Surviving past 2012

The short answer is NO! That said, in biology extinction is the end of an organism. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species. Because a species’ potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult. This problem leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly “re-appears” (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. 

The “2012 hype” about the winter solstice (12.21.2012) being the end of the world is just that- HYPE!

A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. It is estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. So a couple of questions. What’s the big deal and who knows for sure about what happened millions of years ago, let alone 10,000 years ago?

In the near future, three anthropogenic extinction scenarios exist: catastrophic climate change, global nuclear annihilation, and one of dozens of 2012 scenarios.

Many of the world’s scientists agree that we are in the middle of a mass extinction, which is the 6th in earth’s history. The 5th was the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Experts predict that 1/2 of all life on earth will be extinct within this century. How about that optimistic news? Hey, at least they’re saying that we’ll survive 2012- we just won’t survive by 2112! 

What we do know is that mankind is not being a good steward of the planet. We’re polluting our rivers and oceans, destroying the rain forests, tearing up the ozone layer, and generally being a CANCER to the planet. For those who keep track of such things we’re losing the rainforest (our most important ecosystem) at the rate of two acres per second! That’s a number much like the trillions we’re in debt. Who can picture such scenarios?

Evidently we humanoids can’t.

The National Wildlife Federation estimates that we’re losing 27,000 species annually around the globe. With current estimated population gains things can only get worse and one gigantic example is what’s called “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. Seriously, a huge floating mountain of plastic waste is growing in the Pacific. It is the size of a continent and composed of plastic fragments that have floated together. Charles Moore has estimated that there is six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton in this area. And how long do we think we can keep this up?

And how about this statistic: worldwide we are producing some 400,000,000 metric tons of hazardous waste annually. Again, a number we have no vision or understanding about, but whose ramifications can be deadly for us all.