2012 isn’t the end of the world, Mayans insist
It also sounds like the Mayans who aren’t too busy trying not to starve to death are also getting very annoyed about the whole thing. Considering this is basically the white people stealing a bit of their culture and then shellacking it with the Christian idea of a global apocalypse, well, I’d be really annoyed myself. Particularly when said thieving white people are dishonest hacks that are trying to make money by scaring people half to death, or just by making really stupid-looking disaster movies about it.
And sadly, I bet no one will listen to a real Mayan calling it BS. This is one of those unsinkable (and stupid) rubber duckies – if you call BS on one disaster theory, another springs up in its place. Or the believers in it just ignore you and move on. Which I honestly wouldn’t have a problem about it if they weren’t apparently running around and scaring the heck out of fourth graders with this stuff.
The article does a pretty good job of summing up a bunch of the disaster BS that’s going around and at leas throwing in some quotes to let us know that scientists think it’s total BS. Phil Plait even puts in an appearance!
Most of the 2012 stuff hinges on astronomy, which is why I don’t have much to say about it. I just listen to the lovely and talented Dr. Plait, nod, and say “F*** yeah!” at appropriate times. But thanks to Yahoo News, I now know one of the proposed geological ways the world is supposedly going to blow up.
The stupid. It burns:
Another History Channel program titled “Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days” says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a “pole shift.”
“The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster,” a narrator proclaims. “Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe.”
History Channel, I would demand that you feel ashamed, but we’ve known for a long time that you don’t have any shame to begin with. Anyone who has taken even the most basic geology course should know that this is complete, gleeful fabrication. The entire mantle of the Earth shifting in days? Are these people on drugs? The part of the mantle known as the asthenosphere is capable of plastic deformation, but it’s made of hot rocks under high pressure, not freaking marshmallow fluff. The mantle has convection currents that move the crustal plates, but come on – when we’re getting a few centimeters a year out of one of these babies, we think it’s really cooking. India is experiencing the most rapid movement out of any of the plates, and it’s moving at 5 cm/year. Not exactly the stuff of horror.
Also, to the best of our knowledge, the magnetic field is determined by currents within the Earth’s core. Not the mantle. Not even close.
Again, I repeat – are these people on drugs?