"For the coming few decades, Randers predicts, life on Earth will carry on more or less as before. Wealthy economies will continue to grow, albeit more slowly as investment will need to be diverted to deal with resource constraints and environmental problems, which thereby will leave less capital for creating goods for consumption. Food production will improve: increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause plants to grow faster, and warming will open up new areas such as Siberia to cultivation. Population will increase, albeit slowly, to a maximum of about eight billion near 2040. Eventually, however, floods and desertification will start reducing farmland and therefore the availability of grain. [...]

Now that mad cow disease is back, should you be worried? They say no here, but I'm a big believer in the idea that if something bad could happen it almost definitely will happen, so, yeah, go ahead and panic. Let's not pretend like there aren't tons of wacky cattle pieces in the system already. In fact, if you've consumed red meat in the last, oh, twenty years or so, it is fairly certain that BSE WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN. So there's really nothing to be done about it at this point. Might as well go have that burger.

Photo by Peter Asprey, via Shutterstock

"DRINKING just one sugary soft drink a day may raise your risk of a heart attack by 20 per cent."

"The Earth is currently being battered by a storm of charged particles from the Sun, which could disrupt power grids, satellite navigation and plane routes. The storm – the largest in five years – will bombard the Earth's magnetic field throughout Thursday. It was triggered by a pair of solar flares – the largest of their kind – earlier this week…. The effects will be most intense in polar regions, and aircraft may be advised to change their routings to avoid these areas."

Up next: untreatable E. coli.

Busy week. Asteroid 2012 BX34 will safely pass Earth on Jan. 27. Distance: 36,750 miles (59,044 km) or about .17 lunar distance.

— Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) January 26, 2012

Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small, ~11 meters/37 ft diameter. It wouldn't get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try.

— Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) January 26, 2012

That's right, asteroid, we dare you. Eeesh.

Are these the top risks of 2012? Sure, why the hell not.

"People diagnosed in January with 'totally drug-resistant TB' (TDR TB) have been independently retested at the National Tuberculosis Institute in Bangalore. The tests confirm that the bacteria resist all first and second-line drugs used to treat TB…" Even better: "Three of the first 12 patients have died, six are being treated and three have gone missing."

"A new source of methane – a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide – has been identified by scientists flying over areas in the Arctic where the sea ice has melted. The researchers found significant amounts of methane being released from the ocean into the atmosphere through cracks in the melting sea ice. They said the quantities could be large enough to affect the global climate."

"Eating red meat is associated with a sharply increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease, according to a new study, and the more of it you eat, the greater the risk…. each daily increase of three ounces of red meat was associated with a 12 percent greater risk of dying over all, including a 16 percent greater risk of cardiovascular death and a 10 percent greater risk of cancer death. The increased risks linked to processed meat, like bacon, were even greater: 20 percent over all, 21 percent for cardiovascular disease and 16 percent for cancer."

"A doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., calls it the 'sitting disease,' likening the ill effects of inactivity that doctors are still discovering to the discovery of the side effects of smoking." —Okay, everybody up, right now. Let's all take a brief stroll, for our health. I myself am going to run downstairs and have a cigarette, but, really, anything is better for you than sitting, which will kill you dead. DEAD. Also, have you ever tried working at a standing desk? Doesn't it make you feel super-pretentious? Like, who am I, Arturo Toscanini? It just doesn't do it for me.

Photo by Gemenacom, [...]

"If a nuclear weapon was used in, say, New York City, and three, four or five hundred thousand people were killed, the American people would put overwhelming pressure on their government to make sure this couldn't happen again. As a result, we would risk losing all our civil liberties. The Bill of Rights, the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech — all of that would probably quickly disappear as people insisted on a police-state kind of security." —And that's the most upbeat part of this article.

“Although it’s becoming fashionable to talk about these solar storms, there is no need for sensationalism.” —Physicist José Carlos del Toro says we shouldn't be too concerned about solar activity disrupting our technology and turning life as we know it into a dark and terrible pit of despair in which all the hallmarks of modern society are eradicated as we devolve to our most primal and barbaric instincts, raping and robbing and killing in an orgy of destruction followed by our total extinction as a species. So lighten up.

Image by April Cat, via Shutterstock

You're not just going to be bored to death this holiday season: "[The] post-meal recovery period is being studied by scientists who are increasingly finding that what happens in the body after eating a big meal doesn't just bring on sleepiness, commonly known as food coma. It can also increase the risk of later health problems."

"Critics have argued that there may still be indirect sources of cow protein in feed (cow protein is fed to chickens, and poultry leftovers go back into cow feed), so more stringent regulations are needed. While those critiques are valid, this case of BSE at least reveals the testing system in the US is not entirely broken." —Oh thank God.

"Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good. It's a guilty pleasure. You're out enjoying this nice March weather, but you know it's not a good thing." —National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Jerry Meehl discusses the unseasonable weather we have been experiencing recently. To wit: "Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records." The good news is that at least we get to ride out our few [...]