Humans are only limited by the laws of physics, our understanding of these laws, and applying this understanding in clever and practical ways to achieve whatever we desire – given the resources, yes.
There happens to be a huge sphere 840,000 miles in diameter that is fusing hydrogen into helium on its own. It’s only 93 million miles away, and is the sole energy source responsible for sustaining all life on earth.
Think about that for a second. Really. Just try to guestimate how much of that energy, which rains down on us for free, is utilized by the entire sum of biomass on this planet. And has been for over 4 billion years, with another 4 billion plus to go. And out of that enormous quantity of energy that is being converted by life every day, it’s only the tiniest fraction of energy this planet receives from its star.
Fossil fuel, god bless its heart, has done us fine. But next time you look up at the sky, or watch the sunset, reflect on what that ball of tremendous fusion we’ve been circling for eons will afford humanity in the coming centuries. Perhaps even sooner.
Haven’t been on in a while and read the posts noting some valid points. However, “it’ll never happen to us”, is what the Mayan culture probably thought, the Minoans, and on and on. How many civilizations have “simply vanished” for no apparent reason. Pollution, followed by drought, followed by . . . Like dominoes. It isn’t the pipeline I object to so much as that no one cares enough to get involved in “anything” political.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting “it’ll never happen to us” in that sense. There are plenty of things that could be the ruin of much of the world’s current societies, and plenty of things to be concerned about.
Many of the causes that people rally behind though are misguided IMO. Did you have a specific one in mind?
But anyway, all this is very different from human extinction, which for the reasons given previously I think is unlikely in the vast majority of scenarios.
Forget the romantic ideas of, say, cat and dog evolution in the absence of humans. To take humans off the planet you need to virtually sterilize it of all life (there have been extinction events that have wiped out the majority of species. This is not the same thing).
The one exception I can think of is if ET has a grudge against homo sapiens specifically. I’d love to expand on this point but my post has been quite long already
I had read a short story some time ago (can’t remember the name unfortunately) based on the premise that humans will never go extinct. Instead we ran out of easily exploitable fuel sources and went back to essentially a paleolithic level culture. It ended about 800 million years in the future with humanity living in caves underground as the sun’s gradual expansion towards red giantdom had baked anything on the surface. Realistic? Maybe not, but the other did seem to put a lot of thought into it. Either way, it was oddly comforting to know that humanity had become the new cockroaches.
Dude/dudette, what is your issue? Do you have a degree in Global Extinction Events but can’t get a job in the field or something?
Is there some reason why the Discovery Channel is an inferior source to “some guy on the Internet who insists humans will be fine”?
Well, that’s what (several) science shows have said. Those words, exactly-precisely. Admittedly it’s pop-culture science at best; still possibly better than “some guy on the Internet.”
Hey, I also found a cite online about wildfires. That doesn’t mean the first thing I said never happened; it just means I didn’t find an easy cite.
What? We now have behavioral data, not just bones, from the Cretaceous? It’s my understanding that the burrowing theory is a hypothetical precisely because we don’t know enough about the behavior of the small animals of the period to be sure.
Well, that leads into a discussion about oxygen levels in bomb shelters during the Dresden and Hamburg firestorms, for one thing. I’m guessing worldwide fire would be bad, but maybe some people would survive. Food would become an issue during the ensuing impact winter though.
I certainly hope so. As an extreme misathropist I believe that the only way life remotely likely humans can continue to survive on earth would be if humans are wiped from the planet.
Otherwise, the whole planet is going up in smoke and it could happen at any time, whether by accident or on purpose.
How the heck is all life on Earth supposed to go extinct before humans do? If humans do enough damage that ecosystems are crumbling, we’ll have a massive human population die-back. No more humans, no more ecological damage, and 20 million years later you’ll never notice the difference.
Sailboat, earlier you were implying that a chicxulub-sized asteroid impact would self-evidently lead to the end of humanity. Now you’re saying some may survive, but food might be a problem in the ensuing nuclear winter.
Well, I think that some humans would survive a nuclear winter (note for one thing that plants can be grown under artificial light). But the important thing is that you’ve basically conceded the main point we were debating.
Well for one thing, humans can eat just about anything, especially after cooking.
As long as there’s animals scuttling around the world, there’s animals we’ll trap and eat. As long as there’s some vegetation in at least one region of the world, we’ll eat that.
For there to be nothing edible anywhere, you’re talking about a virtual sterilization.
What you’ve done there is equivocate “die-back” with “die out”.
I’ve already said, many times in this thread, that there are many phenomena that could lead to a human population crash.
But that’s not the same thing as extinction
There are billions of us on this planet, covering much of its land. And we’re by far the most adaptable species. If there’s anywhere on this planet that is not completely sterile then it will be exploited by a population of humans.
Barring the ET scenario, if humans go down, we’re taking just about all life with us.
And I’m not saying this to champion humanity. I think we suck, in many ways.
