created a cooling effect with the levels

that were there then, it makes sense

that we can expect a greater degree of cooling because

of the higher degrees of CO2.

Why is that important?

Well a lot of that cooling happens north of the equator.

The bulk of the earth's landmass is north of the equator.

The bulk of the world's population

is north of the equator.

And most of our food is grown north of the equator.

So when we see a change in climate,

when we see a cooling-- and that doesn't

mean that we're moving into another Ice Age--

but even a little cooling changes the conditions

that allow us to grow the food and support the industries

that we depend upon.

So this is important.

And I think it is important for us

to be honest, truthful, and factual with ourselves.

I asked earlier in the program how can we

be resilient to the extreme if we're not honest with ourselves

about the extreme?

And this is a perfect example of exactly what I mean here.

So the question that obviously comes up

is if the carbon dioxide is not causing the changes

in the climate, as we have been led

to believe-- as many scientists believe right now-- then what

is?

So this is the key climate change is a fact,

it's happening.

But it may not be happening for the reasons

that we have suspected.

So what we're now beginning to understand parallels,

in many cases, what our most ancient and indigenous

traditions have always told us.

If you go to the Inuit elders in the Arctic regions

and you ask them what it is that's causing this change,

they will tell you.

They will tell you that the Earth has

changed her location in space.

They'll say that their sky has changed.

This is the term they use.

Their sky has changed.

Well there was an Australian astronomer.

His name is Milutin Milankovic who agrees with this.

Before he died in 1958, Milutin Milankovic

had created a theory that was discounted at first,

but it is becoming more popular now

because it is telling us the story that

matches the data of what we're actually saying.

Milutin Milankovic recognized three big cycles,

shifts in the location, of Earth in space.

Earth, it doesn't stay stationary as Earth moves

around the sun, our planet does a dance.

There's a tilt, an angle, and a wobble.

And they have technical terms.

And let me just identify those very quickly.

One of those is called the precession of the equinoxes.

We all heard about precession during the 2012 phenomenon

in the Mayan calendar.

Precessions are about 26,000 years long.

And our ancestors knew that.

So that is one of the cycles.

A second cycle is what is called eccentricity.

And what that means is that as earth moves around the sun,

it's not a circular orbit, it is an elliptical orbit.

Sometimes in the ellipse, we're closer to the sun.

Sometimes we're further away.

That means the cycle varies when we're close,

about 41,000 years, and we're further

apart about 100,000 years.

That's the second cycle.

And the third is called the tilt, or the obliquity.

OK?

So these three cycles that Earth is going through

as it moves around the sun, now you know what they are.

Let's take a look at them as they are plotted on a graph.

You're going to see something absolutely astounding.

So what you're seeing in the graph on your screen right now,

the red is the precession of the equinoxes.

The green is the obliquity.

And the blue is the eccentricity.

Now, if you look closely as they ebb and flow,

if either eccentricity or obliquity or precession,

if any two of these rise at the same time,

look at what happens.

At the bottom of the screen, you're

seeing warming and cooling of the Earth.

And you can see that when eccentricity, for example,

and obliquity, when those coincide,

we have a warming period on the Earth.

I'm showing you this on the screen right now.

And you say, well, maybe that's an anomaly.

Maybe it's just that one time.

But look at this.

If we go back and look at each of these.

Here we're seeing eccentricity as a peak

and we're also seeing obliquity as a peak

in the blue and the green.

and right below that.

Every place where that happened, we saw warming in our planet.

And it happens all the time.

So the reason this is important is because we are here

at the far left of the screen.

Where that red line is, that's us.

And we're having a little bump in eccentricity.

We're seeing that coincide with the obliquity.

So we're seeing this dance the Earth is

doing in a very precise way that has created

warming in the past, and it's doing the same thing right now.

I would expect to see some warming.

And we are seeing a relatively small warming

compared to what we have seen in the past.

So this is one of the cycles, climate.

And I mentioned there are three cycles that are converging.

I spent a little bit more time on this portion

because we're hearing so much about climate.

And I think it's important to really

understand throughout this series,

throughout "Missing Links" I'm going

to refer back to the extremes that are

being caused by these cycles.

The second cycle that I'd like to talk to you

about is the cycle of economies.

And when I talk about economies, it

doesn't have to be about money.

It can be.

The economies are about people, about the way

we work together and share the vital resources that we

need-- food, water, medicine.

Well there was an economist early in the 20th century.

His name was Nikolai Kondratiev, Nikolai Kondratiev.

And he was the first to recognize the rhythm of cycles

as it plays out in global and local economies.

Whether we're talking the small scale of a family,

or a large scale the community, or a planet,

it seems to be the same thing.

And what he did is he identified a 66-year economic cycle.

And he broke this cycle into seasons.

And I find this fascinating.

Our 66-year cycle, that we're in right now began in 1949.

That was what he called the Spring of this economic cycle.

And it lasted from 1949 until the year 1966.

This was a time of inflation.

It was a beginning of an inflationary cycle.

And in inflation, as we all know,

there are certain stocks, certain commodities,

certain bonds, that that tend to do better or worse

depending on where we are in this cycle.

In the inflationary cycle, what we see is

there are certain assets that tend to do better in the Spring

than they do in other times.

But the Spring only lasted until 1966.

From 1966 until the year 1980, we

were in the Summer of this economic cycle.

And I remember this personally.

I was in school and I was working in the 1960s, 1970s.

I remember when I could deposit my paycheck in the bank

and I could get 16, 17, 18% interest on my money

because we were in an economic cycle of this inflation.

It was called runaway inflation.

It was good for me.

It helped me to save for college.

so that's something we may not see again for a while.

So from 1980, we went into a new economic cycle, the Autumn,

that lasts until the year 2000.

And in this cycle, as the others,

there are certain investments.

There are certain tangible assets

that seem to do better in this cycle

than they do in others until we enter

into the next phase of the cycle.

In the year 2000, we went into the Winter of the 66-year cycle

that we're in right now.

A period that is less popularly known.

It's called dis-inflation or deflation,

when the things that used to have value begin to lose value.

Property loses value.

Precious metals lose their value.

It's a very, very different way of thinking about money

and about economies.

And that lasted until the year 2015.

In 2015, according to Kondratiev,

we now have entered into a new economic cycle.

And we are beginning the inflationary cycle once again.

And I think we're seeing this as the Federal Reserve is

beginning to raise the interest rates to create the inflation.

And we're seeing this happen in the world.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Listen, I know it's not news to you guys,

but it is to Wall Street, apparently.

The economy grinding to a halt. Today's GDP report

was up only 1.5%.

- In just 29 minutes today, China's stock market plunged 7%

and then was shut down altogether for the day.

[END PLAYBACK]

So this isn't right, wrong, good, or bad.

It is a period of time where things change and the way

we think about things changes.

If you don't know that and you see the economy making

wild swings, you think something is wrong

and something's broken, when actually we're

in a very volatile time with this particular cycle.

Now, I mentioned three cycles and I'm

going to talk about the third one right now.

This cycle is a cycle that is a little mysterious to people

because it is the cycle of human conflict.

People say to me, what do you mean a cycle of conflict?

Doesn't it just happen whenever it happens?

Well the answer is no.

There is a rhythm.

There are cycles of conditions that make us more vulnerable

and make us more susceptible to conflict.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- There is a real problem in this country

that we've got to address.

And it's not going to change overnight.

But you've got to understand that anger.

[END PLAYBACK]

It doesn't mean that the cycles drive war and conflict.

It means that when we find ourselves in those cycles

that we are vulnerable and susceptible.

And it's an opportunity for us to walk very softly,

to extend that olive branch of peace,

or go the extra mile to create an agreement,

or find cooperation whether it's with our families, our friends,

our communities or between nations.

I recently had the opportunity to speak at the United Nations

with a dear friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Bruce Lipton.

And we were invited to share with the UN

our perspective of cycles of time, what we as a world

can expect so that we can prepare,

know where to put our resources, know where to put our energy.

And I'm sharing with you precisely what

I shared with them.

The fact that we are living this rare convergence

of these cycles.

And the economic cycles, and the climate cycles,

many of those people were not familiar with.

So the value of knowing this that we

are in this cycle of human conflict

when it's so easy to be misunderstood

and to trigger an incident that can wreak havoc

on entire nations.

The value of that is it arms us with the wisdom

and the knowledge to be very, very conscious

about our agreements, about our communications.

You're actually seeing the rhythm

of some of these conflict cycles-- the beginning

and the end of the Korean War, the beginning and the end

of World War I, World War II.

All of these pegged right at the top and the bottom

of those cycles of conflict.

Well, what's interesting is where are we

in these cycles right now?

In the year 2014, we began an uptick

toward greater human conflict.

And that uptick peaks in the year 2020.

So I would expect between 2014 and 2020,

we would see a lot of tension in the world.

It doesn't mean we must have war,

it means we are vulnerable and susceptible.

And it also means there's a greater opportunity for deeper

communication to create peace in the time of that vulnerability.

That's the good news.

So when I talk to people about these conflict cycles,

they say what is it that could possibly

be driving these cycles?

Well this is where it goes back to Mother Earth.

I want to share something quickly, I won't dwell on this,

but I want you to see, so that you

can see how deeply connected we are to our planet.

A lot of research has been done now

relating human conflict and social change

to the sun and solar cycles.

As far back as the 1700s, 1750 to the year 1920,

scientists had the data where they

saw the ebb and the flow of solar cycles

for the first time, they could actually plot those out.

Some very far reaching scientists

looked at human achievements and human disasters

at the same time.

They said what are people doing while these solar cycles are

ebbing and while they're flowing?

And this isn't all about bad things.

It's about innovation and creativity, new inventions,

the automobile, and the way that we're

using electronics today, and all of these things.

The ideas of physics, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck,

all of these ideas, Edison.

This is all happening linked to the ebb

and flow of these cycles.

So what you're seeing on your screen is a very rare image.

It is the image showing the solar cycles ebbing and flowing

from 1750 to 1920.

And the blue line above that is the human activity

all combined-- innovations and war.

Big stuff happens when the solar cycles increase and we

seem to quiet down when the solar cycles decrease.

Well that leads to the question, this ends in 1920.

Where are we right now?

That was my question as I was seeing this.

So I put this together.

So you can see precisely what it is that's happening.

Now what you see is that Solar Cycle 22,

right in the middle of that cycle,

the peak, that was when we had the Iraq Kuwaiti War,

a huge example of conflict.

Solar Cycle 23 was 9/11, right in the middle.

And Solar Cycle 24, the first week

that the sun spots, that the magnetic storms on the sun

began to increase, that was when we

had what was called the Arab Spring in places like Egypt

and Tunisia and Libya, all of these

linked to the solar cycles.

So once again, scientists are not

saying that the sun is causing these effects.

What we're seeing is that there are

natural conditions that create the environment that we respond

to.

And that environment, in that environment,

we are sometimes more aggressive and sometimes

more willing to cooperate.

And that's going to be important later in this series.

I'm wanting you to see it right now so that we can refer back

to this.

So we are now in the Solar Cycle 24.

What does all this mean to us right now?

Well if we understand how these cycles come together,

what we know is that nature-- nature-- uses the extremes

that we're seeing as a trigger for new ideas

and new solutions.

I mentioned that we are living in a time of extremes.

And I wanted to share with you what

it is that's causing extremes, the convergence

of these cycles.

So I think it's fair to say to you now

the best minds of our time are saying we are, in fact, living

a time of extremes.

It doesn't mean bad things are happening, or even good things,

but big things, big, big, changes in the world.

Our world is changing in ways that we simply

have not been prepared for.

And I think it's fair to say, for most of us,

that those changes are happening faster

than we have come to expect.

And what that means is that we've

got to think and live differently,

perhaps more so now than we ever have in the past.

So I began this episode saying that we're

living a time of extremes.

And now we've backed up that statement with the specifics.

You now understand the extremes and what's causing them

and what they mean in your life.

In our next episode, we'll discover

how our time of extremes has already

led to new thinking and beautiful new solutions

when it comes to solving the big, big problems in the world.

So I want to thank you for joining me for this program

today and be sure to tune in for our next

all new episode of "Missing Links: The Deep

Truth of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Faith."