Information is Beautiful - 2012: the End of the World?

Whereas their own society was brought down by sociological/biological causes, which we have no reason to expect they would be particularly adept at dealing with.

Not that I believe a word of the 2012 nonsense. But logically your critique doesn't hold much weight for me, despite sounding truthy.

Peak Oil would be the end of the world in the same way that the cod crisis destroyed Canada. Pollution has been around for centuries and hasn't offed us yet. The threat of nuclear war is pretty much the only thing that stops real wars from happening between great powers. An out-of-control climate isn't something you talk about in the present tense, and won't be seen for twenty or thirty years if it happens at all. Tsunamis have been around as long as the oceans. Nuclear fallout at a civilization-threatening scale could only result from a nuclear war, which I just dealt with. Disease has been around for billions of years and medicine is getting better, not worse, at keeping people alive until they're in their mid-eighties or so. Rising sea levels will mostly inconvenience third-world island nations, if they become a problem at all.

My prediction is that 2012 will be a hilarious year, because so many people will be so worked up about it.