eChipmunks

Can humanity make it through this Century?

I read this =] I sorta like it, But do you belive we will make it through the 21st Century :O! That’s right, Sir Martin Rees, Great Britain's Astronomer Royal and respected professor of astrophysics at Cambridge University claims in his book 'Our Final Century' that humans have only a 50-50 shot of making it through the 21st century. In some of his proposed scenarios not everyone dies, but either way the odds don’t sound that good. Also, I’d like to personally apologize to Stephen Hawking for criticizing his idea that we need to get off the planet ASAP in an earlier post. Sorry professor! I’m converted. Let’s get out of here. Rees explains why stargazers like he and Hawking have the “big picture” when it comes to life on Earth. “Astronomers have a special perspective to see ourselves as just a part of a process that is just beginning rather than having achieved its end," he says. "And perhaps this gives an extra motive to be concerned about what happens here on Earth in this century." At the risk of sounding like Debbie Downer—here’s a sampling of the top 10 proposed scenarios of how we’re all going to die by this time next century. 1) Death by Comet Pound for pound, comets are much more dangerous than asteroids, which have nonetheless gotten more media attention. Comets travel a lot faster through space than Asteroids, which travel at about 25-30 km per second. The speed of a comet approaches a much faster 70 km per second. The kinetic energy of an incoming object from space follows the equation: Kinetic Energy = 1/2 the mass of the object x (velocity) ^ 2. A relatively small object of just one and a half km in diameter hitting the Earth would release more energy than all the atomic bombs ever detonated and then some. An object of 20 km or more would likely cause mass extinction. But hey, at least we’d go out with a bang. 2) Self-Replicating Nanobots Another risk is nanobots turning the world in to grey sludge. Self-replicating, nanometer-size robots could theoretically get out of control and chew through organic matter and turn the into a lifeless "gray goo," a term coined by nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler. Drexler describes grey goo in Chapter 11 Engines Of Destruction: "...early assembler-based replicators could beat the most advanced modern organisms. 'Plants' with 'leaves' no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the with an inedible foliage. Tough, omnivorous 'bacteria' could out-compete real bacteria: they could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we made no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies." 3) Germ Warfare (or Germ “Accident”) Innovation is changing things fast and furiously. Scientists are now creating synthetic life that will allow the possibility of creating biological weapons. Weaponized germs are a real risk. Rees has morbidly placed a bet for $1,000 that a biological incident will claim one million lives by 2020. Most terrifying is that this already almost happened a couple years ago in Canberra. Scientists at the Pest Animal Control Co-operative Research Centre were fiddling with the mousepox virus when they inadvertently created a strain that killed mice, including those that had been vaccinated. Rees asks if scientists could do the same thing with smallpox. The answer is “yes” and nothing stands between humanity and such a disaster other than "a sense of responsibility among individual biologists". 4) Global Warming There’s still plenty of argument on whether global warming is man-made, a natural solar phenomenon, or just something Al Gore came up with in his free time. But if it does turn out to be as bad as some experts claim, the worldwide temperature may rise as much as 2 degrees Celsius, basically hotter than anything in the last one and a half million years. That would lead to famine on a scale never before seen, mass migration, and fighting over the scant resources still available. It probably wouldn't completely wipe man off of the Earth, but the conditions would make you wonder who got the better end of the stick—the dead or the survivors. But at least it would absolve the next concern… 5) Overpopulation This could be the biggest threat to continued life on the planet, because as more people need to be fed, it puts even greater pressure on our rapidly shrinking resources. The growth is now exponentially frightening. Some experts say that with wise resource management our Earth could comfortably host everyone, but when have humans ever been good at resource management? Many of our present global problems can be linked to population growth and wasteful resource management. By 2050, the population of Earth will reach 9 billion humans. That's two and a half billion more people competing for limited

Public Comments

1. Is this all you enviromentalists think about?! the world ending due to us evil humans existing? Well why don't you all kill yourself. That will help you enviromentalist liberal's over-population problem.
2. I'll let you know in 2101!
3. Humanity will likely make it through this century and the next and the one after that but their demise will arrive sometime in the one after that.
4. Sir Martin Rees becomes easily unbearable, when not talking about astronomy. His conclusions in his book "Our Final Hour" are dubious at best and have nothing to do with science. They are actually very anti-science as they often implicitly propagate a "back in time".
5. when i look at the asinine questions asked around here by our supposed future leaders, i break out in a cold sweat.