From NASA: 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice. Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.
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Crazy Weather

Tornado that hit Lincoln City rare, but did serious damage
The tornado that touched down in Lincoln City late last week left behind a path of destruction that may have been only 150 yards long and 80 yards wide. But the National Weather Service said it "ended up doing considerable damage."
Only one October was colder….
…than this one since records for Wichita began being kept in 1888, according to the National Weather Service.
As El Niño grows stronger, so does hope for wet winter
Conditions are developing that could provide wet weather patterns to California this winter, according to weather experts.

50,000 dead starfish found on Irish beach

Extreme weather conditions have killed tens of thousands of starfish and left them strewn across a sheltered beach.
A carpet of pink and mauve echinoderms, a family of marine animals, appeared yesterday morning on Lissadell Beach in north Co Sligo. The adult starfish, measuring between 7cm and 20cm in diameter and estimated to be up to 50,000 in number, stretched along 150 metres of the strand.
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Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Its 'Mother' dead, doomsday sect's future in doubt
By MATTHEW BROWN (AP) – 9 hours ago
BOZEMAN, Mont. — Members of a Montana-based sect whose influence expanded as it prepared for a nuclear holocaust that never came, now search for new directions after the death of Elizabeth Clare Prophet — "Mother" to her thousands of followers. The Church Universal and Triumphant still keeps its 750-person underground shelters stocked with food — "insurance," its leaders say, against possible dark days ahead. Yet with Prophet gone, it's uncertain the spiritual movement she embodied will prove as lasting as all the concrete and steel hidden beneath a Montana mountainside north of Yellowstone National Park.
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Happy Birthday, Mom!

"Mom, on your 67th birthday, I want to tell you: You didn’t fail me. You taught me a lot. The most important thing you ever taught me was the object lesson of what happened in your community. Learning this was worth all the anguish and all the lost years."

By BlackSun / April 8th, 2006 / Elizabeth Clare Prophet

It was a pleasant afternoon at the Royal Teton Ranch. My mom, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and I were walking outside of her house at the Ranch Headquarters in Corwin Springs, Montana. It was on one of several trips I made to the Paradise Valley in 1997 and 1998. Having left the CUT community at the end of 1993, I went back on a number of occasions to visit family and friends, and for two weddings (one of my sister Erin to John Devine, and the other of my stepfather Edward Francis to his beloved Eileen).
I had made a special trip down to the Ranch to see my mom. I was worried about her. Her mental capacity had been diminishing for some time–she was starting to exhibit the classic loss of inhibitions characteristic of Alzheimer’s patients. Following her divorce from Edward, her fourth husband, she had begun to carry on a series of highly indiscreet emotional and physical affairs with male followers and hangers-on. She had also been actively performing “karmic readings” in which many church members were publicly humiliated. She carried on brazenly at the end, her sense of spiritual infallibility persisting far past her decline of inhibitions.

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Meteor explodes over Indonesia

Just when you think it’s safe to live on Earth, along comes a reminder that there are things whizzing around the solar system that can sneak up on us. On October 8 a rather large asteroid exploded high above Sulawesi, Indonesia. According to a press release from NASA's Near Earth Object Program, the blast released energy equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT (that’s 110 million pounds). The blast trail was recorded and is posted on You Tube (where else?). Estimates of the meteor’s size range from 5 to 10 meters. Had it survived to hit the ground, it could have done considerable damage to the area around its impact, but wouldn’t have posed a global threat.
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Cosmic pattern to UK tree growth

The growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space.

By Matt Walker Editor, Earth News
Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century. As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.
The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist.
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Mt. Kilimanjaro Ice Cap Continues Rapid Retreat

The ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has continued to retreat rapidly, declining 26 percent since 2000, scientists say in a new report.
Yet the authors of the study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity’s role in warming the global climate.
Eighty-five percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, the scientists said.
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