ALWAYS TAKE SIMON'S SIDE OF THE WAGER:

Was the world really going to reach its tipping point at the end of 2016? The world will come to an end some time: in a little more than five billion years when the sun expands to become a red giant. Predictions of a more immediate demise of human civilisation due to climate change seem a little more urgent.

Volcanologist Bill McGuire, of the UK government's Natural Hazard Working Group, gave us seven years to save the planet, and that was back in 2008, so we have until... well, now. In October 2006, Gaby Hinsliff in the Observer, reporting on Sir Nicholas Stern's 2006 report on climate change, said 'we have 10 years to save the planet' -- that 10 years is up. In the Guardian in 2008, George Monbiot said these claims that we have until 2016 to save the planet were too optimistic: 'Reviewing the new evidence, I have to admit that we might have left it too late.'

If these doom-laden conclusions were true, was the Guardian not sitting on the story of the century, or of the millennia? They had the story that human civilisation is basically over and didn't thoroughly report it? That seems strange. On the other hand, what about the story that the world has not come to an end? That 2016 did not see the end of life as we know it? Is there not a responsibility to report that? The Guardian ran with the 100 months countdown -- surely it is obliged to say something now that those 100 months are up?

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