Nostradamus 2012: Not fit for the KYBO

I enjoy many of the shows that air on The Discovery and a History channels. Mythbusters, Doing DaVinci, and MayDay to name a few. But there have been a few specials that weren't so special. "The Crystal Skulls" and "Nostrodamus 2012" are examples of real stinkers.

(Image courtesy Astroengine.com)

The History Channel recently aired the 2012 piece and it was chock full of the kind of high quality fertilizer best left inside a KYBO (for non-scouts a KYBO is an outhouse). Nostrodamus 2012 claimed catastrophes attributed to the Hopi Indian "Blue Star", Galactic Super waves, and Galactic and Planetary Alignments. Complete hogwash.

I won't even try to debunk all of these because others have done a fine job already. I'd recommend Ian O'Neill's articles on 2012 over at Astroengine as a good place to start. One of his best "2012 Doomsday Fabrication: Abusing Science and Making Money" with its follow the money common sense should foster some critical thinking.

There are two easy ways to debunk the 2012 Planetary Alignment hoax. The idea of this hoax is that all of the planets will line up in a nice line with the Sun and with (or without) a line to the center of the galaxy and something bad will happen. The problem with this so called theory is that they don't and won't line up that way. How do I know this, two ways:

• Firstly, if all the planets line up with the Sun then Mercury and Venus will be directly between Earth and the Sun. When this happens we can see the planets pass across the face of the Sun as black dots. So if the planets align in 2012 then both Mercury and Venus should transit the Sun as seen from Earth. And while the next transit of Venus is in June 2012, the next transit of Mercury is in 2016. QED - no alignment.

• Secondly, if you're still doubting, the planets don't align. Not even close. How do I know? Simply by charting the positions of the planets and looking at the result. Below you'll see the inner and outer planets charted using the JPL Orbit Simulator. The date is December 21st, 2012. The planets aren't even close to being aligned. Again, QED - no alignment.
  

Exhibit A: The inner planets at 1, 1, 5, and 9 o'clock ...

Exhibit B: The outer planets and Pluto at 4, 1, 7, 9, and 10 o'clock ...

In case you're curious the reference to Sedna was because I needed to give the orbit simulator an object that was not a planet. So I picked the farthest one I knew of and zoomed in.

Related Articles

• Orbits: Intro to NASA's Orbit Simulator - solar system small body tour
• Greenwash, Security Theatre, and Skepticism - Critical Thinking
• Scam psychology, Whack-a-mole and the next 2012 hoax

Scam psychology, Whack-a-mole and the next 2012 hoax

The stream of nonsense predictions about the upcoming doomsday in 2012 never seems to end. It's driven by people who use fear and doubt to make money and gather attention. It's spread by normal people who can't debunk things or lack confidence in their own critical thinking. The first group are con artists and fraudsters. The second don't know any better.

I'm not talking about the relatively harmless nonsense like the "mars appearing as big as the moon emails" (see Mars as big as the Moon: it’s baaaaack) that have been making rounds since 2003. I'm talking about harmful lies and fabrications.

These scams pop up like a whack-a-mole at the amusement park. The problem is there seems to be no off switch. A number of well respected and knowledgeable people have spent time and effort to debunk this nonsense. These include the Bad Astronomer and recently Dr. Ian O'Neill at Astroengine who has written a fine set of articles debunking various 2012 scams. Please read his article "2012 Doomsday Fabrication: Abusing Science and Making Money".

I've said before that critical thinking is an important life skill (see "Greenwash, Security Theatre, and Skepticism - Critical Thinking"). One tool that can help you do this is to think about the language being used and who the person is supposed to be writing to. A hallmark of many scams is pseudo-scientific language aimed at lay people! If an author is trying to honestly communicate they will speak to their audience. While talking above your audience can be a mistake, it's not one experienced communicators make often. It's also another hallmark of a scam.

Con artists rely on people not to ask questions. Perhaps adults feel embarrassed that they might appear stupid by not knowing something. Any three year old can "why?" an adult to distraction in a few moments, yet somehow many of us loose this as we mature. If they can't explain it to you in terms you can understand, then they should be able to direct you to someone who can. If they can't do either, it's their problem and not yours! A friend of mine once described the ability to pick up on misleading pseudo-scientific and pseudo-technical language as his "BS (aka Bad Stuff) detector". Some of the current crop of bad stuff making the rounds are:

• "Barycenter Sleeves" (No such thing - see the Astroengine debunk)
• "mapped by a polynomial function of the third degree" (misleading misuse of math - see the Pseudolympics debunk at Bad Astronomy)
  

And my prediction for the next 2012 scam is the recently announced discovery of a comet-like object called 2006 SQ372 on a long 22,000 year orbit that brings it about as close as Neptune (for more see Astronomers Find a New "Minor Planet" near Neptune). This is simply too small and too far away to hurt us.

Get your hammers ready and keep asking questions!

Greenwash, Security Theatre, and Skepticism - Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is an essential life skill. It lets us make good decisions and can protect us. People don't exercise it all the time, but people who exercise it more tend to be more successful. And people who fail to exercise it can become victims of one sort or another.

So I wanted to comment on some current examples where critical thinking helps.

Greenwash

The term "Greenwash" has been around for about 20 years but has only recently made it into the mainstream. Basically, Greenwashing is about companies exaggerating and overstating their environmental contribution. An advertising con-job carried out on the public. Often where companies spend more advertising their greenness than actually contributing to the environment.

• For a history and definition see Wikipedia, here.
• For a consumer index, see the Greenwashing Index, here.

Companies marketing products have a long history of spinning the benefits of their products even when the benefits are dubious. The spin can range from the relatively harmless, such as stating what a product already does, to deception, such as deflecting attention away from a problem area. Critical thinking can help you see through this.

Update: I saw a related survey on "What should we do about bogus ‘green’ technologies?" at another Scouters blog.

Security Theatre

The term "Security Theatre isn't as mainstream yet. It refers to security measures that give people the illusion of security rather than providing real and measurable security. A lot of the security measures put in place since 9/11 fall into this category.

Examples of this include no-fly-lists. While they seem like a good idea at first glance, they break down under scrutiny. The problem with the list is that it isn't properly maintained; it is subject to false alarms - it has been used to detain babies, children, well known public figures, politicians, sky-marshalls, and inconvenience many thousands of people; there is no visible oversight of its effectiveness; known terrorist suspects have been kept off it; and there is no evidence to support that it has ever stopped an attack. I won't get into more detail on this debate, but if you're interested you can find more by one of the leading critics of Security Theatre, Bruce Schneier, who has posted many articles on his widely read blog. A few are below:

• The No-Fly List
• Five-Year-Old Boy Detained by the TSA
• Sky Marshals on the No-Fly List
• No-Fly List to Be Scrubbed (cleaned up)
• Canadian Privacy Commissioner Comments on the No-Fly List
• In Praise of Security Theater

Security Theatre and it's mindset has been a healthy target for comedy:

• The Chaser, an Australian team has made fun of this with such episodes as "Airport Security" and the "Trojan Horse". Video clips are available on You-Tube here and here.
• The TV series "Boston Legal" dedicated part of an episode to the absurdities of the no-fly list. An audio clip can be found here (mild language warning).
  

Skepticism and extraordinary claims

The world is full of doomsday prophecies and other bunk. A healthy does of skepticism is useful for dealing with extraordinary claims. There are lots of people who will waste your time seeking attention, money, and fame. All of this they take from you without providing anything of value back.

Current examples include:

• The end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 predicts the end of civilization. This is no more true than suggesting the earth would end after December 31st, 999AD or 9999AD - the calendar is just a bit stranger. See here and here.
• Planet X is coming to destroy us. Planet X was originally an astronomical reference to a presumed missing planet or unknown planet beyond Neptune. Pluto didn't fit the bill and it took over 50 years to resolve the facts. Later the name was usurped by conspiracy theorists. The predictions aren't supported by facts and the date for doomsday has been revised. See articles, here, here and a series of articles here.

Update: The crop of bunk surrounding 2012 never seems to to end. Fear mongers and misguided folks keep reviving it and scaring people with these fabrications. Dr. Ian O'Neill at Astroengine has written a fine series of articles debunking these. Have a look at 2012 Doomsday Fabrication: Abusing Science and Making Money.

Some bunk that has passed their best before dates:

• Venus Transit (in 2004) Floods
• The Grand Alignment of Planets Disasters (2000 and many previous years)
• Asteroid 2007 TU24 near miss disasters. For a description of this rock see Wikipedia. For the debunking see this and this. For a told-ya-so, see this.
• Planet X (2003).
  

So exercise your critical thinking and save your time and money. Better don't let the fear mongers profit!

Wanting to believe

People are often predisposed to believe in a cause. The problem with this is that people often suspend their critical thinking and can be taken in. They can overreact to circumstances. Or they can mis-evaluate the situation.

To demonstrate this, a group took a petition to an environmental event. The petitioners (correctly) claimed that there was a substance associated with all major sources of water pollution and sought a ban on the chemical. What was it? Check out dhmo.org for a wealth of information of dihydrogen monoxide (dHmO, aka H2O). Sadly, a large number of people just listened to the spin and signed the petition to ban water!

While there is nothing wrong with wanting to believe or belong, we still need to be careful to apply some critical thinking.