Why do scientists believe the human race could become extinct during this century?
Some scientists (John Leslie, Martin Rees, Richard Posner, Nick Bostrom) have said that the human race has a 50% chance of becoming extinct during this century.
I haven’t read enough to understand this argument.
Is the environment the main reason or are there other possible reasons?
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Because the next Twlight film will cause a cataclysmic onslaught of raging teenage hormones.
Getting smacked with a meteor would probably do the trick. : )
Perhaps because humans are ruining the planet via pollution, deforestation, and eco-fucking.
@jfos Indeed, eco-fucking.
Still, even with all of this eco-fucking going on, the complete extinction of the human race during this century seems like a very pessimistic view to me.
Barring some cataclysmic event, whether manmade or natural, it isn’t going to happen. Scientists who make such sweeping claims are fear-mongerers who have been paid by specific interested parties to further a specific agenda. These pseudo-scientists have been paid handsomely to spin their “findings” toward a particular end, willing to disgrace and abandon an otherwise rigorous and long-respected community of their peers. This is nothing but pure, unadultereated rhetoric. Ask yourself who would have the most to gain with these outlandish claims, and you’ll have a crystal clear picture of how these “reports” came to be (and more importantly, WHY).
50 percent sounds highly unlikey—could you provide any sources for this theory?
This sounds unlikely. And the wording of the initial question is worse. I don’t think scientists in generally think any such thing.
Because they wouldn’t get their grant money if they said the truth and told everyone that it won’t be for a few hundred years or that they really don’t know after spending so much money. Its more likely their lives would be disrupted in the next 100 years if they don’t get their money. The planet has had extreme changes all by its self over millions of years before or help. Its a living evolving thing. Not much we could do to change things except not make it worse but we won’t be able to change a thing. Just slow down are part in its destruction. So why worry about what we cannot change.
OK, I’m trying to look this up. who are these people? Bostrom is a philosopher, not a scientist. Rees is an astrophysicist, which gives no insight into the survivability of the planet for humans. He also has a burr in his butt about living in space. Posner wrote a book, but I still can’t figure out who he is. And a search for John Leslie turns up a porn star and a TV presenter, but not a scientist.
More details please?
Hey Phillis, great minds think alike. :)
I pretty much think its all about the money as well.
I’m not seeing these great weather changes either.
One minute we are headed in an ice age. Then things warmed up and its global warming, Then the ice caps are melting and then they predict another ice age. Then the planet is tilting and slightly getting out of orbit, then the moon is getting closer and then farther. When is it going to end? Not the planet , but the stupid guessing.
Because, SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!
OK, found Posner, also not a scientist. A judge with degrees in English and of course Law.
Which scientists would that be?
Because they’re building SKYNET.
@snarp i looked these guys up as well and found the same things. next question.
@pandora: I know!! Oh, and odn’t forget about El Nino, El Nina and other recurring planetary patterns. I guess those are our fault, too, instead of naturally occuring phenomena. Maybe somebody dumped too much hot grease down the kitchen sink.
El Nino, El Nina
I had them both for breakfast.
Bring it on!
@phillis, @Pandora – For the record, this question doesn’t refer to any legitimate climate scientists. Climate scientists do not believe the human race is headed to extinction. And their grants are not driven by creating some false sense of immediacy, nor have they done so. Science funding just doesn’t work that way.
And let me also say that the assumption that scientists who have spent decades studying climatology don’t know about El Nino, La Nina, and other cyclical patterns or solar activity, is ludicrous. I studied these things in Geography 101, and my professor who was a climate scientist is better versed in those things (and many other topics) than any of the climate change deniers. He’s also one of the smartest, most academically rigorous people I know. Probably number 1 or number 2.
@ChazMaz Reminded me of…
“I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!”
“You eat shit for breakfast?”
“No!”
I agree, Snarp. The title pseudo-scientists is befitting a person who touts this kind of information. They might have gotten a degree, but the private and corporate sector has the one thing that years of reserch do not offer. Know what I’m $aying?
@snarp. I feel that much of science is an educated guess. Not all of it. But if you sit quietly and wait and listen, you will get another scienctist who will debunk everything or parts of what another science said because of some so called new discovery or a new invention that shows the old one was flawed.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a healthy respect for science in general. I just don’t trust that many who are in the field are really as smart as they think they are. They may be smarter than I but won’t put all my money into a home on the tropics because it may be the only place to survive climate changes.
Everyone is going to watch too much reality TV, and will forget to eat, drink, and do other bodily functions. Mass death will result. :-)
1) Believe that your favourite source of info-tainment is where science comes from.
2) Vaguely remember some ridiculous factoid that you think sounded sciencey.
3) Convince yourself that scientists believe just what you think they do.
4) Parrot the Mcfactoid while pointing out how dumb they must be to believe such silly things.
5) Voila, you’ll feel smarter than those silly scientists, and you didn’t even have to open a book!
@phillis
Incredibly large bribes that make scientists betray their profession and parrot what they are told to say?
For what it’s worth, I’m a scientist, and I don’t think we are going to be extinct any time soon (certainly not in the next century).
Well gee, ragingloli (nice name, by the way), you can spin insinuations any way you like. If you want to assume I mean a large percentage of them, that’s fine by me :)
Also, @ragingloli, where are these really large bribes, because I’d like the opportunity to take them turn them down.
I don’t even know what anybody’s been talking about since my last comment.
Well, what I wanted to insinuate is that I trust public researchers and scientists much more than those working for a private corporation because the latter are under a greater pressure to have their results conform to the ideology and stance of the corporation they work for.
@ragingloli: However, the public scientists are probably under huge pressure to get grant funding from the government or non-profit foundations. I know I was, when I was still doing research.
That’s much better! I admire directness without the bite. It’s fine that you trust them. Truthfully, most of them work very hard for years on end, which displays more patience than many people I’ve known. The very minor few I was refering to are indeed the ones hired by corporate interests. It appears to me that we are saying the same thing, which is very cool! We merely approached it from different angles.
Thanks, Critter! All three of those were very enlightening. I am sure that, contrary to the final words in Vid 3, most scientists do not agree that volcanic output does not affect global warming. If they had three days post 9–11 to study earths temps minus the contrails, then they’re going to be orgasmic when the next super volcano erupts. Vid 1: I would say I’m in support of this theory, but with the current hype greedily consumed by a panicking populus, I have some built-in leeway to park my common sense (no-carbon emitting ideas, dontchaknow. Let’s see them tax that). I promise not to distort the facts Al Gore style, though. Sheeple have a hard time absorbing anything going against the grain of the PC Cafe crowd. Sugar?
What he said is completely accurate with regards to volcanic eruptions. The net effect from volcanoes over this century has not been one of warming, but one of net cooling. In terms of GHG emissions, the emissions from volcanoes represent approximately 1% of total anthropogenic contributions. Not to mention the compensatory cooling caused by the aerosols volcanic eruptions emit into the upper atmosphere.
The issue is not whether volcanoes can alter the climate (of course they can and have as any paleoclimatic record reveals), the question he was addressing was whether volcanic eruptions are a significant cause of the net increase in ghg concentrations in the atmosphere over the last 50 years (relative to cooling from aerosols), and similarly a significant contributor to the net global warming occurring over the last 50 years. In short there is no evidence that volcanic eruptions can account for recent climate change. They simply cannot. In fact they are offsetting some of the heating that would have likely occurred in their absence.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm
Download the full report, check figure 2.5 and read the caption. The blue band represents volcanoes and solar irradiance.
Also examine the figure and text on page 39.
http://www-personal.buseco.monash.edu.au/~BParris/BPClimateChangeQ&As.html
see figure 1.
The populace which is “panicking” is not the problem, they get it far better than the populace which is apathetic.
It is the mis-led and ignorant masses, along with the culpable media who are the problem. Because it is the media’s failure to educate the general populace (rather than stoke a controversy…much more exciting than an ever increasing weight of consistent scientific evidence point the finger at anthropogenic causes), and the general populace’s inability to understand how the scientific process works, let alone inability to separate legitimate sources of evidence from easily digestible fallacious sound bites…it is all of this plus more which is creating obstacles in democratic societies for governments to make the large rapid cuts in annual greenhouse gas emissions necessary to have a reasonable chance of avoiding more than 2 degrees C warming.
If I understand you correctly, I think you’re confusing who the “sheep” are?
That carbon taxing is going to add up to a multi-trillion dollar windfall in the shortes amount of time ever in the history of the world, and put a grand total of 120-odd people in control of the whole world, kind of makes me not trust a g-ddamn bit of it. It’s a real dampener. In terms of sheeple, I think a few of us bed pretty much alone because we DON’T see the saving of the world, but the fleecing of it. Sheeple don’t like fleecing.
Pardon my bleeting, but emminent domain (to put it mildly) is going to take over like carbon emissions never could. Case in point, Al (my monthly carbon footprint beats your annual footprint any old day) Gore, who happens to be a member of this illustrious group of dignitaries, doesn’t seem too worried about it, and he’s the MC of this party. If he doens’t care, why should I?
Over 80% of the world’s energy is provided by carbon intense sources. If you think this places a disproportionate amount of power into the hands of those who advocate shifting away from the carbon economy, we live on different planets.
I simply have no interest in entertaining irrational conspiracy theories.
All the best
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