which one has a better chance of killing us , global warming , or a asteroid?

Answer 1

Fortunately the dangers of Global Warming have been over hyped.

Recently I asked the question on Yahoo Answers whether people thought Global Warming or nuclear war was worse.

Over forty percent of the people who responded said they thought that Global Warming was worse because they thought that Global Warming would kill more people than a nuclear war.

Fortunately that is completely false.

It does demonstrate the power of Hollywood to create hysteria among the general populations through the use of movies that start with a kernel of truth and spin a ridiculously exaggerated scenario through the use of animation and falsehoods. The small kernel of truth is used to give some believability to the falsehoods..

If it were true that Global Warming could kill large numbers of people we would be in grave danger because we cannot stop Global Warming by the use of means that are acceptable in a civilized society.

If we are to have any chance of stopping Global Warming we must reduce world wide carbon dioxide emissions to less than one tenth of what they are today.

In order to accomplish that we would have to shut down the economies of all of the countries in the world. The result would be a world wide depression much worse than anything that we have seen in the history of this planet.

The depression caused by the shut down of the economies of the world would kill tens of millions of people at the very least and possibly hundreds of millions of people.

Fortunately we can mitigate the effects of Global Warming at reasonable cost if we start now.

The sea levels will rise. Fortunately we can protect the coastal areas from flooding with dike systems similar to those in Holland that are used to hold back the sea.

Hurricanes will become stronger and more frequent. We need to help the affected countries upgrade their disaster preparedness systems..

Droughts will become more frequent. We will need to help the affected countries with supplemental water supplies and desalination plants.

We cannot stop Global Warming by means that we consider to be acceptable in a civilized society, however we can mitigate the effects of Global Warming at reasonable cost if we start now.

Answer 2

Asteroids are unpredictable, if we go on what's happened in the last few centuries than there's a 65,000 times greater chance of dying from global warming. But, it would largely depend on the size of the asteroid, where it struck Earth, it's velocity when it struck, it's composition and whether it was an aerial or terrestrial strike.

It's now generally accepted that it was an asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosoars, another event of this magnitude would, for all intents and purposes, be the end of humanity; ther term used to describe it is an Extinction Level Event (ELE).

The only documented asteroid impact of any magnitude occured in a remote part of Siberia almost 100 years ago, fortunately the area was uninhabited but the impact was enough to fell tens of millions of trees. If an asteroid of this size were to hit a major city it would kill pretty much everyone in the city and for many miles around in all directions, potentially this could be anything up to about 50 million people.

Asteroid impacts aren't all that uncommon. On average there's an imact somewhere on the planet once every 30 years that is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb exploding. Fortunately all the ones in recent history have been in the seas and oceans or remote and unpopulated regions.

The most recent asteroid impact of any size that resulted in the deaths of people occured in 1930 in Brazil. The numbers of dead aren't known but it is a small number due to the remoteness of the area that was struck.

On the basis that perhaps 100 people a century are killed by asteroids you have a 1 in 65 million chance of dying this way. On the other hand, the World Health Organisation has calculated that in 2000 there were 150,000 deaths from global warming, this figure is rising and is expected to reach 300,000 by 2030 and 1,000,000 by the end of the century. On this basis, a person born today has about a 1 in a hundred chance of dying because of global warming. Where that person is born very much affects their chances of survival, most of the deaths that have occurred so far have been in Asia and Africa.

Answer 3

What might kill you or me personally, but not the rest of the planet ... an automobile accident, cancer, other medical problem, old age. Terrorist attack with Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Asteroid is more likely to make us extinct than blobal warming, however in the time period between one mass estinction and the next, the planet will experience hundreds of thousands of cycles of climate change hot & cold.

When it comes to risks to humans, there are many threats far worse than asteroids / comets and global warming / cooling.

We are about due for a Pandemic that will kill off a large chunk of people, and that in turn will be very disruptive to food production, economy, and some nations may take military advantage.

At some point in the future, there may be another Cold War, this time not between the West and Russia, but between the West and China, which may lead to a nuclear war, then a nuclear winter.

A giant rock from space killed off the Dinosaurs a long time ago. Geological evidence would seem to indicate that this happens periodically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event

In the last 600 million years there have been 5 events in which more than 1/2 the life on Earth died thanks to ... well we are unsure ... only one of them can conclusively be blamed on an asteroid impact.

So we are playing a kind of Russian Roulette & through history of mankind we have been lucky. Now we have the scientific know how to protect the planet, but not the political will. The politicians think this is Science Fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_deflection_strategies

Global Warming, Global Cooling ... through history both have happened lots of times ... so long as the Sun's output does not change appreciably, that won't kill us off, but we may have periods of great discomfort
* How close are we to agriculture able to feed the whole world, and what happens if we suddenly lose a chunk of the planet to viable arable land?
* How much damage is the Ozone hole doing, can the Ozone be regenerated?

Answer 4

Whenever i talk to friends about this moderation comes to mind, having lived in a country under the power of one party for a time it has become more apparent to me that a system with checks and balances is most comforting, now your question included global warming,This is the new big bang word for my country to snap back like a rubber band only to be controlled by the other party,FEAR will most likely kill us because it will cloud our judgement. We have known about global warming for years and just lately, it's been like hey news flash global warming. Yeh, that's most likely to get us first.We can see it coming to a certain extent. But watch out for the asteroid because we probably won't see it. In any event live today like it's your last because it may be.

Answer 5

Global warming hasn't harmed the planet at all. There will be changes, but I don't think it's going to kill the entire population, or any population, anywhere. Most of us who live in the U.S. or Canada live where there was once glaciers. The fact that we can now live and farm where glaciers once were, makes global warming pretty harmless in my view. In fact it looks rather beneficial. It would take a huge, giant asteroid to do some catastrophic damage to the planet, eventually one will probably hit. But since global warming isn't harmful, I would say the asteroid is a worse worry.

Answer 6

Asteroid by far. There is a chance we won't even see the asteroid coming. I'm more fearful of a gama ray burst than global warming

Answer 7

An asteroid has a better chance (although it's tiny) of actually killing us.

Global warming has a far better chance (it's certain if we do nothing) of causing an economic Depression (one that makes the 1930s look like good times). I suppose some people will die as a result of that. Many will lead hard lives.

Contrary to what Mike says, it is far cheaper for us to reduce global warming some than to let it hit and deal with the effects. Here's an affordable plan:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,481085,00.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

The right balance between reduction and coping is a worthy subject for debate, but the answer is surely not 100% coping.

Answer 8

An asteroid is highly unlikely. The volcano under Yellowstone Park has a greater chance than "global warming".
"The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet and threaten human civilization, British scientists warned Tuesday.
And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it."

Answer 9

An asteroid in my opinion, due to the sheer amount of them, the fact that they have struck earth before and the fact that scientists have found several that are in a path that could likely impact earth in the future. The asteroids and their path are proven and tangible, while global warming is recent theory that is yet to be proven or disproven and still requires a vast amount of research.

Answer 10

An asteroid. Global warming will increase food poduction in the northern hemisphere and we'll be better off.