Is the human race circling the drain and will they take the earth with them when the self destruct?

Question

I have a feeling this planet isn't long for this universe, because of foul little race known as humanity, always making there wars and poisoning the water and the air they breath and then blaiming it on anyone but them selves, do you think the end is near?

Answer 1

You have stated the question succinctly. We are near the end of the fossil energy pulse, which means that we are also near the end of our cultural pulse. The end of technological civilization is less than 100 years away, and perhaps it will come sooner than fifty.

The trigger event that will cause a die-off of several billion human beings will be a failure of mechanized agriculture, due to the unavailability of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, as well as to shortages of fuel for tractors and harvesters. Worsening the situation, of course, is that mechanized, chemical assisted agribusiness has ruined the natural fertility of a great deal of what was once prime farmland. The land will be like a junkie whose drugs were taken away: it won't be good for much for a long while.

In the meantime, human labor augmented by animal muscle power will try to feed the whole world, and it will fail. There will be triage and political favoritism in who gets the food and who starves.

People left outside the suddenly reduced food chain will turn to crime and to the field in a desperate struggle to stay alive. Game animals will be hunted to extinction, and the world's forests will be felled to provide wood for winter heating.

To prevent that from happening, governments may attack their own populations (as well as others) with biological warfare agents. From the point of view of the attacked, it might become necessary to eliminate the attacker first.

But it is certainly true that humanity is in overshoot of the post-industrial food supply, and we are nearing the end of the happy days. What will happen to us is the same thing that happened to the raindeer on St. Matthews Island: a decimation which leaves only one animal in a thousand left alive, and those in miserable condition.

There are those who insist that our planetary population will level off, as at the high end of a logistical curve. That will not be how it happens. The source of energy for our civilization is fossil fuels, and there will be no equivalent energy resource found to replace it before the fossil fuels are gone. So bunker down, evade the predators, hide your stash, and load your guns. It's going to be a wild ride.

Answer 2

I was reading a site not long ago on 10 different ways to destroy the earth. Not just pollute it, or rain down nuclear annihilation of life, but actually shred the planet.

Consider, the gravitational binding energy is 3/5 Gm^2/r

One clever way to demolish the earth would be to convert a fairly large mass into antimatter. The conversion rate for annihilation is 200%, so using m=e/c^2 one can calculate how much matter would need to be converted into antimatter to blow the earth assunder. It turns out to be several billion tons, more than I had anticipated. But for a brief moment the earth would outshine the sun in a spectacular blaze of glory.

The pace of growth of our technology is not linear, it is exponential. So it is possible we may figure out how to rotate mass like that through another dimension, perhaps, to reverse atomic charge and spin. In another few hundred years, children will play with such technologies the way they now play with transistors, capacitors, LEDs, and other "magical" gizmos we take for granted. Imagine some high school student accidentally passing a reversal field through a mountain range.

A few other tricks--a nuclear disassembler. Imagine a self replicating nanorobot. The earth would not be destroyed, but it could become rather featureless, as all its material ended up as a complex "universal" molecular solvent.

Another trick would be to create a lump of degenerate matter, such as a quantum black hole. These were theorized to have existed shortly after the big bang, but Stephen Hawking demonstrated they should evaporate fairly quickly. Imagine we create one. It would tend to drift through the wall of its container, falling back and forth through the earth, absorbing material with each pass. Eventually the earth would end up about the size of a golf ball, and spinning really really fast. Mankind would be brought closer together. :)

There are more, but I must go eat breakfast now. So, please rank this message--I'm trying to move up a level.

Answer 3

you're PARANOID.
No, the human race is not as bad as you make it sound.
No, the earth will not self destruct and the earth is far from being in danger. The water and the air aren't as poisoned as you're being led to believe.
The end may be near, not because of environmental damage from humans, but because God might be getting fed up with the foul smell that comes from the lies of people like you.

Answer 4

Thats a pretty powerful race that you think we are a part of. While, yes, we do pollute where we go, there is no way we will take the planet with us if we take ourselves out.

Now, most life on the surface of the planet? Thats a possibility if humanity ends itself with a complete nuclear war. But, short of that, the earth has the tendancy to heal itself, and regenerate life even in places it has been destroyed previously.

So, no, we wont take the earth out. And, no, I dont believe the end is near.

Answer 5

You never know.... some nutty terrorist might unleash a supervirus and wipe out all of humanity but leave the planet intact for the animals and plants. On the other hand a nearby gamma ray burst might boil off our atmosphere and kill all life on the planet.
Odds are we will make the planet virtually uninhabitable before either of those things happens though...global climate change is the single biggest threat to humanity at this moment in time.

Answer 6

Yeah, I agree with you about humanity. But if we don't shape up, the earth is going to shake us off like a dog shakes off fleas.

There's still hope, but time is getting short as our global population pushes up and up. Current predictions are that population levels will become stable at around 10 billion. It is clear that with our current practices, the earth cannot long support human civilization as we know it today with those population levels.

It doesn't help that the popular press has been encouraging people to doubt that we humans are a principal cause of global warming, even though over 99% of the experts - earth scientists - are sure that is the case.

Answer 7

You know...I think I have a conversation about this topic every day at work, class or while I'm out with my friends. I used to worry about it but now I don't...There's nothing I can do to change the world...and there's no way to stop the changes that have already been set in motion...

Will the world end? Yes of course it will...and the sun's going to blow up too...My answer is to stop worrying about other people...view and remember the world...what's left of nature...while you can...see sunsets and rises, go out into the mountains and see the wildlife. Take pictures...when the world is gone...photopgraphs of deer, and birds and trees...everyone will want them...

Answer 8

You are being WAY too negative. Get some exercise! Get out of your depression! Things are not nearly as bad as you think. Just be glad you don't live in the middle ages when disease killed 1/3 of all people in Europe. Compared to that we have no problems at all today.

Answer 9

In my own opinion, I see Humans as petty, selfish, arrogant being who, if they see themselves be extinct in the near future, would no doubt take everything else down with them.

I'd also like to think, that if Humans are gone soon, then Earth would choose to stick us for our crimes against her and wipe us out with an ice age or broil us to starve off our infestation.

Answer 10

No, the earth has been able to sustain life under much more extreme conditions than those which we make. I believe our species will get killed off, but life on earth will continue. As they say, life finds a way!!!