Is Doomsday upon us?
Is Doomsday upon us? Is the world ramping up its natural disasters? Is climate spiraling out of control? Is the world economy on the brink of collapse?
Recent media coverage would have us believe such things, with an astonishing variety of “end-of-the-world” what-if documentaries. Great floods, asteroid collisions, supervolcano erupting, polar shift, polar flip, hot-house Earth, methane bubbling up from the ocean floor, melting of the icecaps leading to rising sea levels and sunken cities… Phew. I hope they don’t all happen at once!
It is in human nature to believe that our own generation is “special”, and to be witness to the End of Days, Armageddon, Revelations, Doomsday, (insert your biblical disaster here), yet somehow the human species, despite its numerous and destructive flaws, continues to cling on and advance. One could argue that we are NOT actually advancing, but that’s another topic.
There has been considerable press lately about 2012, the latest of a long line of dates for the end of the world. This date, Dec 21st 2012, to be exact, I think, heralds mostly from the cycling of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which cycles every 5000 years or so. Most other prophecies relating to 2o12 have latched on to the Mayan calendar in some form or another. Is there any truth in this? Well, actually we WILL be around to find out, but don’t hold your breath. Prophets have come and gone with great regularity. There are a few facts worth considering though:
2012 is the year of the next Solar Maximum, which is expected to be a particularly violent one, and may cause power blackouts and communication disruptions. Further, at the rate the polar icecaps are melting (considerably faster than we predicted), we may face large scale melting and associated sea level rises before 2012. This is going to put a lot of cities around the world underwater and create over a billion refugees, something we have never seen before. Our rising cost of oil crisis may come to a head before 2012, having a destructive effect on the US, and later the world,’s economy. It is true that we are long overdue for a supervolcano eruption, and the huge caldera of Yellowstone Park has been swelling over the last decade or two. We are also overdue for both a magnetic pole flip, and a physical polar wobble.
I think the smartest thing is to plan for the worst, expect the best (as technology races to our aid), and look forward to “nothing to see - move along” being the order of the day in 2012. See you in 2013.
Some good books:
2012 Predictions
Egypt Code
Gaia
Revenge of Gaia - Earth’s climate crisis
