The End of the Earth Has Been Postponed

It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will — or if it has already.

A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World", argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and over-hyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on Dec 21st, 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.)

The Mayan calendar was converted to today's Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers.   The GMT theory was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that uses the movements of Venus to predict events.
He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant. But Lounsbury's evidence is arguable. It's not so much that any of these gentlemen's calculations are off but that historical data, which their calculations depend  upon, is unreliable at best.

 Looks like end-of-the-world theorists  need to find another ancient calendar on which to pin their apocalyptic hopes. Sorry guys, I realize you were hoping that the earth would blow up or burn to a cinder and spin off into space; Maybe another day.

Other Dire Predictions of Doom Which Fizzled Out;
Heaven's Gate, 1997:
When comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997, rumors surfaced that an alien spacecraft was following the comet — covered up, of course, by NASA and the astronomical community. Though the claim was refuted by astronomers (and could be refuted by anyone with a good telescope), the rumors were publicized on Art Bell's paranormal radio talk show "Coast to Coast AM." These claims inspired a San Diego UFO cult named Heaven's Gate to conclude that the world would end soon. The world did indeed end for 39 of the cult members, who committed suicide on March 26, 1997.

Nostradamus, August 1999:
The heavily obfuscated and metaphorical writings of Michel de Nostrdame have intrigued people for over 400 years. His writings, the accuracy of which relies heavily upon very flexible interpretations, have been translated and re-translated in dozens of different versions. One of the most famous quatrains read, "The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come great king of terror." Many Nostradamus devotees grew concerned that this was the famed prognosticator's vision of Armageddon. But hey, we're still here.

Y2K, Jan. 1, 2000:
As the last century drew to a close, many people grew concerned that computers might bring about doomsday. The problem, first noted in the early 1970s, was that many computers would not be able to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900 dates. No one was really sure what that would do, but many suggested catastrophic problems ranging from vast blackouts to nuclear holocaust. Gun sales jumped and survivalists prepared to live in bunkers, but the new millennium began with only a few glitches. And hey, we're still here.

Don't relax completely; we are slowly but surely bringing the earth as we know it to an end. It may take several more decades but we will end up in a hostile, barren environment which, eventually, will be unable to sustain life. Ponder that for a minute.

http://climate.nasa.gov/          http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/        http://unfccc.int/2860.php

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/climate_carbon_energy/climate_agreement/