Lawrence E. Joseph’s “Apocalypse 2012” and the Mayan calendar

Having just read Lawrence E. Joseph’s “Apocalypse 2012” and several web-sites about the Mayan calendar, I thought I’d make some comment.
The idea that a semi-sentient “Gaia” Earth can not only protect itself, but affect sun spots, is fascinating, but about as rigorous as talk of an “energy belt” or “interstellar energy cloud” (a more highly energized region of space) – a little too much Star Trek maybe? Asteroids or even something larger crashing into Earth? Possible, sure, but we do watch the skies, including things far, far away, which certainly can’t get here anything like as quickly as light from them does. Civilization might perish from an asteroid, but most likely wouldn’t necessarily, should people but try to be prepared. Cycles of destruction? Well, there are lots of cycles, and we should try to learn more about them, certainly. The idea that astronomers, geophysicists, volcanologists, climatologists, glaciologists and scientists of solar physics, whatever they might be called, should meet to compare data and endeavor to protect our future, is fascinating – and about as unlikely to occur as it’s believable that information is not being withheld from us (by governments, businesses, even academia).
The Harmonic Convergence (1988? I forget…) wasn’t even as exciting as the turn of the “new millennium”… we don’t understand gravity, or magnetism really, or even what energy, as opposed to matter, is. That human-kind may enter into some new kind of awareness I certainly like to believe, much as I believe Scythians thought very differently than Romans (or Shoshone than Puritan pilgrims). Storms and earthquakes are bad, but aren’t apocalyptic, and the crack in the Sahel (13 feet wide!) portends little for most people now alive. Magnetic fields and cracks in them? I don’t know, but cracks in magnetic fields sounds a bit like tiny dimensions (cracked). The earth’s crust shifting over its core, magnetic and polar shifts, the Earth tilting over? Sure, but how rapidly? Maybe we could avoid calamity by mining less, using less, being more loving, caring and respectful, but even Biblical tales of God’s terror don’t show violent punishment, or the threat of it, making for better people.
Why did Lawrence Joseph leave out ozone holes and other atmospheric changes endangering us, bee and amphibian death, threats to the food chain (Monsanto!), and declining birth rates among the educated and prosperous? Yes, a Yellowstone volcano sounds very dangerous, and may well be, and humanity may be like a fungus in need of eradication, but the main thing I learned from the book is that it simply isn’t true that more people are alive now than have died so far (by extrapolating from a population figure mentioned). Noosphere? OK, but what about the collective unconscious? And why did Mayan super-predictors, knowing the Spaniards were coming, fail so utterly to protect the culture that enabled them to become so accurately predictive?
Anyway, change is underway – it always is, and death is our future. Live with it.