That’s not an extinction event, that’s Africa.
No, it isn’t.
The continent of Africa faces many problems, but most of them are not caused by overpopulation. Nor are people routinely murdering each other for handfuls of water and crumbs of bread.
Right, that was a poor joke.
But the point behind the joke stands - famine through overpopulation is a self-solving problem, as it were. It’d be a grimdark point in our history to be sure, but not The End.
If there were insufficient resources to support a given population on the surface of the Earth to the point at which “people start murdering each other for handfuls of water and crumbs of bread”, what would possibly lead you believe there would be enough resources to construct “colony starships”, notwithstanding the enormous technical challenges of designing and operating such vehicles?
Stranger
I saw a very interesting film called Ocean Planet, which makes the point that nature or Gaia doesn’t like any species to become overpopulated, and there are natural checks and balances that eliminate any overpopulation.
Some of those checks include viruses.
IMO, either mankind controls it’s population, or something as simple as a virus or perhaps starvation will kill us off or exterminate us altogether.
Other solutions would include the Greenland ice cap melting and changing the Gulf Stream, which would probably put parts of Europe under ice.
People have come to believe that they are mightier than nature, but those that think that are in for a shock.
Just look at what happened in Colorado recently. Imagine if that had gone on for a month- how many would have died?
BTW Gaia doesn’t care about the life forms that cling to the surface of the planet. Species have been created and exterminated for millenia, but the planet lives on.
Perhaps Agent Smith had it right!
Gaia doesn’t care about the life forms that cling to the surface of the planet because Gaia doesn’t exist.
As has been pointed out, any number of things could wipe out civilization without wiping out humanity. But once civilization is wiped out, we have a long period of time in which we are vastly more vulnerable to a second event wiping us out completely. And because we’ve used up all the easiest-to-locate fossil fuels, it may be impossible for civilization to get to this point again. Even if there isn’t a huge catastrophe knocking us back to the stone age, something as simple as economic cycles could theoretically lead to a point at which we simply can’t sustain a certain level of technological infrastructure, and the population won’t be sustainable with lower levels of tech. Once civilization is gone for whatever reason, I suspect natural climate change will eventually lead to human evolution away from large, calorically expensive brains, and over many millions of years, we will gradually give rise to a clade of small, rodent-like omnivorous mammal species.
True, but the numbers of bees and amphibians are in steep decline, and they’ve been around for milliond of years, too.
My sense is that if humans become extinct absent an asteroid or something from beyond our solar system or galaxy just hitting us, that it will be diseases that haven’t yet come into being, super-viruses,–worse yet, airborne diseases–that we shall not have the time or learn how to treat.
We’ve had had a few good centuries, and the bad guys have been “on the run” for some time. There are so many conditions we’re cured, improvements we’ve made, from pasteurization to to penicillin, polio and flu shots, there’s bound to be a reaction, a kind of (not to anthropomorphose) revenge of all that “bad stuff” we’ve learned to keep in check or eradicate altogether (or so we think) that could be merely in eclipse, incubating, ready to roar back.
On that cheerful note…
I don’t think the recovery time will be that vast. We’re leaving around so much junk, they won’t need to reinvent hardly anything. It will just be a matter of infrastructure.
Energy is a real concern, but I don’t think it is a game-breaker. Renewables may suck compared to oil but they will be enough to get us going, especially for a fledgling civilization.
And coal is abundant just about everywhere, and the reasons for not using it don’t really apply to a post-apocalyptic world. And they don’t need to use coal forever, just enough time to get pretty much back to where we are, then they can build nuclear power stations 
I’m sticking with my prediction that the gap between mad max and mcmuffins will be a relative blink of an eye.
We have been busily been breeding your super-viruses by over use of antibiotics ( yes, I know abntibiotics don’t cure viruses ) and other drugs. Already, there are serious diseases that are nearly drug resistant.
Just keep telling yourself that whenever there is a “500 year” flood, like in Colorado.
Well if you’re referring to the theory that organisms can alter their environment which in turn affects their survivability then I agree, but if you’re espousing the nonsense idea that the planet makes conscious decisions to alter itself to regulate those organisms in some kind of self-protective action then I’m simply going to point out that it’s a crock of shit.
Humanity will NEVER end.
Never.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…
Well, billions of humans believe in an unseen “god” or “gods” that do/es nothing for them, so for me to believe that the planet is an organism is not a big stretch.
BTW, natural feedback mechanisms in nature ( ie Gaia ) are well understood by scientists.
… but will they be a Republican and a Democrat or two Republicans? Will the debate be in the Pit or elsewhere?
No, we can take it to mean “a change in genetics, regardless of cause, that improves fitness,” where “fitness” as used here is a bit tautological. Is it different from natural evolution? Yes, because the genetic changes are less random.
IMHO, the term “evolution” should apply even to artificial selection. Admittedly, at some point the distinction between “evolved” and “developed” gets lost, when applied to living things.
Perhaps that’s simply evidence that intelligent life is very unlikely. Perhaps it happens only in a small fraction of galaxies. (Your arguments don’t apply to intergalactic travel.)
I know a cockroach who might disagree with you. No, not archy, another one.
Yes, this.
I missed the start, but I saw most of a documentary on tv about how industrial farming is taking over food production ( think Monsanto ) in the USA.
According to the doco ( and it seems pretty convincing to me ) industrial farming of cattle is causing new strains of e-coli to appear, and as anyone knows, e-coli kills people. Also, because they use antibiotics prophylactically, the new diseases ( and old ones ) are becoming immune.
The other big thing they showed was that industrial crop farming is totally dependent on everything working properly. Any breakdown in the system from fuel supply all the way to the distribution network will cause catastrophe.
So for mass starvation to happen, it would just take the rail networks moving corn ( for example ) from the suppliers to the factories to shut down for a few months.
Basically, Gaia doesn’t have to do anything, industrial food production is already poisoning the population- just look at the rate of type 2 diabetes, which is now in the young population, and obesity is out of control.
IMO, people will die en mass because we are addicted to cheap, mass produced food full of poison.