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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the end will be near but not tomorrow
Aikimox (Dec 18th at 3.12p.m.)
Not that record temperatures are the be all and end all of the climate debate but I do believe that all of the world’s continental highest temperatures were set before 1980, but some of the lowest have occurred since then.
Here in New Zealand we are just six weeks away from the 40th anniversary of the hottest day recorded here. Some of the people crying about the end of the world through heat weren’t even born then!
Be also weary of record heat temperatures and where they are gleaned from, i.e. sub-standard weather stations in various heat island situations. Read elswhere on this site if this situation hasn’t been presented to you before.
Have a great Christmas and New Year’s everyone. I have a big year ahead with TWO possible “Great Comets,” in the sky. The two comets in question are well behaved being close enough to us or the sun to get a good view of them, but not so close as to cause mass suicides and the like.
Meanwhile a La Nada inspired drought continues to ramp up in our area despite some attention that we will receive around Christmas from the remnant of Cyclone Evan that has recently ravaged our Pacific neighbours in Samoa and Fiji.
Cheers
Coops.
Lets enjoy the day…
elmer says @December 19, 2012 at 6:33 am
Pretty amazing, Elmer.
There can be no doubt that the world is going to end in 2038. In that year, the Unix timestamp runs out of bits to increment, and all computers will reset themselves to 1901 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem). That wil of course completely upset all the climate models; and since, as we all know, reality *always* follows suit, earth will either boil or freeze, or more likely do both at the same time.
Dscott
The Book Of Revelations is such a wonderful work and like the gargoyles that adorn the external of cathedrals,its surface language is strange and forbidding for the less than perceptive in terms of presentation and purpose.What looks like a newspaper account of future events to some is a sanctuary for others but the contemporary mind is either unfamiliar or unable to think in the same terms as those who constructed the narrative and so it goes for many other works of antiquity – it is not their deficiencies but one of the modern heart set on wrong values that prevents interpretations of these great works.
Out calendar is based on a meteorological event coinciding with an orbital event that defines all timekeeping,in ancient times the flooding of the Nile and the annual appearance of the star Sirius from behind the glare of the Sun after an absence of a number of month.It is a supreme discovery that is now rejected in the world of mathematical modelers who aggressively deny that days/years translate directly into rotations/orbital circuits and subsequently a great tragedy for our race
It is one of the quirks that while the space agency NASA takes time out to assure people that the end of the world is not tomorrow,the same agency cannot tell the public what purpose is served by the extra rotation of February 29th in closing out four circuits of the Earth around the Sun when the ancient Egyptians proudly understood that to keep daily cycles fixed to orbital points required the addition of an extra day after 4 consecutive cycles of 365 days –
“on account of the precession of the rising of Sirius by one day in the course of 4 years therefore it shall be, that the year of 360 days and the 5 days added to their end, so one day after every 4 years added to the 5 epagomenae before the New Year, whereby all men shall learn, that what was a little defective in the order as regards the seasons and the year, as also the opinions
which are contained in the rules of the learned on the heavenly orbits, are now corrected ”
Canopus Decree ,Egypt
It is to a 100 % certainty that days/years transform into rotations/orbital cycles directly yet the NASA space agency believes otherwise and ,using a fatally flawed use of Ra/Dec,insists that 24 hour days and daily rotations fall out of step –
“The Earth spins on its axis about 366 and 1/4 times each year, but there are only 365 and 1/4 days per year. ” NASA
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970714.html
In short,the situation is so dismaying that it would be a major achievement to get scientists to comprehend when the end of the year is let alone the end of anything else.The Earth turns once in a day, a thousand times in a thousand days and never falls out of step regardless whether NASA imagines it turns 1465 times in 1461 days.If you are going to use the Bible,may I suggest the saying about taking the mote out another’s eye when there is a plank in your own.
Elmer,
That is an interesting video.
@A.D. Everard :
If you ARE destroyed first, do please put up a posting so the rest of us can have an extra few hours to party! As I’m in California, and we’re near last, I could likely catch a flight to Hawaii and get a few extra hours!
😉
@Aikimox :
No, it’s not more extremes. Global warming is more HOT extremes.
Your 35 year history is barely 1/2 of a PDO cycle. I’ve got a whole one in the bag now. I can tell you that the weather right now is remarkably like it was in the 1950s. During the 70s-90s it was rather placid in comparison. But the earlier years were much more variable. Heck, they even had New York City hit by a REAL Hurricane. ( 1954 I think it was).
Now, it was even worse before that. The 1800s especially had some mad mad weather. Toe curling stuff compared to now. And even worse earlier. 100 year droughts and the fall of civilizations.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/california-extreme-super-flood/ in 1861 …
Then there are Bond Events and Heinrich Events and a long cycle Polar See-Saw:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/d-o-ride-my-see-saw-mr-bond/
All perfectly natural and all “toe curling” compared to now.
There’s even what look like 5,000 and 23,000 year cycles of even more extreme range.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/why-a-henge/
Right now we’re on the top warm end of a 5000 year cycle, btw. There’s Otzi the Ice man just came out from under a glacier… which means it was WARMER when he fell as the ice was not there, then. Similarly there are flash frozen greens coming out from under a glacier in the Andes that, you guessed it, was ice free 5200 years ago when the snows first fell (and never left until now).
But, don’t worry, these periodic events end with a nice cold plunge. It’s going to happen, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
Why does it happen? We don’t know, but have decent guesses. Looks like a periodic natural oscillation in the Sun / Moon / Earth systems as they interact.
But you can think 35 years is a long time if it makes you feel better…
@Patrick Guinness:
No way the Russians are getting back on the Global Warming bandwagon:
They are busy getting their nose froze and their toes froze and…
http://rt.com/news/russia-freeze-cold-temperature-379/
That sound you hear is The Fat Lady singing… in Russian…
I give it to the Mayans. They had the cosmos from the Earthling perspective pretty well figured out, including future astrological events like eclipses, alignments and planet transits. Now what most folks don’t realize is the 13:13:13:13 actually translates back to 0.0.0.0 a reset of sorts. According to my research on Mayan calendar counts there are 4 or 5 such ages since the “beginning of time” and the real long count is two more sets of numbers long.. so in reality we are at something like 0:4:0:0:0:0 on the count.. maybe 5 like I said its been a while since I researched.. and there is a whole lot of garbage out there now that makes it hard to find the original references.. Im sick of sky is falling theory, why can’t we just admire the work of a people that came up with a calendar that, for their time.. was pretty incredible to say the least. As for the end of the world folks.. it takes nothing to set them off. I wonder if we will be digging up cult idiots again this round like the last time a comet passed close:)
Lew Skannen says:
December 18, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Am I the only one stock piling the little hex keys you get when you buy flat pack furniture?
In other Universe, they are called “Allen wrenches.”
I’ve got a bunch, though I cannot say I am stockpiling them — I don’t buy furniture that often.
An interesting factoid I’ve seen in the news the other day:
65% of Americans believe that “the end of days is near.”
75% of these believe, at the same time, in anthropogenic global warming.
A statistically significant correlation, I would say.
And a truly pathetic state of national culture.
eyesonu says:
December 19, 2012 at 11:11 am
otropogo ,
“I can understand (or try to from your perspective) the failure of all the predictions of doom and the end of the world. You can rest assured that someone will soon come up with some new ones for you to fear.
It is somewhat ironic that you can rest assured that there will be another prediction of doom. Anyway, you have my heartfelt sympathy that the earth will still be around next week.”
I don’t see how you’re able to understand ANYTHING, logically challenged as you clearly are.
Where have I posted that the earth would not be “around next week”? How do poor predictions of global catastrophe prove that all such predictions are false? Does the fact that any number of people have predicted a stock market crash, or an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption that didn’t occur on time constitute assurance that all such predictions are false?
I would hardly expect a crudely translated fragment of an ancient calendar to constitute a precise prediction of anything. In fact, I would consider it the height of stupidity to conclude that because no remarkable global event occurs at 10am GMT Dec. 21, 2012 (for example) that the prediction of an event of global significance (at least to humanity) is thereby disproven for the near future.
OTOH, I would not be surprised if something momentous DID occur on or about December 21, and had been led to expect a thoughtful and informed discussion of possible ways to make sense of the Mayan prediction from an astronomical point of view.
There seems to be some difference of opinion as to the periodicity of the galactical alignment forming on the 21st, with some saying it is an event that occurs every 5,100 years, while others suggest it happens only every 26,000 years. Even this point has not been addressed here, so far as I’ve seen. In fact, the supposed subject, instead of being a focus of debate, seems to have served primarily as a vehicle for unfocused derision of anyone who credits the possibility of any global catastrophe. One would think this is a forum for dinosaurs in denial…
Surely everyone here has at least seen or read of signs of highly advanced civilizations which vanished virtually overnight, with no clear cause. If a solar event were to deprive us of electrical power for even as little as a few months – a possibility that has been quite seriously considered by the US Congress, from my reading – I find it quite easy to imagine the complete disintegration and disappearance of our own civilization, due to its complete dependence on electrical power for water, food, transport, communications and for keeping our nuclear waste from blowing up in our faces.
To suggest, as you do, that to voice such a concern indicates a desire for such an event to occur is a contemptible ad hominem attack that has no place in a forum for scientific discussion.
otropogo,
Thank you for pointing out that I am clearly logically challenged. I guess that was something that I had overlooked in myself. I will give serious consideration to the points you presented in your post above and take precautions as to a possibility that there could be an impending catastrophic event on the 21st.
Perhaps the first thing I should do is go out and buy more beer, lots more and get it on ice as soon as possible. Next I will begin to worry about the possible catastrophic events that could happen. As I worry I will begin to drink beer which should help me worry less because there is nothing I can do about the end of time. If I am still around on Saturday I will worry about my hangover and the need for more beer.
But I will be better off for it as I would then know that I had logically worried myself into a drunken stupor for no logical reason. Should I find myself with a tee shirt and reservations in the circle of hell, I will know that it was illogical to worry about the end of time as there was nothing I could do about it. Now it all sounds logical to me!
About an hour and a half to go for doom to strike New Zealand. I might give them a call just after midnight their time to ask what we can expect here in Australia a couple of hours later.
Hello New Zealand and Australia – are you still there?
Hello! Hello! …..
I want to know if I should pay off my MasterCard and Visa.
Good Morning Allan Macrae.
It is 6.31 am on the 21st December 2012 and I feel fine.
Slightly cloudy. No wind. 15 deg C. No sign of the beginning of the end here.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of human induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for mitigation and adaptation.”
Reminder folks that this was after just 8 years of the planet warming.
No warming until 1980.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1937/to:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1937/to:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1937/to:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1937/to:1949/offset:0.01/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1957/to:1964.17/offset:0.01/trend
Warming after 1980
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1959/to:1988/plot/gistemp/from:1959/to:1988/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1959/to:1988/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1959/to:1988/plot/gistemp/from:1959/to:1979/trend
Breaking news: Mayan calendar found to actually end on Feb 15, 2013.
Newsflash: Mayan calculation of asteroid 2012 DA14 orbit was not perfect! It will miss earth by 21,500 miles.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2012 DA14&orb=1
Today’s forecast.
D Böehm says:
December 20, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Today’s forecast.
========================================
The forecast was for tomarrow. Tomarrow never comes.
Maybe the Mayans were climate modelers?
Gunga Din says:
December 20, 2012 at 2:03 pm (replying to)
D Böehm says:
December 20, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Today’s forecast.
========================================
The forecast was for tomarrow. Tomarrow never comes.
For toemarrow, yes, for toemarrow is inside the foot of the matter …..
Gail! No! You’re making a HUGE mistake! People from Alberta CANNOT DRIVE!!!
So was it supposed to be the beginning of the day, or the end of the day?
Good Morning John in NZ and Compliments of the Season.
It is now the morning of 21Dec2012 in Alberta and coincidentally, we are still here too!
I wish you and yours joy over the Christmas season, and trust that humanity will survive a while longer, as this planet hurtles and spins its way into eternity.
Well, it’s December 21 and I see n
3pm and all is well!
As I write this it’s just after 3pm, Central Standard time. If the Armageddon were going to happen you’d think it would be on the news already.
I have to confess. I did some stockpiling for the occasion. Not food and guns, or even gasoline. Mostly scotch and bourbon, but a little red wine and some beer as well. Oh, and a bottle of really really good good bottle of cognac. (Think; what would be a good price for a kid’s first car cost today?) Hate to be drinking cheap brandy and have a fortune in the bank as the world comes to an end.
Wife’s having some of our close friends, including the hot neighbor lady, over for an ‘apocalypse partly’ later. This could to turn out to be an interesting day.
(Posting under a pseudonym today.)