Repent, for the end of the world is at hand
According to the Daily Telegraph, Meade – for some reason I have an inexplicable urge to assassinate him – may be wrong.
Yep. You may go right ahead and exclaim Hurrah. I just did.
The prediction was taken so seriously that geophysicist Daniel Rothmans – yes, his great, great grandfather was the idiot who discovered the cigarette – has whittled down our remaining time to 83 years – that is to say the year 2100. That will be the year that humanity finally winds down.
And, apparently, it will be our fault or, more accurately, President Donald Trump’s, for ignoring the warning signs presaged by climate change.
You see, disaster will strike when the oceans hold so much carbon that mass extinction will become the answer to life’s problems.
No habitable oceans. No us. Period. Enter The Void.
According to his calculations, the best-case scenario means the critical extra amount of carbon required in the oceans is about 310 gigatons, so says projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Mass extinction
“It’s saying – if left unchecked – the carbon cycle would move into a realm which would be no longer stable and would behave in a way that would be difficult to predict,” Prof Rothmans said. “In the past this type of behaviour is associated with mass extinction.”
And this from a relative of a guy associated with cigarettes. Ironic, don’t you think?
What does one call Earth without humanity? UnEarth?
I mean, there are burning ques- tions out there. Who will populate the KLCC? Who’s going to pay GST? How will we balance our budgets? Should we even care?
And let’s just think about mass extinction for a minute. I mean, that’s six billion souls suddenly waiting in line to be judged and sorted out. I mean, it could take years for Saint Peter to figure it out.
What would we do in the meantime?
These will be the questions our grandchildren will have to confront.
Actually it all depends on one’s state of mind. Once asked to spell Armageddon, John Lennon admitted he could not. “But so what?” he replied proudly. “It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”
All this end-of-the-world philosophising reminds me of a preacher called Nathaniel Walker who used to stand by the road and declaim about the need for repentance as “the end of the world is nigh”.
But the cars kept speeding on and he was generally ignored. Until he walked past a lever with a sign that said “Pull this for the world to end”.
He thought this was the perfect site for his preaching and, lo and behold, the cars stopped and people began congregating. And very soon, it got so crowded that the highway was very nearly blocked.
Just then, an 18-wheeler came barrelling down the highway and the driver couldn’t brake in time.
He had two choices: he could either hit old Nathaniel or the lever.
Explaining to the Highway Patrol later, he pointed sadly at the red smear that used to be old Nathaniel and said apologetically: “Well, it’s better Nate than lever.”