"2012 is, now famously, the year that the long count Mayan calendar predicts will see radical transformation."

No it doesn't. Exasperated archaeologists have already explained that, to the Maya, the end of a long count was simply the end of a cycle. People are interpreting the calender with a Christian apocalyptic bias, there are sound scientific reasons for concern, so let's forget about the calendars of dead civilisations.

Don't blame the Maya for whatever occurs in 2012.

This is all very reminiscent of the suddenly-fashionable mumblings of Nostradamus, back in the eighties.

I can only guess that it is in our nature to look for a supernatural cause every time we meet adversity. It is so much easier, and more comforting somehow, to attribute nasty stuff to an external agency.

"There is an underlying psychological factor at work here: if enough people believe that change is imminent, it most likely is."

Fortunately, this particular piece of doom-mongering is about as convincing as the man with the sandwich board proclaiming "The End Is Nigh".

The Club of Rome lives on!

And has acquired no greater intelligence or insight with advancing years.

It's quite possible that some university communication schools (always hotbeds of unusable skills in business) are teaching that if you want to get a persuasive message out to the public, then couch it in terms of the end of the world.

If you can include a dead (but groovy) civilisation in there too, it's a double word score. If they were brutalised by a sophisticated and well armed imperial nation, it's triple word score.

My climate skepticism is well known - mainly for articles like this. If advocates of global warming, rising sea levels, etc, want to be taken seriously, they really need to ignore the popular culture tags and keep to the science.

Disaster Porn I believe this is now called, and the catastrophists love it and cannot get enough!

What next, the counting of "tipping points", oh wait those keep passing by.

Temperature will go up with increasing CO2, oh hang on, that's not happening either. I'm sure if we wait long enough, it will, but I'm just as sure, if we wait long enough we'll travel to other planets .. depends on your time scale doesn't it?

Prophets have always been around, prophets of doom have an appalling record of success.

Back in medieval times, they put prophets to death whose prophecies caused panic and did not come about, we should consider the same.

I suspect most doom prophets are just people who didn't get enough attention, so ramped up the "doooooom", till they did.

It's short lived though, or it should be.

Peter is obviously right, we can't go on with this exponential expansion forever.

Governments however, when they look at this problem should start closer to home than industry.

The most ridiculous expansion has been in higher education, & the public service. Industry & the population is running liker crazy, just to keep up with the growth in funding costs in this area.

When we have someone who professes a belief in the Mayan calendar making believable predictions, & global warming, in the same article, we have obviously found someone with an obsessive character. Surely this is not someone who should be teaching young impressionable minds.

The only institution such people should be involved with would be one where they are protected from self harm as an inmate, not a teacher or warder. Confinement to such an institution might also help protect the less stable among us from exposure to such fanciable interpretations of simple facts.