2012 Phenomenon: Has the Countdown Begun?

2012 Phenomenon: Has the Countdown Begun?
Hemantha Abeywardena writes from London…
“The series of strange events that we witness at present are the hallmark of the Armageddon,” say the experts who rely on, what scientists call pseudoscience – the analysis of Mayan Calendar, which predicts the end of the world on 21 December 2012.

The events have, however, baffled the folks who practise real science – biologists, physicists, ornithologists and of course, ‘warmists’, the league who now keeps a very low profile for obvious reasons: birds fall dead in their thousands from the sky; hundreds of thousands of fish die on the shores leaving very little clue for understanding; winter has become perilously extreme in the northern hemisphere; in the opposite half, summer is ruined with floods of biblical proportions. No geographical area on the earth has been spared by natural disasters; events that defy reason happen everywhere.

For us, the mortals, who live in the northern hemisphere, the debate between the two – scientists and the folks, the former poke fun at - is producing the much-needed heat – and light humour too – in the hour of need. We can keep the gloom at bay.

When the first significant death among blackbirds was reported in Beebe, Arkansas, it was attributed to fireworks by biologists, as if it was the first time ever birds faced with fireworks. However, when the death of birds was reported in Louisiana and Texas, the scientists retracted the hypothesis as fast as the dead birds plummeted from the sky.
At that point, another set of specialists took over the issue – at least, the explaining bit. It was by behavioural psychologists who attributed the death to ‘stress’: they were pretty equivocal in saying that the death was caused by stress, perhaps due to fireworks during the festive period. However, they failed to account for the absence of the phenomenon in the regions where the display of fireworks is a just a part of daily life, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and some parts of Africa. The statistics do not support the presence of stress among birds; they don’t support the death in large numbers either.

Then, came the Theory of Thunderbolt: the birds may have been struck by a thunderstorm. It was mocked as well, as the thunderstorms have been with us since time immemorial and history has no records to link the two events, even by those who used believe in superstition. So, that insight died a premature death too.

Article from:  december212012.com