TikTok clips revive debunked climate disaster theory

"The Adam and Eve story, the theory of that is that it happens in cycles of 6,500 years and that it's a 90-degree flip. But six days later or on the seventh day, it corrects itself and the planet flips," says Jimmy Corsetti in a January 18, 2023 episode of the "Joe Rogan Experience," the most popular podcast on Spotify and a frequent source of misinformation.

"The theory is that when that event happens it's going to be cataclysmic."

Clips of Corsetti, who runs a YouTube channel about ancient mysteries and conspiracy theories, have since gained millions of interactions on TikTok and YouTube.

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Screenshot of an April 18, 2023 TikTok post

The theory in the posts is based on a book published in the 1960s called "The Adam and Eve Story -- the History of Cataclysms."

Chan Thomas, an engineer and self-proclaimed polymath, described how earthquakes, tsunamis and supersonic winds destroy civilizations when the poles switch places, thrusting the Arctic and Antarctic into the tropics. He detailed past pole reversals through a reinterpretation of the book of Genesis, pre-biblical legends and geological phenomena.

In another video published March 2, TikTok influencer Darris Watkins cited the book, calling it "a CIA document" and linking it to global warming.

"The Sahara Desert used to be green and Antarctica used to have forests," he says in the clip, viewed more than 19 million times. "So now like some places turn cold, some places turn hot."

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Screenshot of a March 2, 2023 TikTok post

Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, said in May 2023 that posts promoting the Adam and Eve theory are part of a new trend in which skeptics promote "cataclysm narratives as climate sedatives."

Geoscientists say that although Earth's magnetic poles can reverse, no such switch is imminent. And when it does happen, it does not cause a cataclysm or climate change.

"There's no evidence that Earth's climate has been significantly impacted by the last three magnetic field excursions, nor by any excursion event within at least the last 2.8 million years," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says on its website (archived here).

Corsetti later told The Verge that the TikTok posts took his remarks out of context and that the Adam and Eve theory is "certainly not considered accepted science."

'No documented catastrophes'

NASA has refuted claims that a pole shift is imminent and likely to cause the apocalypse, although it could make compasses point the other way and disorient birds and fish that use the magnetic field to navigate.

Earth's magnetic field is "in continual flux, its strength waxing and waning over time," NASA says on its website. The ongoing shift affects navigation but there is "little scientific evidence of any significant links between Earth's drifting magnetic poles and climate."

Changes in Earth's magnetic field -- generated by the planet's molten iron core -- apply only to its magnetic poles, not the geographical North and South poles. The former flip locations "every 300,000 years or so," according to NASA -- a process that usually takes place over "hundreds to thousands of years."

Paleomagnetic records, traces of metal magnetization in the ground, indicate the poles have fully reversed 183 times in the past 83 million years -- and several hundred times in the past 160 million years.

The last full flip was about 786,000 years ago, according to a 2014 study (archived here). The reversal may have taken less than a century but was preceded by "a period of instability that spanned more than 6,000 years," according to a University of California-Berkeley article about the research (archived here).

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Photo taken by astronaut Nick Hague from the International Space Station, obtained from NASA on October 2, 2019 ( NASA / Nick HAGUE)

"There are no documented catastrophes associated with past reversals, despite much searching in the geologic and biologic record," the October 2014 article says, noting that a pole shift could disrupt the electrical grid.

NASA also says fossil records show no evidence of major changes such as extinctions or floods due to magnetic pole reversals.

The poles flipped about 41,500 years ago, only to change again 500 years later. However, ice cores from that period "don't show any major changes," NASA says on its website.

'Routine declassification'

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2013 released 57 pages of a 1965 edition of Chan Thomas's book (archived here and here), fueling theories that authorities had banned it.

Among numerous TikTok videos mentioning the theory, including some in French, several refer to it as a supposed "CIA document."

"Before releasing the book the Adam and Eve story they redacted much of the entire story!" says one TikTok post. "Why might the CIA feel a book should not reach the general public?"

But the book had already been reprinted in 1993 -- a decade before the CIA release.

In that volume, Thomas claimed Jesus was a scholar who lived for years in India and that aliens came "in a space vehicle" to take him away after his crucifixion. The author also offered advice on how to survive a cataclysm.

A CIA spokesperson told AFP on June 12, 2023 that excerpts from the 1965 edition were "among a set of permanent records that were reviewed and released through CIA's routine declassification process."

The spokesperson declined to comment on why the copy of Thomas's book may have been classified. The 2013 release contained other documents unrelated to "The Adam and Eve Story," including a March 1966 Time magazine article and a "transmittal slip" listing equipment such as saws and drill bits.

Read AFP's other climate-related fact checks here.