As a scientist I am often asked to speculate about theories, myths and legends. With the current focus on global warming I am often asked to comment on the reasons for the phenomenon, ways in which we can prevent the situation from getting worse and often, if it could be linked to other phenomena, predictions by the ancients and and even to partake in bets about the end of the world as we know it.
The last part is simple: as I have no evidence and information that I can use to even develop a feasible hypothesis about an apocalypse date, it is useless to take a bet on the end of the world. In any case, should I die before such a date, it would signify the end of the world for me, and would that be good enough as a deal breaker, and if I did win the bet (how?), why would I worry, as I cannot easily rake in the millions riding on it!
The other parts are more difficult, and more interesting to attack. I do not believe that global warming is so simple a phenomenon that we can point a finger at the big corporations spewing toxic fumes, or my old fridge or even the cows farting, as the major reasons for global warming. I just know enough about systems dynamics to consider a multitude of interrelationships that may be the cause. But let us consider a few of the popular theories at this time.
First of all there are the stack of prophecies. These range from what Merlin had to say about the impending catastrophe, to what the Mayan calender points to, the predictions of old faithful Nostradamus and obviously the I Ching, the Bible and several other “holy” texts. I have tried to read many of these “holy” texts or sections of them over the years, but I am not sure that I can safely claim that any of these are clear on the specifics of mankind’s demise. Sure, as a Christian I can tell you that the Bible is clear about a final day of reckoning, a time when all that we know as the world will be destroyed to be replaced by another place. It is also made clear that no man will know the date.
Merlin is a great character, but I have no evidence that that character belonged to a real flesh and blood human like the rest of us. Nostradamus did actually share the dust of Terra with us, and he did write some compelling things. However, every time we consider his prophecies we have to do so with 20-20 hindsight. Only after 9-11 could we link the prophecy to the event. Would it not be nice if we could do this with a couple of days to spare, or is this just the essence of doomsday prophecies: no way to know “when” until after the fact?
Which brings me to the current topic of many videos on YouTube, large discussion groups on all sorts of web pages and even prime time programs on TV: The Mayan 2012 prediction. Now for those living in ignorance, the long and the short of it is that the Mayans were really good at astronomical observations and that they also wrote down quite a bit of their work. They devised a very accurate (insanely so for the time) calendar of astronomical events like solar and lunar eclipses. This comes as no surprise as people were often offered to the gods on those special days and knowing up front about the impending solar eclipse would give one and one’s network of friends and family a great deal of bargaining power, not to mention the ability to survive mass offerings. Still, the events linked and predicted by these masters of calculation amazes us all and they predict a bit of a final event around 2012 (December to be more precise). I have some references at the end of the blog for you to surf to. My personal feeling is that 2012 was really far into the future for them, way beyond any retribution, and I am not sure, but it could also be that when they saw what was going to happen then, they promptly decided this was it - the end. In reality, planets will align in a certain way during 2012, but we have no reason to believe that this will cause the whole “engine” of the solar system to seize up and to go down in flames. It takes a bit of maths and calculations to show what the forces will be on the participating planets, but I do not see anybody publishing the results of those. My guess is that the scientists that can do this, discover that it makes no difference, and the rest just repeat what is read on the web and take it for the truth.
“But global warming is different!”, I hear you say. Yes, and so it is, but if you page through the web of links below, you’ll see lots of “links to show that this is no coincidence”. The human mind is a very susceptible thing and it is constantly looking for cause and effect links to try and understand the current situation. Our survival depends on this, and we have been very successful in the past doing just this, finding reasons for what we see around us. We have found many causal relationships and used these to predict the future and in this way we have survived and thrived as a species. Some things are a bit more non-linear, and to try and find simple links may cause us to miss the reality by quite a mile, thus ending exactly where we did not want to be, in the middle of (often) a self-made disaster.
Sometimes global warming is linked to the discovery of a proto-planet called Eris outside the orbit of Pluto, which was promptly relegated to a proto-planet itself. So now we have 8 planets and a couple of large planet like objects in the solar system. But back to this planetoid. This thing is seen as the mythical planet that will swing past earth and that will slow it down so as to stop the rotation of the earth. Back in the Old Testament of the Bible, there is in fact a situation where just such an event occurred. Anyway, you may go read that link below as well. Personally I am quite ok with these things, if the earth has to park for a day or so, to allow Joshua to sort out the enemies, cool by me. If it happens again, and we survive it like he did, even cooler. From a scientific perspective one must ask what the physics of such a situation will entail, and what would happen to the physical systems of the planet, including tidal action, weather systems, etc.
Back to global warming, which is often mentioned as a result of these events mentioned above. Is it possible that the current melting of the ice caps is a result of us doing damage, or is it these extra-terrestrial events, or a combination of it all. I do not know really, but I do believe that we are really messing with our local eco-systems. That is always a serious issue. Whether we can influence such a large system as that of Terra over a period of about 150 years is my open question. Most large system are really rather solidly set in their ways and no amount of arguing from the chaos guys will convince me that the earth is an exception. I believe we will kill ourselves in local optimisations of waste long before the earth system will just flip its lid. I think we are a bit too idealistic to think we can sink this ship by ourselves. Yes, we can make our lives a real misery by cutting down the forests, by fishing waters to emptiness and by pumping so much smoke into the air that we suffocate. Some trees will always survive this, some insects could care less, and many furry animals will go merrily on their ways with humans dead and forgotten.
Let’s face a fact or two here. We emerged from a small ice age in the 1840’s, something not brought on by the cool gadgets of the Renaissance. We have gone through hot spells around 1000 AD when the Vikings found it easy to sail to Iceland, colonise it and cut all the trees down. But soon it became rough and they lost links with Denmark and Norway. It became cold and the seas were not that friendly. Must have been the loss of the forests of Iceland I guess (!). People migrated across from Indonesia to Australia at some point when the land masses were linked because the ocean levels were low. Was it because of so much water captured in ice or because it was a hot period and water was not trapped in ice but actually in the ocean or in the weather system in general?
The blog is getting too long, so here goes with the 2012 “Flip of the Poles” theory. So if it is not serious enough that all the planets will align and thus tear us apart, the poles will flip in a day and wipe us out as the cosmic rays come in to fry us when the atmospheric magnetic shield of the earth collapses. Our electronic systems will fail, birds will go south (literally), whales will beach, people will be disoriented and snails will stop snailing. What happens to tortoises I am not sure, but supposedly they have survived previous flips. You see, we have had this in the past, but we are not sure that humans will survive it this time around.
The reality is that many scientists are sure that a flip is a slow process, taking a few hundred years and that the effects of such is phenomena will manifest in animal migration patterns being disturbed and modified, that our electronic systems will have to evolve to cope with the effects, etc. It may have an impact on weather and in fact many suggest that the current spell of global heating has to do with the sun and its recent polar flip, amongst other things. A polar flip may just steer us towards a small ice age again, who knows.
So there you have it. I do not know, and frankly, I have many more immediate problems to resolve. I worry about the water resource in South Africa, about poverty and diseases like HIV/Aids, malaria, etc, and about my retirement annuity. As a friend recently said, if only we get wiped out by a comet, it would be great. He would be the first on a hill somewhere screaming: “Bring it on!”.
Sometimes we have to be rational, face our problems and do something about that what we have control over. Sometimes “hoping” for a disaster of extraterrestrial proportions to end it all and to absolve us from the possible crime of wasting the planet ourselves, is just childish. If something like that happens I am sure the human spirit will come through for us if there is the remotest possibility of survival. For me, in God I trust!
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This is not a reference list, but rather a list to help you see what is on the web on these topics
It is not the only places, but I found each interesting, for various reasons!
From a GAIA perspective
Doomsday
Related to other lore - human origins
The birds are going south!
NASA Sun Polar Flip
NASA Eris
Pole flip simulation (cool!!)
Bible Joshua
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