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This Is the Way the World Ends
Dave Knott writes "The CBC's weekly science radio show Quirks and Quarks this week features a countdown of the top ten planetary doomsday scenarios. Nine science professors and one science fiction author are asked to give (mostly) realistic hypotheses of the ways in which the planet Earth and its inhabitants can be destroyed. These possibilities for mankind's extinction include super-volcanoes, massive gamma ray bursts, and everybody's favorite, the killer asteroid. Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue."
I always love it when people say these things. Point of fact, we don't have enough data points to make this prediction. At best, that's a wild conjecture.
Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue.
From the record of paleomagnetism found in spreading ocean floors, the reversals are anything but periodic. Reversals recur, but the interval between reversals can be less than 25 thousand years, or longer than 35 million years. In other words, the intervals between reversals vary in duration by a factor of more than 1000.
The oceanic record is limited to the last 200 million years, at most. It has been extended further back by correlating measurements from continental rocks formed at different times, and relying on models for tectonic drift. This naturally yields inferences with lower confidence and limited time resolution. However, the results suggest that geomagnetic field has occasionally been stable for more than 50 million years at a time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_reversal
Given that their occurrence is erratic rather than periodic, and that there is no decent model for predicting their occurrence, the assertion that a magnetic reversal is "overdue" is absurd.
The scaremongering that a reversal would lead to "the end of the world" or mass extinctions is equally puerile. Reversals of the geomagnetic field show no particular correlation with extinctions in the past.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'm sure you haven't.
Some of the fundamentalists BELIEVE in their god. They don't care if they all die, so long as they go to heaven.
Right. And you know this how? The Saudis are rich enough to have bought all the nukes they wanted (from Pakistan, North Korea, say). And they're as devout as they come. But they haven't sent us all to paradise/hell.
Funny thing, fundamentalist leaders don't sacrifice themselves. And that goes for Muslims as well as Christians and Communists.
The world population is increasing exponentially. Nothing increases exponentially in a limited environment, so the most likely scenario is that we will simply continue growing our consumption until we run out of the resources which allow the growth. oil, water, energy etc. Then the carrying capacity of the earth will be drastically reduced and with that goes the number of living things. In the final stages of growth humans will displace most other lifeforms which compete for resources.
You could use yeast in a bottle as an example. It grows until all the sugar is consumed, or alcohol level is too high, then it all just dies off.
Our bottle is simply larger.
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