When an obscure preacher forecasted the end of the world on May 12th it was universally dismissed and rightfully ridiculed while giving the preacher and his church notoriety and cash. End of the world predictions, especially when time sensitive, occur periodically and most people dismiss them as well they should. The preacher or minister, whatever he calls himself, knew what he was doing and his motivations were clear even if his followers didn’t see it.
The end of the world occurred in 1984, 2000, another date I can’t remember, and the end will also come at some date in 2012. My guess is on June 6 2006 (666) the end will come again and pass and we will all have laugh about it. Someone should write about the history of the end of the world. Or at least hire me to do it.
When I ridicule end of the world predictions I get chastised as a know-nothing. I actually get accused of aiding and abetting--notice that you can only abet while aiding, no one abets on its own, its always “aiding and abetting” I like to spend the day abetting without giving aid to anyone, can that be done?—okay I’m sidetracking. But, yea. A person can be going against conventional wisdom by denouncing the end of the world.
How can that be? How is it I can be accused of all this in the face of utter nonsense? Well let’s take a headline from the Vancouver Sun for instance. I knew without reading the article (eventually I did anyway) that this end of the world prediction was ridiculous, here’s the headline:
Could the Net be killing the Planet one search at a time?
Now you see? The end of the world because we are searching “how can I be smart like John Talleos” on Google along with millions and billions of lesser searches. It’s causing doomsday and a lot of other unrelated frustration. The difference here is a simple play of words. If someone says “the end of the world” we laugh, but if we say “killing the planet” then people sit back and wonder what now, paper clips, lazy-boy chairs?
Recently there have been a lot of tornadoes. Is it God’s way of punishing us for making the Kardashian's more famous than they deserve and that it is the beginning of the end of the world? Laughable, right? I’m even laughing even though it’s my own joke. But this, from Professor Robert Thorson of the Hartford Courant is serious stuff:
Historically oriented climate scientists suspect there's a change in the air, especially since the previous year experienced almost record-breaking heat, the energy from which tornadoes are born. Insurance companies are rethinking their long-term rates for customers. It's still too early to tell whether this is due to climate change, because such assessments can only be done in hindsight.
For those who are getting concerned, a well-informed and politically neutral report, "Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate," was published by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program in 2008. It's available online for free (http://courant.com/noaa). One of the report's most straightforward conclusions is that, on balance, a warmer world will be one with more extreme events.
The planet won’t die peaceably. It’ll take a lot of extreme events like tornadoes, hurricanes and even snow storms. This is due to man-made habits. But which one? One side says “the end is near because we idolize the Kardashian’s (minus Bruce Jenner and the drunk kid)” while the more serious side says “Searching for the Kardashian’s on the Internet is killing the planet.” I guess it all depends on which words we use but it’s safe to say we can all blame the Kardashian’s, whatever the case.
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