Guest post by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
The Mayan calendar is about to end, and with it, the world.
People love nothing more than an apocalypse. Meteor collisions, alien invasions, super volcanoes, nuclear winter, and global warming all provide great material for mass entertainment and breathless news reporting.
The latest apocalypse to capture our imagination is the idea that, along with the Mayan calendar, the world will end on the 21st day of this month. The Mayan “Long Count” calendar, which began in 3114 BC, ends on December 21, 2012. The calendar is supposedly the measure of days from the beginning of humanity to the end. As a result, some doomsayers predict the end of the world in a few days.
Proposed scientific reasons why we won’t have a merry Christmas include ejection of mass from the sun, a sudden switching of Earth’s magnetic poles, a massive meteor collision with Earth, and a sudden shift in Earth’s crust. At this very moment, people across the world are stockpiling guns, machetes, kerosene, matches, sugar, and candles in preparation for the coming disaster. But our National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) assures us that the world won’t end on December 21.
Over that last two centuries, most doomsday threats have been blamed on humanity itself.
Consider overpopulation. The Anglican minister Thomas Malthus postulated in 1798 that global population would outstrip mankind’s ability to feed itself, leading to economic disaster. Dr. Paul Ehrlich followed up with his 1968 book The Population Bomb, predicting that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death during the decade of the 1970s. But the agricultural revolution of the twentieth century and slowing population growth have confounded the predictions of Malthus and Ehrlich.
Other feared man-made catastrophes include killer air pollution, global thermonuclear war, worldwide disease pandemics, economic collapse from passing the production point of peak oil, and disaster from genetically engineered foods. While the jury is still out in some cases, these predicted catastrophes do not appear to be occurring.
But the greatest of all these fears is Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate.
Alarming climate change predictions would fit well with Mayan fears, but they need a little more time. According to economist Lord Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics on the impacts of global warming: “…what we are talking about then is extended world war…People would move on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would have to move…” From environmentalist Bill McKibben: “The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has—even if we don’t quite know it yet.” From Dr. James Lovelock: “…before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”
What’s amazing is that the theory of dangerous global warming is accepted by the majority of world leaders. Today, the heads of state of 191 of the 192 nations are pursuing policies to try to stop the planet from warming. Most leading universities, NASA and other major scientific organizations, most of the Fortune 500 companies, and the news media accept the pending doom of man-made climate change. The world is spending over $250 billion each year to try to “decarbonize.”
But empirical evidence does not support the theory of catastrophic man-made warming. The 0.7oC rise in global temperatures since 1880 was matched one thousand years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were warmer than today. Despite increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Earth’s surface temperatures have been flat to declining for more than 10 years. Arctic ice has been declining, but Antarctic ice, which is 90 percent of Earth’s ice, has been increasing over the last 30 years. Sea levels are naturally rising at 7‒8 inches per century, but no evidence shows that accelerating sea level rise is underway. Hurricanes and tropical storms are neither more frequent nor stronger today than in times past. Polar bear populations have more than doubled in the last 50 years.
So, complete your Christmas shopping and don’t sell your winter coat. The world may end, but not before you have to pay your taxes and your credit card bills.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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It appears the world is safe since all illustrations show that the Mayians adopted the Aztec calendar.
Send a heartwarming message to someone before end of the world http://noahsarkboardingpass.com/ It is never too late 🙂
Though we laugh this kind of idiocy sometimes has consequences. Remember Harold Camping? Some supporters used up all their assets because they were convinced by a deluded man. The same thing is occurring with CAGW – temperature has disappointingly stalled for 16 years in the face of ever rising c02.
And so it is with Warmists continued failed predictions. Free beer tomorrow.
“Andyj says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:35 pm
I bought a bottle of salad cream today, the use by date is the 21st of December 2012.I think it may be Mayanais.”
Nice one.
There is a series of documentaries on UK TV at the moment called ‘Preppers’. All about families who are genuinely preparing for a collapse of civilisation or global disaster. They are pretty sad and depressed people. Worst of all the way they drag the kids into it. They are the real victims of of all of these end of the world predictions.
With regards to screams of fossil fuels will run out, billions will starve, blah, blah, such alarmists main problem is that they fail to factor in human inventiveness, innovation, new discoveries, adaptiveness etc.Around 1900 there was great fear that London would soon have manure metres high in the streets due to the grown of the horse and cart. Then came the automobile – problem solved.
If you turn the mayan Calendar over it carries on on the other side!
Guys must see this. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9RX2p5/www.gay3ty.com/the-world-will-end-in-2012/
‘our National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) assures us that the world won’t end on December 21’
Oh dear, now I’m worried!
You forgot to mention Planet X 🙂
Never believe anything until it is officially denied and never ever believe anything that officialdom claims about anything at all and you will thrive and survive.
I have examined a great many eschatologies over the past 6 decades, and can claim with the highest confidence that the only common element to all of them has been that they have all been exactly wrong.
The world is not coming to an end. The MAYAN CALENDAR is coming to an end.
That’s all right, though, because very few people have relied on the Mayan calendar for anything for hundreds of years.
I think we will make it past 21Dec2012.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Best, Allan
from wiki
The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on 21 December 2012.[1][2][3][4][5][6] This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.[7] Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae have been proposed as pertaining to this date, though none have been accepted by mainstream scholarship.
A New Age interpretation of this transition is that the date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era.[8] Others suggest that the date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the black hole at the center of the galaxy,[9] or Earth’s collision with a planet called “Nibiru”.
Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Professional Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar “ends” in 2012 misrepresents Maya history and culture,[3][10][11] while astronomers have rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience,[12][13] stating that they conflict with simple astronomical observations.[14]
Bryan A says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Dr Lovelocks prediction is likely to be proven true
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WRONG CENTURY, he was talking the 20th C and we are more than a decade past his deadline. The only threat to the people of the world are the sociopathic megalomaniacs trying to set up a world government.
http://www.globalgovernancewatch.org/spotlight_on_sovereignty/lamy-calls-for-europeaninspired-global-governance
Colin says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Oh crap! I’ve maxed out my credit cards….
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Go buy some kneepads you are going to need them when you apologize to your wife and boss…
Rosco says: @ur momisugly December 18, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Didn’t some actually do that before the last apocalyptic prediction in recent history – sold everything pending the Saviour’s return only to wake up broke the next day ?
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Harold Camping says end of the world is probably Oct. 21, 2011
TBear – ‘killer tomatoes’…? Aha – I see it all now..! That’s why all those cunning tomato growers have been pumping CO2 into their polytunnels – not to increase yields, as I thought – but to make their tomatoes into KILLERS..!
And we’ve all been thinking that CO2 was benign – it was only those 191 out of 192 governments who were wrong – but they knew all along..!
Aikimox says:
December 18, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Regarding the global warming stuff, – global warming doesn’t mean you will see a 10C surface temperature rise across the globe….
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I suggest you look up jet streams, Rossby waves, and Zonal and Meridional flow.
The key phrase in the snippet below is “…The geography of insolation isn’t constant but instead varies seasonally, as well as daily. Consequently, the prevailing cells of low and high pressure, including the ITCZ, the subtropical highs, and the jet stream, tend to migrate north and south…
The sun’s TSI may stay close to constant but the mix of wavelengths vary and the ocean absorbs the higher wavelengths where that variation is the greatest.
SEE: NASA: SORCE’s Solar Spectral Surprise “…. SIM suggests that ultraviolet irradiance fell far more than expected between 2004 and 2007 — by ten times as much as the total irradiance did — while irradiance in certain visible and infrared wavelengths surprisingly increased, even as solar activity wound down overall.
The steep decrease in the ultraviolet, coupled with the increase in the visible and infrared, does even out to about the same total irradiance change as measured by the TIM during that period, according to the SIM measurements…..”
NASA: How Much Ultraviolet Radiation Reaches the Earth’s Surface?
To figure out the impact of changes in the sun’s visible and UV radiation remember the ocean surface is 3.61×108^14 meters squared and that is what you are multiplying by. IR has little to no impact on the oceans.
My two cents.
When the “end of the world” doesn’t happen, what will be the next chosen date for it? 2029 for a meteor strike is too far in the future — need something sooner. I like the 2016 date for Obama to finish off the Earth…
richardscourtney says:
December 18, 2012 at 3:38 pm
…..Actually there was a much more recent case than that and it was even more generally accepted than AGW is now.
It was eugenics only a century ago. And we all know what that led to.
Richard
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Richard, it was VERY recent, at least in my state of North Carolina.
In the USA
Do not think this has ended either
ACLU: The DNA of virtually every newborn in the United States is collected and tested soon after birth. There are some good reasons for this testing, but it also raises serious privacy concerns that parents should know about…
John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar wrote in a book he co-authored in 1977…
As far as I can tell the “Eugenics Movement” just morphed into “Population Control” it never died.
What could be more unfair, and intellectually dishonest, than to lump the fragmentary Mayan end of humanity prediction with any and all other catastrophic predictions? The remarkable accuracy of the ancient Mayan astronomical observations and predictions put them in a class entirely on their own, and demand a corresponding amount of respect.
Quoting Wikipedia as an authority on this subject? Good grief!
What’s next, an opinion poll on the matter from the ethnic Maya currently living in Guatemala and Mexico? Surely it must be clear to any thoughtful person that the Maya’s astronomical knowledge of a thousand and more years ago was received from other sources that have been lost to us thanks to the ravages of time and the pillaging and self-righteous censorship of more recent generations.
I really expected better from this forum.
albertalad says:
December 18, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Okay, I live in the far north of Alberta, Canada. Me and my family will definitely make it during the upcoming climate disaster….
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If the Chicken Littles have it backwards you are welcome to join us in NC. I made sure we were below the last terminal moraine when we moved. The climate should be about the same as what you are used to link /sarc
brokenyogi says: @ur momisugly December 18, 2012 at 3:45 pm
…. In fact, failing to take into account that nature generally changes in a cyclical fashion, rather than a linear one, is part of the fallacy of CAGW. In that sense, the Mayans were actually a step ahead of a lot of our climate scientists.
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So were most other ancient civilizations. Knowing when to plant your crops in an agrarian society was critical. Hence Stonehenge and other monoliths scattered around the world.
D Böehm says:
December 18, 2012 at 3:52 pm
….Nothing whatever unusual is occurring. In fact, the planetary climate has been especially benign over the past century and a half.
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Make that the last 10,000 years especially when you compare it to the temperature of the last 140,000 years.
Climate Chicken Littles remind me of the poem Richard Corey
Too much wealth and time on their hands so they have to makeup something to scare themselves with. Unfortunately unlike Richard Cory they want Western Civilization to commit suicided.
David Thomas Bronzich says:
December 18, 2012 at 4:56 pm
INEPTOCRACY is a system of government where the least capable of leading are elected….
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And here I thought it was a KLEPTOCRACY: A system of government where those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed are elected by those who seek personal gain at the expense of the few remaining actually productive citizens.
(Love the definition BTW)