2012

For a while now, a hot topic for debate and discussion is the so-called 'apocalypse' coming December 12, 2012. Not to mention the movie "2012" coming out next month. It's been said that the Mayan calender 'runs out' and the poles will shift making the world one giant catastrophe leaving mankind extinct from Earth. Other doomsday theorists suggest that this is just a Western myth. According to an article by Mark Stevenson of the Associated Press of Yahoo! News, "Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012."
While research and other proven theories object to the apocalypse, I couldn't help but notice some things while I was reading our Cartoon Guide to the Environment textbook. For instance, in Chapter 3 (p.33), they show some graphed relations between population size and time with respect to carrying capacity. The first shows population size leveling off just below the carrying capacity. The second ("more typically") shows the population 'wobble' around the carrying capacity until it evens out. The third shows the population overshooting the carrying capacity so far that it leads to catastrophe. This "disrupts the ecosystem so badly that its carrying capacity is reduced, and the species suffers a die-off from which it never fully recovers." The 2012 doomsday theory popped into my mind the second I read that statement. Is our population going to level off at our carrying capacity or will we create even more baby booms to throw our ecosystem out of balance? Is this the 'end of the world' that has been predicted?
Even television is hopping on the bandwagon. History channel features shows discussing possible explanations for all these possible coincidences that have been predicted by researchers who did not have the kind of technology we have today. They simply studied the stars and patterns of the Earth. How can we really know their data is true?
The article 2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist reveals much about the theory I had not known before and I encourage you to take a look. It eased some of my concerns and skepticism surrounding the whole idea. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.