From the comments:
"these doomsday scenarios you're so fond of are dramatic but informationally empty so long as you refrain from meaningful comparisons between domains."
First, if my readers think I am "fond" of doomsday, I am clearly failing at my job. I am trying to awaken people to the myriad of ways the world might end (many of which are preventable), so that they will feel compelled to either change their behavior or become advocates for change themselves. I do not enjoy the idea of the world as we know it ending. I am quite happy with being alive.
The thing about doomsday scenarios is that you can't accurately predict them, they are dramatic, and they really are in a domain of their own. Asking me to provide detailed calculations of the kilowatts of power stored in the Earth, the current gigawatt consumption of power by humans, then forward projecting the increasing consumption of humans to a point at which they have sucked the heat out of the Earth is a weighty calculation...but not impossible. What is impossible is to determine at what point along that curve the core of the Earth destabilizes and we die in a gravitational apocalypse, or a radiation bath from the sun. It's not like life on Earth would end at the exact moment we froze the core of the Earth...it'd disappear from the face of the Earth at some impossible-to-predict point along that line. Other scenarios are equally difficult to predict.
Climate Change: Literally thousands of climatologists cannot agree on the effect humans are having on this planet, nor can they agree how the world will collapse if human-induced global climate change causes a doomsday scenario.
Solar Flare/Radiation Megadeath: Scientists basically agree that a bath of gamma radiation via a massive solar storm would wipe out life on Earth, until deep sea Archaebacteria evolved over billions of years and complex life returns to land. The problem is scientists probably won't have more than about 8 minutes to tell us we're doomed. And as I've mentioned before, solar storm experts have absolutely no idea what is going on with the sun lately, and their models to predict times of high solar activity have failed them.
Asteriod Bombardment: Scientists estimate that the human race is finished if an asteroid a mere 2 kilometers in diameter hits Earth. The asteroid will not wipe us out immediately, rather it will poison the air and cause an Ice Age that would drastically reduce the capacity of Earth to sustain life. Just for reference, Eugene Shoemaker at the USGS estimates that every year at least one asteroid hits Earth with the force of the atom bomb detonated at Hiroshima. And those asteroids are only about 50 meters across. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which struck Jupiter in 1994, broke into several fragments, some around 2 km in size. When those large fragments struck Jupiter, temperatures of 24,000 K were observed, as well as a dust plume that measured 3,700 km across, about the same as the radius of Earth. Scientists readily admit they have little or no idea where most of the asteroids in solar orbit are, or how much warning they'd have if one was headed our way.
Magnetic Pole Swap: Did you know every 750,000 years or so the magnetic poles swap? Did you know we are 30,000 years overdue for such a swap? Did you know that during a pole swap, the magnetosphere disappears, and the Earth's surface gets bathed in so much UV radiation that almost all surface life will die? Scientists studying this late-arrived pole swap suggest it is coming; the movement of the poles (apparently they move?) is accelerating.
Supervolcano: When the Yellowstone Caldera explodes, Ice Age! No one is sure when this will happen, but the rate of swelling of the caldera is accelerating.
This is all a dream: Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi wrote in the 4th century BC that he had a vivid dream he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself "Am I awakening from a dream I was a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly dreaming I am Zhuangzi?" Though impossible to know, we all could just be part of someone or something's dream, and when they wake up, we cease to exist.
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