MP1 said:
I believe these signal polar shift being underway. If that is true, could anyone please tell me if the shift is actually a dead-end or is there something being done to ensure that the flora and fauna is impacted less?
I read up a bit and found that the the so-called end of Earth is predicted to be in 2012. Is this anything that one really needs to be worried/terrified about? And is anything being done about this as a concern for the Earth in general?
As the previous poster has noted, the 2012 End Of The Mayan "Long Count" Calendar nonsense is exactly that: Nonsense. It's the exact equivalent of those who were irrational enough to have believe that The World Will End with the Year 2000 (or 1900, 0r 1800, or 1700, or 1000, &c., &c.), simple because the digits rolled over. The Universe does not give a frozen fig about when the Mayan Calendar, Gregorian Calendar, Hindu Calendar, or any other arbitrary human method of keeping dates happens to complete some cycle.
Regarding geomagnetic pole reversals, they are expected to be mostly harmless. First of all, even if the Earth's magnetic field were to disappear entirely, the Earth's atmosphere is more than thick enough to screen out the overwhelming majority of cosmic and solar radiation. [The Earth's atmosphere has about the same stopping-power as nearly a meter of lead shielding, because a pressure of 1 atmosphere implies that there is a column-mass of about 1033 grams of air above every square centimeter of the Earth's surface, while the density of lead is 11.34 gm/cm^3, and to a first approximation, radiation shielding power depends primarily on the integrated amount of mass between the target and the radiation source. So the shielding power of the Earth's atmosphere is roughly equivalent to about 91 cm of lead.]
Second, both the paleomagnetic data and the results of computational simulations indicate that the Earth's magnetic field does
not vanish completely during a geomagnetic reversal. The data indicate that the dipole component basically just "tips over" from "North" to "South" orientation over a period on the order of ~1000--5000 years, and that its magnitude never falls below roughly 10% of its "nominal" value during the reversal process --- and a 10% nominal geomagnetic dipole moment is still strong enough to deflect the overwhelming majority of incoming cosmic radiation and solar wind plasma.
Third, http://www.psc.edu/science/glatzmaier.html" that during a geomagnetic reversal, the magnetic quadrupole moment begins to grow as the dipole component weakens, reaching a maximum at about the same epoch that the dipole component reaches its minimum as it "tips over." So at no point during the reversal does the geomagnetic field completely vanish; it just becomes temporarily more complicated.
Finally, please note that the Earth's geomagnetic field has reversed hundreds of times during its history --- yet these events show no statistically significant correlation with "mass extinctions."
So at no time during a geomagnetic reversal does the Earth's magnetic field ever drop to "zero," but rather, it remains strong enough to shield the Earth at all times --- and even if it
did drop to zero, the Earth's atmosphere would still provide sufficient shielding to protect its biosphere.
Migratory species that use the Earth's magnetic fields for navigation may get a bit confused while the Earth temporarily has an "East" pole and a "West" magnetic pole (plus perhaps a few "extra" poles) instead of just a "North" and "South" magnetic pole --- but since most such species use multiple external clues to navigate by, it's unlikely that any of them will go extinct during the evolutionarily short timescale of a geomagnetic reversal. (For example, many species of birds use magnetic fields to navigate, yet birds have not gone extinct despite hundreds of geomagnetic reversals since they evolved --- and experiment shows that they can still navigate even if one glues magnets to their heads.)
