Oops I did it again ...

It's apparently only a matter of time before our number's up if we don't change our ways, as scientist have warned that human-made crises are 'outrunning our ability to deal with them'.

The world faces a compounding series of crises driven by human activity, which existing governments and institutions are increasingly powerless to cope with, a group of eminent environmental scientists and economists has warned.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say that nations alone are unable to resolve the sorts of planet-wide challenges now arising.

Which makes you wonder quite how screwed we actually are, if you consider the inability to get international cooperation on climate change, fishing etc etc

It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere ...

While the rest of us are understandably concerned at the cheery news that the effect of global warming heating the oceans could cause Earth's axis to tilt,we now find the NASA scientists have suggested that the best way to stop our planet from overheating would be to move it to a cooler spot!

All you have to do is hurtle a few comets at Earth, and its orbit will be altered. Our world will then be sent spinning into a safer, colder part of the solar system.

Well, that's alright then ... !

Greg Laughlin, Don Korycansky and Fred Adams of the Nasa Ames Research Center in California came up with the plan, which involves carefully directing a comet or asteroid so that it sweeps close past Earth and transfers some of its gravitational energy to Earth, nudging it slightly away from the Sun. Since life on Earth is able to thrive thanks to the planet's position in our solar system's Goldilocks Zone ("not too hot, not too cold"), shifting it around to control temperatures isn't that crazy. Actually, scratch that - read further into the article and you'll soon realise just HOW crazy it actually is ...

Engineers would have to be very careful about how they directed their asteroid or comet towards Earth. The slightest miscalculation in orbit could fire it straight at Earth – with devastating consequences.

It is a point acknowledged by the group. ‘The collision of a 100-kilometre diameter object with the Earth at cosmic velocity would sterilise the biosphere most effectively, at least to the level of bacteria,’ they state in a paper in Astrophysics and Space Science. ‘The danger cannot be overemphasised.’

There is also the vexed question of the Moon. As the current issue of Scientific American points out, if Earth was pushed out of its current position it is ‘most likely the Moon would be stripped away from Earth,’ it states, radically upsetting out planet’s climate.

Braaains, braaains, our braaains hurt ...

Aaaaaand, we're back ... tanned (thanks to all the radiation from the old nukes crumbling to dust in the bunker) and skint (Armageddon-proof holidays don't come cheap, y'know) ... and so to work.

A double whammy of news for you today, and we're sure we're not the first to point you in the direction of this story - with scientists having another 'no shit, sherlock' brainwave. Actually, that's a bit unfair as it's actually quite useful to study an outbreak of revanantism in the context of it being a 'contagious disease'.

Their conclusion? ...

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

Welcome back everyone ...

Ring a ring o' particles ...

The Large Hadron Collider, the massive science experiment which broke down last year within days of being switched on, is to start up again in September - a year after it was first activiated.

Amidst the hoo-ha that in the race to discover the so-called 'God Particle' it would create a black hole and bring about the end of the world, the activation of the machine produced not even the slightesy hint of anything apocalyptic. And then it broke.

The machine is currently being readied for its restart and the first beams of particles will be fired around its 17-mile ring in September with the first collisions will follow about a month later.

The LHC, based at the Swiss headquarters of the European nuclear research organisation Cern, was switched on in September last year amid a fanfare of publicity. But just 10 days later an electrical fault led to a catastrophic leak of helium used to cool the machine's powerful magnets, causing a complete shut-down.

Global crisis 'to strike by 2030'

A "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions, the UK government's chief scientist is warning.

In a major speech to environmental groups and politicians, Professor John Beddington, who took up the position of chief scientific adviser last year, will say that the world is heading for major upheavals which are due to come to a head in 2030.

He will tell the government's Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster that the growing population and success in alleviating poverty in developing countries will trigger a surge in demand for food, water and energy over the next two decades, at a time when governments must also make major progress in combating climate change.

"We head into a perfect storm in 2030, because all of these things are operating on the same time frame," Beddington told the Guardian.

"If we don't address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages," he added.

Scientists anticipate 'more bad news' on climate change

More than 2,000 climate scientists gathering in Copenhagen are expected to give a much clearer - and up-to-date - picture about the effects of climate change.

The scientists are concerned that the 2007 reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are already out of date. Latest data suggests greater rises in sea levels this century.

For the scientists, this conference is "about removing as much wriggle room as possible from the political negotiations on a new global climate treaty taking place in December".

In the context of the wrangle over the language used when talking about the effects of climate change, it will be interesting to see what conclusions a sober, research-based and non-political analysis will come to. The acid test will come when the politicians meet later in the year and what tactics they will employ to evade acting over what will undoubtedly be a pretty miserable prognosis.

Life "doomed" by four degree rise in global temps

James Lovelock, the former Nasa scientist and chief proponent of Gaia theory, has hit the headlines again with 'doomsday' predictions of the effects of climate change.

Climate change will wipe out most life on Earth by the end of this century and mankind is too late to avert catastrophe, a leading British climate scientist said.

Lovelock, 89, has said higher temperatures will turn parts of the world into desert and raise sea levels, flooding other regions.

His apocalyptic theory foresees crop failures, drought and death on an unprecedented scale. The population of this hot, barren world could shrink from about seven billion to one billion by 2100 as people compete for ever-scarcer resources.

"It will be death on a grand scale from famine and lack of water," Lovelock told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. "It could be a reduction to a billion (people) or less."

More worryingly, he claims that even if the world found a way of cutting emissions to zero, it is now too late to cool the Earth.

Ironically, this comes just a few weeks after experts at Britain's top climate research centre launched an attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming.

Keep watching the skies!

Chicken Lickin' wasn't kidding ...

The coal apocalypse?

Coal kick-started the modern world - is it possible that it could also end it?

Scientists are claiming that if growth in carbon dioxide emissions is to be constrained and even reversed then the world cannot afford a 'coal renaissance'.

But at an American Geophysical Union meeting, researchers said it was possible oil's demise could trigger an acceleration in emissions through more coal use.

Which is worrying, considering that in the US coal has for some time been touted as an environmentally friendly alternative to oil ... yes, that's right ... Coal. Environmentally friendly. In the same sentence. Without the word 'isn't' inserted in the middle. Environmentalists have been fuming (geddit?) during the election over the coal industry's concerted efforts to establish the 'myth' of 'clean coal' so they can cash in on the drive for cleaner energy.

And is it working? Well, in his speech accepting his party's nomination on August 28th 2008, President-elect Obama promised to end America's dependence on Middle East oil within a decade by investing $150 billion in 'alternative' energy sources that included, yep, so-called clean coal alongside wind, tidal etc.

As the Washington Post found itself, almost Cassandra-like, forced to point out - coal ain't clean, whether you're sticking it in a power station or liquefying it to stick in your car's fuel tank. It ALL produces as much, if not more, CO2 - the primary climate change gas - than the demon oil. And demand is rising.

Obviously, while the Americans argue, everyone else seems to have decided it's a gamble worth taking in a world where extracting oil means dipping toes into the Middle East. The Russians and the Chinese continue to consume coal like it's no tomorrow - reserves are believed to be far, far greater than those of oil - and in response to the Russian propensity to use its natural gas supplies to Europe as a bargaining chip, Europe's getting in on the act too ...

Coal has become another pawn in the global trend towards major countries striving for 'energy independence'. The consequences on the environment of these nationalistic concerns are grim.

The point of no return ...

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

The Arctic is considered one of the most sensitive regions in terms of climate change and its transition to another climatic state will have a direct impact on other parts of the northern hemisphere, as well more indirect effects around the world.

NEWS: Arctic Sea "Foaming" with Methane

Unsure whether to introduce a new category of apocalypse entitled merely 'global fart' ...

NEWS: magnet problem spanner in the works for LHC

A reprieve ...

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until Spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure.

"Cheer up, it's not the end of the world!"

Yeah, it wasn’t funny the first hundred times I heard that either …

But doesn't it worry you that, maybe, one of these days someone's going to be right? Hideously, devastatingly right? No, me neither ...

That, apparently, is odd for a man who edits a magazine about that very subject.

Three issues of the official magazine of the apocalypse in and I'm becoming something of an authority on the subject ... a terrible boring authority ... yet you could never exactly call me a believer as such. I don't start to fret when oil prices go up, I remain unconvinced that George W Bush is the anti-Christ, I really think God has better things to do than dole out virgins to trigger-happy idiots. And yes, shock, horror, I don't believe in THE END OF THE WORLD.

Completing this circle of non-belief is 'most people', as it is they who now don't believe me. Chief amongst these is lawyer-turned-acerbic-TV-host and Bee Gee baiter Clive Anderson. I found this out while being interviewed for a BBC Radio Four show called The End is Nigh ... Again last year which, rather festively, was broadcast on New Year's Eve. It purported to examine the latest predictions of the end of the world and included interviews with apocalypticly-minded minds such as Gaia-theorist James Lovelock.

And me.

The questions were benign enough, but when all of my answers tended to slightly mock whatever theory we were talking about, Mr Anderson and his producer were a little bemused.
The problem is that I just don't believe. Sure, mankind isn't going to on forever, whether it's fire, ice, war or plague that wipes us out, but I certainly don't believe the one day I'll wake up and find that all the Christians have been hoovered off to heaven or that global warming will make this place completely uninhabitable. The end will come, but it'll either come before we can do anything about it, or it will be the long, slow twilight every race must suffer – bare in mind that 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. There, that puts it into context, doesn’t it.

So how, asked Anderson, could I say I didn’t believe in the end of the world (other than when our sun gasps its last and destroys whatever is left of our home planet) when I edit and produce a magazine about it? Easy, say I, I just find the concept and its hold on the human psyche utterly, endlessly fascinating. Witness the reams of newsprint, the mountains of books and the endless number of webpages about this most timeless of concepts. Ever since mankind developed a sense of the future, he has had a sense of it coming to an end; as mortal beings we are only too aware of our impending death, yet we are ultimately powerless to change or delay it. Predicting it is a cunning way to try and exert some control, exercise some measure of influence over that dark day that awaits us all. Doesn't work, but that never stops people trying. Whether it's voices in their head, a feeling in your gut, an alignment of stars or the way your dog's entrails sit just so on the makeshift Stonehenge in your back garden, trying to second guess fate has been a favourite past time since time immemorial. But we just can't seem to get it right ...

And that’s where THE END IS NIGH! comes in. We seek to chart and preserve mankind’s on-going fascination with its own demise, examining the claims of those who would see us consumed by solar fire, dashed to pieces by flying rocks, obliterated by nuclear weapons or wiped out by a big bad bug. Where there is a hell-fire preacher predicting perpetual purgatory, you will find us. When a scientist looks up from his microscope or telescope eyepiece in horror, we will be there.
In the end, they cut me out of the programme, preferring instead to concentrate on the scientists and their pet theories.

Just as well really ...

ANALYSIS: web 'must separate rumour' from science

As a source of apocalyptic rumour and panic, the internet can't be beaten. Once upon a time, doomsayers were confined to preaching, pamphlet/book printing or - in usually quite extreme cases - bagging mainstream media attention to propagate their ideas, but now anybody with a copy of Dreamweaver and a broadband connection can be all over the internet like a rash.
Now obviously the flap over the LHC was something more than that, since those who launched the biggest legal challenge against the switch-on were scientists themselves, but you don't have to have an intimate understanding of Google's listing system to find websites that put an apocalyptic slant on scientific discoveries or ideas both old and new. Polar shifts, the conjunction of planets, asteroid strikes, shooting stars, even messages in the layout of the pyramids in Egypt - all these ideas and more (worse?) find a home on the World Wide Web. It's a boon for us - since it makes these people all the easier to find - but it also means the mainstream media are more likely to pick up on the latest predictions and by broadcasting them they encourage others to find or believe in them. It's a vicious circle that's not really been addressed by a loony-ignoring scientific community before.
It is therefore a sign of how significant the LHC flap was that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who gave birth to the internet, has said he is "increasingly worried" about the way the web has been used to spread "disinformation".
Speaking to the BBC News website in advance of an announcement about a Foundation he has helped create that he hopes will improve the World Wide Web, Sir Tim has voiced concern about the use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth. He also linked this to general 'scientiphobia' such as the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine could cause autism.
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."
It's obvious why the misguided interest in the LHC should provoke his ire - his pioneering work on the web was done at the collider's home of CERN at Geneva - but it must also be truly galling to see what could be one of the most important experiments in the history of mankind reduced to the status of a freakshow by journalists whose attention helped explode bog-standard apocalyptic scaremongering into a real 'silly season' summer story.
Sir Tim's solution? Systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources. Whether this is in any way workable or not, it's significant that the father of the internet (who thanks to his connections at CERN is also a major figure in the wider scientific community) has chosen to tackle such people head on, rather than ignore them lest the attention almost legitimise their ideas.
But did scientific rebuttals destroy the MMR allegations and lay parents' minds at rest? The downward spiral of uptake rates for the vaccine would suggest otherwise and it can be argued that suspicions of science, and those 'in charge', run much deeper than those behind paternalistic action plans maybe realise.
Apocalyptic ideas are ultimately an expression of our fear of the unknown, of things that come outside the world's received wisdom - they feed on uncertainty and the LHC just proves that no scientist can ever give the 100% guarantee of what will happen in an experiment (otherwise, what's the point of doing it in the first place?)

So bear in mind that Robert J Oppenheimer, who created the world's first atomic bomb, ordered extensive calculations to prove that the detonation wouldn't set off a chain-reaction in the upper atmosphere which would engulf the planet in flame - which may well represent the first quantitative risk assessment of human extinction, something that has continued on and off for almost 70 years.

LHC Countdown 22.00BST 09/09/2008

10.5 hours and counting ...

There is SOME good news, however - I get interviewed about all this by BBC Radio Solent at 8.14am and then I'll be on BBC Radio Four's The World Tonight at 10pm.

(I love how the local radio station does it BEFORE the event, but Radio Four is suitably convinced nothing will happen so they're doing the interview in the evening ...)

NEWS: It's official - "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat"

There are lots of things to get wound up about in the world, many of them truly apocalyptic - global climate change, world food supply, biosecurity etc etc.

However, let all doomsayers take note: particle acceleraters are not one of them ...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is due to be 'switched on' (which basically means it will circulate a beam of particles through its entire 17km length for the first time) at 9.30am EST on Wednesday. For what is the beginning of a groundbreaking attempt to uncover the origins and the building blocks of the universe, it is only right the event will be broadcast around the world. However, we all know why there's so much media interest in this event - and it ain't a new appreciation for scientific endeavour.

The End is Nigh has been produced, on and off, for almost four years and yet it still comes as a surprise that scientists working on the LHC have not only had to fend off legal challenges, but have also apparently been receiving death threats. Once such recipient, according to the Daily Telegraph, has been Frank Wilczek, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But an End is Nigh Common Sense Award goes to Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, who bluntly told the Telegraph: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

Most of the media attention of this event has focused on hyping up or refuting such outlandish claims, and the Telegraph goes on to report that the head of PR James Gillies, the public's contact for info on the £4.5 billion machine, is inundated with people fearing for their lives. "There are a number who say: "You are evil and dangerous and you are going to destroy the world," he said. "I find myself getting slightly angry, not because people are getting in touch but the fact they have been driven to do that by what is nonsense. What we are doing is enriching humanity, not putting it at risk."

With apocalyptic fears usually fuelled by the attention the media pay to anyone with a scary theory, the LHC would appear to be teaching us as much about human ignorance as it is about the foundations of existence.

The LHC Switch On: 32 hours and counting ...

All kinds of crazy

There's nothing like a sublimely over the top scientific experiment to bring the doomsayers out of the woodwork ...

Yours truly got interviewed on Friday by the BBC News website, which is doing a feature about why we're obsessed by the end of the world. I can only compliment the reporter concerned for him tracking me down, though to be fair my name's all over the internet like a rash ...

Anyways, the 'angle' behind the story is the many scare stories about the switching on of the massive Large Hadron Collider near Geneva this week, the operators of which saw off a legal attempt to stop it in the European Court of Human Rights. A group of scientists, headed by Professor Otto Rössler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, had applied for an injunction to stop the collider being switched on because they feared that rather than reveal the secrets of the universe, the machine would actually either create mini black holes that would swallow the Earth 'within 50 months' or splurge exotic killer particles everywhere.

Now, I'm excited about the scientific possibilities as anyone but what's really got my attention is the huge kinds of crazy this experiement has drawn from the EotW community, a small sample of which can be viewed in the comments on the New Scientist's blog about why the collider won't suck us all into a black hole.

What's interesting to note is that although the collider is being switched on, it's not being switched on to FULL power. That's a few months down the road. Will be interesting to watch the doomsayers once nothing happens in the next few days - will they, in the main, leave the issue alone and switch back to 2012 or will they eagerly watch for the date of when the collider goes to full strength? Should be fun ...

NEWS: Risking Armageddon for Cold, Hard Cash

Washington Post: September 7, 2008

While everyone has been abuzz about Georgia, the Beijing Olympics and Sarah Palin, perhaps the most important development in the world has been unfolding with almost no attention. India and the United States, along with deep-pocketed corporations, have been steadily pushing along a lucrative and dangerous new nuclear pact, the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement. Both governments have been working at a fever pitch to get the pact approved by the 45-country Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs the world's trade in nuclear materials, and before Congress for a final vote before it adjourns this month.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says the deal will let his country, which refuses to sign either the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, take "its rightful place among the comity of nations." I entirely understand why today's democratic, globalized and modernizing India wants recognition and respect, and I agree that it needs more energy. But this foolish, risky deal is not the way to get any of these things. India's democracy has already paid a crippling price, and now the planet may too.

The historic deal will allow U.S. nuclear companies to again do business in India, something that has been barred since 1974, when New Delhi tested its first atomic bomb. (India tested nuclear bombs again in 1998, spurring Pakistan to follow suit with its own tests days later.) The pact will also lift restrictions on other countries' sales of nuclear technology and fuel to India, while asking virtually nothing from India in return. All of that will undermine the very international system that India so ardently seeks to join.

The deal risks triggering a new arms race in Asia: If it passes, a miffed and unstable Pakistan will seek nuclear parity with India, and China will fume at a transparent U.S. ploy to balance Beijing's rise by building up India as a counterweight next door. The pact will gut global efforts to contain the spread of nuclear materials and encourage other countries to flout the NPT that India is now being rewarded for failing to sign. The U.S.-India deal will divert billions of dollars away from India's real development needs in sustainable agriculture, education, health care, housing, sanitation and roads. It will also distract India from developing clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and from reducing emissions from its many coal plants. Instead, the pact will focus the nation's efforts on an energy source that will, under the rosiest of projections, contribute a mere 8 percent of India's total energy needs -- and won't even do that until 2030.

So what will the deal accomplish? It will generate billions of dollars in lucrative contracts for the corporate members of the U.S.-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry. The Bush administration hopes that it will help resuscitate the moribund U.S. nuclear power industry and expand the use of this "non-polluting" source of energy, one of the pillars of the Bush team's energy policy. The deal will let the real leaders of the global nuclear-power business -- France and Russia, both of which eagerly support the deal -- reap huge profits in India. And the pact will provide spectacularly profitable opportunities to India's leading corporations, which are slavering to get their hands on a share of the booty. How much booty? This newspaper estimates more than $100 billion in business over the next 20 years, as well as perhaps tens of thousands of jobs in India and the United States.

This is what the U.S.-India nuclear deal is really all about. This is what the nonproliferation regime that has kept the world safe from nuclear Armageddon for decades is being risked for: cash