Outcome: chaos

So, what’s the best thing to do on a Saturday night? Go out? Catch a movie? Dance? Wow… everything sounds very appealing, but I guess I would have to go with documentaries on Discovery Channel about the world being destroyed by major catastrophes…

I guess this is the “Catastrophe Weekend” on Discovery Channel, you know? Sometimes we see “Shark Week”, “Africa Special”, “Mafia Marathon”, “Tornado 360º”, “Airport 24 hours: Sao Paulo”.

Since last year — and I guess it will only increase until the fateful date — we’ve been bombarded by 2012 specials. What will happen on 21 December, 2012? And what we see is the possible outcome. One of the things we hear could happen is that Earth’s magnetic poles could be inverted. I thought this meant that the Earth would turn upside down but this is obviously not the case. What happens is that every some 10,000 years there are big solar magnetic storms, really big ones, and when they occur, radiation can easily penetrate the thinner parts of the ozone layers and through the holes that already exist. The way it can affect Earth is that it could generate dozens of magnetic poles scattered around the globe and, having no specific magnetic north, animals could migrate to the wrong regions in the winter, huge amounts would die and consequently the food chain would be affected. Outcome: chaos.

Another theory presented was that a planet — not only meteors or asteroids — but a whole planet could be coming towards our galaxy. And the thing is that it doesn’t even have to collide with the Earth. By only passing through the galaxy, it would immediately change the orbit of the planets. Outcome: chaos. (Before the commercial break, one scientist said it would be impossible for this to happen within the coming millions of years because if there was really a planet approaching the galaxy, they would have spotted it already.)

Needless to say that every new scenario they painted made me become more frightened. It was raining at the time and every time a bolt of lightning struck, it made me occupy less and less space on the sofa (I don’t know how that was physically possible, but it did happen).

I guess the most impressive one — because it’s the most realistic — was the supervolcanoes. Scientists say there are dozens of active supervolcanoes around the world and one example is Yellowstone. The park sits on an active supervolcano that erupts every 600,000 to 800,000 years. They said the last eruption happened 640, 000 years ago, which means that it’s already in the “red zone”. With the super explosion (couldn’t expect less from a supervolcano…) the ashes would take over the atmosphere all the way to New Zealand, literally covering all the surface of the planet and leading us to what they call a “volcanic winter”: cold and no sun light. This could last years and would cause the death of animals, plants and crops. Outcome: chaos. (Well, we all know what happened a couple of months ago with the Icelandic Eijjalgbcocksuckergjjlt volcano…)

I changed the channel to Nat Geo and the “Saturday Marathon” was on: Aftermath!, a series of “what if” programmes basically showing the worst possible imaginable scenarios happening to the Earth. I watched the programme about the Earth’s population doubling overnight to 14 billion people. What would lead to catastrophe is the lack of water. Los Angeles would build desalination plants but would discover this to be extremely expensive to maintain, so the plants would be shut down. New York City would have to build skyscrapers in Central Park to accommodate all the people living there. Farmers would abandon the countryside because the rivers wouldn’t have enough water for irrigation of crops and diseases would spread. People would start migrating to colder regions and even try to bring ice  from polar ice caps to supply the cities with drinkable water. Outcome: chaos. (After about 40 years, the population would slump to only 4 billion.)

The other shows were “What if oil disappeared overnight?” and “What if the Earth stopped turning?” but I thought I’d had my share of catastrophe for the day, so I decided to turn in. I wanted to read some news and logged on to The New York Times. Editorial: Another Bad Idea From Arizona. Now, what the guys in that state want to do is to make the children born in the US to illegal immigrants also be illegal, going against the 14th Amendment (read here).  Outcome: chaos. (Where’s Glenn Beck to defend the Constitution now?)

I finished reviewing this TEDTalk by Enric Sala, translated by Luis Eduardo Cerquinho Cajueiro. It’s another talk about the situation of the oceans and Enric proposes ways to try to preserve what we have before it’s too late.

We Feel Fine: “I ever doubt myself and what I can do All I have to do is call my dad and by the end of our conversation he will have me feeling reassured that I can do hard things”