"Earth's magnetic field is not about to reverse and..." Topic

… trigger global catastrophe

"In the early months of 2018, a news story began doing the rounds claiming the Earth's magnetic poles were "overdue" for a reversal.

The repercussions of such an event included "devastating streams of particles from the sun, galactic cosmic rays, and enhanced ultraviolet B rays from a radiation-damaged ozone layer".

Reports warned of a world in which computers, mobile phones and even flushing toilets ceased to work, and parts of the Earth became devoid of life…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Well if we get a Polar shift individuals can stop worrying about Global Warming/Climate Change.

Oh wait a minute the climate will most likely change for those still alive afterwards.

Well, it's not that the poles won't switch, it's a matter of when. The last full reversal was 780,000 years ago. The last "excursion", where poles move, trying to switch, and then snap back in place, was only 40,000 years ago. In the last 20 million years or so, these pole reversal have occurred every 200,000 to 300,000 years. In that respect, we are statistically overdue for one.

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The experts think that, despite Mithmee's usually uninformed opinion, that the changes will not be as apocalyptic or catastrophic as the more provocative headlines suggest. During the last reversal Homo Antecessor was doing quite well, they being the antecedents of Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis. At the time of the last excursion, Homo Sapiens was dominating Europe and Australia.

Of course scientists tried to see if there was any link to polar reversals and mass extinctions. From the Wiki article:

Tests of correlations between extinctions and reversals are difficult for a number of reasons. Larger animals are too scarce in the fossil record for good statistics, so paleontologists have analyzed microfossil extinctions. Even microfossil data can be unreliable if there are hiatuses in the fossil record. It can appear that the extinction occurs at the end of a polarity interval when the rest of that polarity interval was simply eroded away. Statistical analysis shows no evidence for a correlation between reversals and extinctions.

Plotnick, Roy E. (1 January 1980). "Relationship between biological extinctions and geomagnetic reversals". Geology. 8 (12): 578.

Glassmeier, Karl-Heinz; Vogt, Joachim (29 May 2010). "Magnetic Polarity Transitions and Biospheric Effects". Space Science Reviews. 155 (1–4): 387–410.

Sorry, don't have the live links.

As for what could happen during a reversal, here is a sober assessment (sorry, flush toilets still work)

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Civility always drives home a point better.

The experts think that, despite Mithmee's usually uninformed opinion, that the changes will not be as apocalyptic or catastrophic

You are only thing about if the North Pole becomes the South Pole.

I am talking about the planet shifting on it axis and some other parts of the world become the North & South poles that would be a very apocalyptic & catastrophic event.

You are only thing about if the North Pole becomes the South Pole.

Well said. I have no rebuttal for that.

I am talking about the planet shifting on it axis and some other parts of the world become the North & South poles that would be a very apocalyptic & catastrophic event.

Yes you are talking about that. You and only you. That is not happening. Read the link above. There are pictures showing how the dipole changes. (Warning, these are from computer simulations. Obviously not real science, right?)

Are you conflating the Earth's rotational axis (which wobbles around all the time) and the Earth's magnetic axis?

What is the mechanism allowing this "very apocalyptic and catastrophic event" to occur, and can you show any evidence for this? The only effects I can find are increased porosity of the ozone layer and rotating satellite and communication outages, depending on the Sun's CME's. Serious but hardly apocalyptic. It may be worse for animals that use magnetic navigation.

You do know that these reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to occur, right?

Here's a good National Geographic interview dealing with the "doomsday hype":

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NASA weighs in:

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And Space:

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And Universe Today:

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And Science20:

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And Robert Walker has a good "debunking doomsday" article on Quora:

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Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand