Another sign of the Apocalypse?

I was thinking a thread on things that show that mankind has gone about as far as it can go without the outside help of God to fix things, might be interesting.

Something like this:

Twin Plagues Threaten Northern Forests
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP

HAINES JUNCTION, Yukon Territory (Aug. 23) – A veil of smoke settled over the forest in the shadow of the St. Elias Mountains, in a wilderness whose spruce trees stood tall and gray, a deathly gray even in the greenest heart of a Yukon summer.

"As far as the eye can see, it's all infested," forester Rob Legare said, looking out over the thick woods of the Alsek River valley.

Beetles and fire, twin plagues, are consuming northern forests in what scientists say is a preview of the future, in a century growing warmer, as the land grows drier, trees grow weaker and pests, abetted by milder winters, grow stronger.

Dying, burning forests would then only add to the warming.

It's here in the sub-Arctic and Arctic — in Alaska, across Siberia, in northernmost Europe, and in the Yukon and elsewhere in northern Canada — that Earth's climate is changing most rapidly. While average temperatures globally rose 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past century, the far north experienced warming at twice that rate or greater.

In Russia's frigid east, some average temperatures have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), with midwinter mercury spiking even higher. And "eight of the last 10 summers have been extreme wildfire seasons in Siberia," American researcher Amber J. Soja pointed out by telephone from central Siberia.

Along with shrinking the polar ice cap and thawing permafrost, scientists say, the warming of the Arctic threatens to turn boreal forest — the vast cover of spruce, pine and other conifers blanketing these high latitudes — into less of a crucial "sink" absorbing carbon dioxide and more of a source, as megatons of that greenhouse gas rise from dead, burning and decaying wood.

American forest ecologist Scott Green worries about a "domino effect."

"These things may occur simultaneously," said the researcher from the University of Northern British Columbia. "If the bark beetles kill the trees, you'll have lots of dead, dry wood that will create a really, really hot fire, and then sometimes you don't get trees regenerating on the site."

For the whole article see:
http://news.aol.com/article/beetles-wildfire-threaten-northern/635359?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fbeetles-wildfire-threaten-northern%2F635359

 

The 2012 Apocalypse — And How to Stop It
By Brandon Keim

For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists. But that’s exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers described in a chilling report issued earlier this year on the destructive potential of solar storms.


Entitled "Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts," it describes the consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth’s magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the United States "$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year," concluded the panel, and "full recovery could take 4 to 10 years." That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages.
Good-bye, civilization.



Worse yet, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in 2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth’s geomagnetic shield. But the report received relatively little attention, perhaps because of 2012’s supernatural connotations. Mayan astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous "birth of a new era."


Whether the Mayans were on to something, or this is all just a chilling coincidence, won’t be known for several years. But according to Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End," "I’ve been following this topic for almost five years, and it wasn’t until the report came out that this really began to freak me out."

For the whole article see:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/2012storms

 

That is really bad..

The trash dump in the middle of the pacific has been disturbing me..2 X the size of Texas..

Man is coming close to ruining it
one thing for sure, the earth is strong

 

Study says plastic decomposes at sea
AP

Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that doesn't break down. A new study indicates that, in the oceans, plastic does decompose, but says that's not a good thing either.

Thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year, some of it washing up on coasts, some being swirled by currents into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii, said to be larger than Texas.

"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable," Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, said in a statement.
"We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future," said Saido, who presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society on Wednesday.

Saido reported that the decomposing plastics release potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A and PS oligomer, which can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals.

 

Cicadas < here you go,, why human beings suck!! the planets surface would be better off burned to a crisp and flooded..

 

wow

 

It's a good thing this Thread isn't about 2012!

 

:smash:.. ima build a ark..

 

I don't know man....just because things are bad....why would that signal a need for God to step in?

I mean, it must have been really bad when that comet hit at the CT boundary millions of years ago.

And it has been bad when we had polar shifts. And then when Krakatoa blew off, that was pretty ragged out....

I know that there are some very, very, very serious times that would warrant God stepping in, i.e. planetary emergencies like wherein a star goes supernova. But you don't think we are in that kind of situation, do you?

 

I've seen the beetle destruction in Canada. There are forests as far as the eye can see completely dead. It's unbelievable.

 

Yep, we're all goina die . . . or at least banged up pretty bad.

 

Kind of hard to ignore symptoms like that.

 

Here's a video on theGreat Pacific Garbage Patch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html

 

Just to be a little more clear about my article:

It's not so much about 2012 as it is about the increase in solar flares and the effects they can have on our electronics. It's also about the increasing downtown on earths protective barriers.

Civilization is too dependent on technology, and if the power grid went out then it could cause massive damage. Nothing about this is nonsensical if GE and NASA are taking it seriously.

 

I figured as much and found it interesting but there are those who only read as far as 2012 and decided it was all quackery and went off and started posting nonsense.

 

Really? Who are they?

 

I got one! Them liberal pussies voted for a black man! rabble rabble *shoots gun*

 

I was thinking more along the lines of things that are starting to make the Earth uninhabitable but I guess for some what you mentioned would do that.

 

Pathetic that we don't the ones about the Earth but we do accept the ones about Obama being the anti-christ? :/