Do you think the human race will ever go extinct?

Question

I was having a discussion with my uncle over the holidays and he said he thought that global warming would cause the extinction of the human race. I thought that was total non-sense. We then started talking about what could conceivably cause the extinction of the human race. Where we agreed was with gamma ray bursts, major comet impact etc.

Do you think the human race will ever go extinct (like the dinosaurs)? If so, how do you think it will happen?

Answer 1

There are some events which could wipe us out. I do believe in the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, but I doubt that humanity would go extinct because of it. We're pretty smart and very adaptable. And we can be pretty tough when it comes to survival.

Nuclear holocaust and subsequent nuclear winter could possibly do it. A large enough impact could definitely do it. A near pass of a star could do it by throwing the earth away from the sun. This could happen in about 250 million years when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda. But if we dodge all those disasters, all life on earth will come to an end when the sun becomes a red giant. This will be a long and horrible experience for life here, and the outcome is certain. But that won't be for another 4 or 5 billion years.

Some think that long before the Andromeda collision, we will have evolved into an entirely different species. That doesn't have quite the same connotation as going extinct. This is a good subject for debate, too, because I believe we have reached a point where the extensive mixing of the gene pool, along with our partial escape from the pressures of natural selection, (thanks to technology), might slow down or even stop human evolution. Or if we do evolve, it might be in planned, deliberate ways, like through genetic engineering.

In any case, I think there's a 90% chance that our current species will not exist in 250 million years, but our descendant species will.

Answer 2

Extinct Human Races

Answer 3

Too many ways unfortunately,

Personally, I'm a big fan of the immediate consequences , our political leadership on this world is so completely pathetic that its highly probable that we will experience at least one limited nuclear war in the next 100 years. Maybe we will learn from that , maybe we won't, but if that doesn't get us, the "Army of the 12 Monkeys" scenario always scared the hell out of me, then of course there is always....The Matrix.

Well, in 2880, there is a fairly decent chance that the Earth will be hit by a larger asteroid, but this would only kill things in a large region of the planet, and would cause major devastation, it's possible a larger impact could eliminate our civilization altogether.

As you mentioned gamma ray bursts from a nearby stellar phenomenon, such as Eta Carina. Global warming as such could be a circumstance where the situation gets totally out of control, if CO2 continues to warm the tundra, methanates release and then there is a huge impact +10-15 degrees across the world, this creates a snowball effect, whereby the Earth would largely become fairly sub-tropical, however, the sea levels would rise fairly catastrophically, so civilization would either have to have a controlled eugenics program to orderly preserve populations and civilization / technology of the various continents, or would probably reduce into some sort of Mad-max/Waterworld type of situation.

The trick is to get off-world, if we can get off-world and found a sustainable colony on Mars or on the other moons of the solar system, or find and then seed and colonize other star-systems, "we" would likely not become extinct.

We would also likely not be the same people we are today.

It's also possible that through some other catastrophic error that we wipe ourselves out at a stellar level, planetary/stellar level engineering will probably come with planetary/stellar level problems.

Then of course there is always the possibility of aliens, or robot revolt - like in the Matrix/Terminator/Battlestar Galactica or something where we get wiped out by some aspect of our own technology.

If however, we successfully manage to colonize the neighboring 5 or 10 sun-like star-systems, it's extremely unlikely that our species would go extinct for tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.

Answer 4

I think that human race knows more today and it is more intelligent than the dinosaurs on one side, but they manage weapons that could wipe us out in one day on the other hand.

So it is a question of achieving a balance, like Carl Sagan, said.

Humankind could become extinct not because of an asteroid but because of nuclear war, global warming, stupidity, and there is so much of that.

Answer 5

The people of earth are so vulnerable it is a surprise they have lasted this long. The Dinos made it for several millions of years. People have only been around as people for less than one million. Your Uncle may be right. The global warming is due to a change in the sun, It's magnetic field is up 25% and that is causing our rise in temperature. Will people survive this situation. Some, not all.

Answer 6

The human race as we know it will some day be gone, humans will have evolved to live in the polluted world we are making for ourselves, maybe humans will develop scaly lumpy skin to protect them from massive solar radiation and acid rain that could melt a normal human i minutes without protection, heck humanity might not even breath air as well know it in the future but i doubt humanity will go extinct.

Answer 7

Of course we will. Even if we don't blow ourselves to smithereens, and even if we manage to get off the planet before the sun swallows it up (and that's assuming we haven't evolved into something not even remotely reminiscent of a human by then), we're definitely going extinct when the universe eventually runs down and all usable energy is gone. Of course, for the moment all our eggs are in this one basket, so currently any passing asteroid could finish us off at any time, and we probably wouldn't even have time to notice it before it hit...

Answer 8

It is quite sure
All animal species begins , becomes more important and vanishes one day. Even if human race would not disappear suddenly, there will be a lot of mutations so that our followers will be very different of ourselves

Answer 9

i think humman race will go extinct because the global warming mels the ice capes of north and south pole.
and also it makes a hole in ozon layer

another reason is we are damaging our ecosystem ourselfes.

green cover is largely reduced in forest for contruction work .
this makes the scarcity of rain fall and oxygen
so there will depletion in animal also.

Answer 10

Anything is possible, altho if the human race evolves into something else, would you consider homo sapiens sapiens extinct?