Predictions for 2007 and beyond...

Its the last week of 2006... At least, there were,

• no hurricanes in USA (yes, absolutely ZERO landfalls compared to the monstrous 2005).
  
• no major disasters in Asia like the giant tsunami in 2004 that killed 220,000 people.

And here are some of the cheerful predictions that i came across:

For 2007...

• "Religious broadcaster" Pat Robertson has published his predictions for 2007 that, God told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in a mass killing late in 2007 (sometime after September), though it seems that God did not particularly say that it is going to be nuclear.
  

• Some of most common people's predictions in CNN include, "US will be stuck in war and/or may retreat like from Saigon", "High gas prices as much as $100 a barrel", "Terrorist attacks on US soil"...
  

• And here are some less interesting predictions from Forbes about the US economy :-)

And Beyond...

• Arctic ice will vanish during the summer of 2040, endangering (or rather killing) ice dependant species like polar bears etc., As an early sign of the polar melting, we just saw that one of the six canadian arctic shelves had broken away from the north pole!
  

• Apophis, the kindest meteor we have known so far, will graze through earth's atmosphere at about 36000 kms (22500 miles) in 2029 and again in 2036, at about 1/10th of the distance between earth and moon, and at the same altitude range as that of the geosynchronous satellites, it is expected to be a pretty interesting rendezvous :-)
  

• We will run out of (wild caught) seafood by 2048, according to a report published in the 3rd November issue of the journal Science published by AAAS, a nonprofit science society.
  

• Last but not the least news is the (old) finding that Earth's magnetic poles are undergoing a reversal - this was found by some observations indicating a weakening magnetic field which might give rise to problems similar to the south atlantic anomaly in many places around the globe. But its okay to ignore this for now, since a complete reversal might take a 1000 or 2000 years more (did i hear thank God?!) ! Look here for a cool animation on the reversal process and if & how this might affect animals that rely on it...

Well, though all these predictions seem to portend only a grim future on earth :-), they just make me feel more determined to seize everyday of my life and enjoy it as much as I can, when I can... Still I have the whole of today to do whatever I want to, and no one can stop me from being myself... Carpe Diem!