Sunday, January 27, 2008

2012

Margaret blogged about watching the Life After People program. I saw it too.

I also saw the program before it, which was about doomsday predictions from different civilizations all over the globe. Apparently, everyone agrees that the world will end in 2012.

Yesterday, I saw a news item about the ice caps now being thought to melt entirely in the summers in five years' time...which will take us to either the summer of 2011 or of 2012.

Last night, I saw a program about a very inaccessible area of the Sahara desert where there is graffiti proving (?) that people once swam there. The commentator suggested that NASA photos of the Sahara prove that there were once rivers in the Sahara (I thought there was once a sea, too). Something was said about the Earth tipping on its axis to explain why the Sahara desert was once a fertile area.

Before you make a 2012 list on the same principle as the movie "Bucket List" you might like to check out what a NASA scientist has to say.

http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/arot.html

On the other hand, and at the risk of saying something someone else has already examined, I am fascinated by the thought of prehistoric graffiti. I do have to wonder whether it is justified to assume that ancient graffiti artists drew accurate --insofar as a cartoon can be accurate-- representations of the world around them.

I'm not interested in writing a post-apocalyptic novel, but an alien romance offers fertile ground for an outsider to stare at graffiti and extrapolate.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

2 comments:

  1. Another fact that surprised me (in watching LIFE AFTER PEOPLE) was that without constant pumping the New York subway system would be flooded in 36 hours. Of course I knew Amsterdam is below sea level and would be under water if the dikes failed. However, I had no idea large sections of London are in the same predicament. Humanity really has reshaped the "natural" landscape in some major ways.

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  2. Having been born in the UK, I did know about the Thames barrier.

    There was also a fabulously terrifying program on The Weather Channel's "It Could Happen Tomorrow" about what would happen to London if there was a storm surge moving down between Scandinavia and the British East Coast.

    I was surprised about the New York subway, too. I suppose it is to do with the water table. DUH to me! But if sea levels rise, the water table would also rise.

    A lot of us might have damp basements, even if we feel safe otherwise.

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