Life After People: Tonight (1/21) on The History Channel

Even the science and history channels feel the need to speculate and find ways to scare the crap out of us.  Well, the cable news shows do it all the time, why not the science and history channels, too?

I'm really looking forward to this one. If for no other reason than watching the fantastic graphics depicting plants taking over the world, creeping up the sides of skyscrapers and ultimately crumbling all of our mighty edifices like so many sandcastles.

Think I'm making that up; not!  It's all in the promos.

We do know that jungles have gobbled up ancient cities in Mexico, India and South America, so why not English ivy rooting out the White House, Lincoln Memorial, Wrigley Field, the Empire State Building, or Los Angeles' City Hall.

Appropriately, the two-hour epic focusing on what the Earth will look like when all the people have gone the way of the dinosaur, will follow an hour of end-days Mayan prophecies, which predicts the final days of life as we know it to occur on December 21, 2012.

For two hours last night Nostradamus said pretty much the same thing, but they could have done it in about 15 minutes, but then that wouldn't be any fun, now would it?

As we get closer to 2012 we can expect a lot of these types of programs.

I have a money-saving tip for the History Channel people.  String together all the old computer-generated footage of "life before people" when dinos ruled, and show that with new voice-overs. 

Earth's geology has changes many times over the millennia.  It's been estimated that the planet has gone from all ocean, to a single Pangaea-type continent to multiple continents that are constantly on the move at least five times.

Before a land bridge connected North and South American the Sahara was a lush tropical paradise, because there was no land mass to stop the ocean currents.

Both poles were tropical paradises, not magnificent frozen glacial wonders.  An inland sea covered the United States from the Grand Canyon almost to the west coast.

Not to worry if you miss it.  Like the planet, these shows have a way of recycling themselves, too, and we can always catch the reruns...

That is if we're still around to see them...