Will the human race ever become extinct, and if so when/why?

I don’t think we will ever be extinct. Unless a predator comes that can destroy us. Possibly aliens.

When:
Within the next 1,000 years.

Why:
I am being optimistic.

The human race is bleeding out.

@willbrawn I forgot about the alien invader scenario! Thanks!

Yes, it’s a near certainty. But not for any of the reasons you mention.

We can certainly survive anything that we do to the planet or to each other. What is much less certain is how we can react to save ourselves if when the planet is next hit by a planet-killing asteroid, of the size that has caused numerous mass extinctions in the planet’s past.

The cyclical nature of life makes this a racing certainty. Whether it be at our own hands or nature selecting mankind for extinction remains to be seen.

It’s just my opinion that our extinction(of course we can’t survive forever) is so far off in the future that it doesn’t even matter right now. Even though it seems at times that we will kill ourselves off, I think if such a situation happened, we humans, knowing we must survive, would prevent such an event before it happened be cause we simply want to live.

@CyanoticWasp Ah yes the meteor/asteroid impact and massive volcano eruption dust cloud we all slowly starve and freeze to death horrible way to end it all extinction!

“we humans, knowing we must survive, would prevent such an event before it happened”

Too late.

Sure. We’ve been on this planet an extremely short time in cosmic terms, and have already done more damage than all the other billions of species ever did over a much, much longer period of time. We will be gone and forgotten in a blink of an eye, measured by the standards of deep time. It won’t require an exogenous catastrophe. We are the catastrophe.

I believe we will do it to ourselves. Next world war will be the end of us all, thats why im moving to Mars.

@Blackberry
we humans, knowing we must survive, would prevent such an event before it happened be cause we simply want to live.

I don’t think so. Humans as a collective and as individuals largely lack long term foresight.
For example, we know what damage an asteroid impact will cause and we know that statistically, the next killer rock is overdue and yet any research into and development of defence systems is virtually non existant. Or take the recent failed climate change conference in Copenhagen.
We will only recognise our end when it is already inevitable and then humanity will run around in panic like ants, lamenting “How could we not see that coming, why did we not do anything to prevent it?”.
Unless humanity undergoes a shift in its thinking, away from short term profit to long term benefit, we will either destroy ourselves or be destroyed by a catastrophy that we should have seen coming from far away.

“We are the catastrophe.”

GA

We are not the catastrophe, we are the program.

Humans are the superior and inevitable result of Earth’s life.

I don’t know whether humans will become extinct because of the way we’ve been treating the environment. I can certainly see this leading to the fall of civilization without sufficient resources, but humans have populated nearly every corner of the globe. I believe it would take extraterrestrial influence (asteroid, alien invasion, sun explodes, etc.) to have a sure chance of wiping out the human race absolutely. Heck, I think we’d probably even survive a zombie invasion.

@DrEldonTyrell That sounds like arrant nonsense to me. Would you care to explain what you mean? Evolution is a blind process, and is not hierarchical. We are just one of billions of branched nodes, directionless and random.

@ragingloli yeah, you’re right. Thanks for correcting me. I think that I was referring more to a situation where humans could actually do something at the last minute, like someone realizing they shouldn’t start a vicious nuclear war because they themselbes could be killed or something. Your answer makes more sense though.

I’m pretty sure I could wipe them out with one of my Sunday dinners ;)

Its unchangable that oneday earth, and earth bound beings, will no longer exist. One reason is due to the fact that the sun only has a limited lifespan, and once that is reached it will be the end of earth as we know it.

There all also many small factors, such as the moon being on a slow steady path away from the earth, which once it reaches a critical point, will affects tides, weather patterns and many small details that affect the sustainibilty of life on this plantet.

Its not a matter of will it happen, its a matter of when… it could be tomorrow, it could be a 1000 billion years away – whether we as a race manage to populate other planets will be the only thing that will keep us going as a race.

@DrEldonTyrell What are your views then on us programming AI and through the approaching point of Singularity we could then become obsolete the human form of a vinyl record.

aw shit the apocalypse is coming

I believe there is a high chance that we will become extinct, or at least our population will be decimated.

Why? A few reasons. We developed weapons of mass destruction before we developed good sense. We still haven’t developed good sense.

Also, there was one country which pretty much had the monopoly on nuclear weapons. This country turned pissing people off into an art form. They made war and destruction into an art form. As a result, quite a few countries hate this country, and quite a few are ‘friends’ with it. Now, the countries which hate this country also have nuclear weapons. It seems to me like it’s only a matter of time before we screw ourselves. Someone’s going to get a little trigger happy with their nukes.

And finally, people can’t seem to close their legs. Sure, we’re already decimating the environment, but lets have a few more spawn anyway. Why adopt? Sure, there are lots of kids out there without homes who need caring for, but I’m so selfish that I need a little cretin with my DNA. Any less won’t do. I need 10 of them. 15!!! In short, people can’t stop shooting babies out of their vaginas, and I think that this may be our undoing… we cannot establish any kind of equilibrium with our environment, nor do we want to. We’re perfectly content to bonk all day, whilst simultaneously raping the Earth.

The star we rely on for life has a finite amount of hydrogen. The jellys that think humans will be around forever are out of their minds.

@Narl I almost forgot about the “Lights Out Forever” Finale! +6