Synthetic biology.
Someone could create one or more pathogens in their home laboratory and release them throughout the world for a fraction of the cost of a nuclear weapon. Depending upon how they did it and how virulent they are, tens or hundreds of millions of people (or more) could die before anyone knew what was happening.
And then they could start all over again.
Of course not, but this is hardly the only mechanism by which religion poisons human existence. For starters it is typical of most religions that they teach there are things more important than all the suffering and joy of living things. They promise magical rewards for behaviors that otherwise would be obscure and bizarre; to quote Weinberg, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Religions generally attempt to change the interpretation of people’s observations, and anything that interferes with the process of observing, believing, choosing, and acting will tend to erode the quality of our choices. And, religions often dehumanize groups of people or suggest to their followers that groups of people should be mistreated or even killed.
Humanity
Space Dingos.
Oops! You are correct. I got the two confused.
Dyogenes was the Greek man with the lamp who went looking for an honest man whereas Damocles was the one who presented us with this idea of a dangling sword.
Thank you for your correction. It was definitely appreciated.
nm.
Space dingos?
Oh my! That is a new term AFAIC. Very interesting.
Mad scientist: “I have combined the DNA of the world’s most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all.”
[Pours DNA into replicator chamber]
Man [coming out from chamber]: “It turns out it’s man!”
Is the world getting more religious? Does anybody have a cite for that?
There are now 7 billion humans reproducing themselves exponentially on a planet that cannot sustain half that many. Most of these multitudes already eke out lives of toil and want that are of no consequence to anyone who has access to the internet.
What humanity should be worrying about is the weight of humanity upon the planet. The effects are already in evidence, and have been for quite some time. There can be no other consequence but eventual misery for all.
In the meantime we distract ourselves with nuclear nightmares and fear of asteroids from the heavens.
I also vote for overpopulation. Yes, the population may be leveling off, but it’s already unsustainably high – too high not just for mankind, but for the welfare of many other creatures as well. Those who say human population is obviously still at sustainable levels (we’re sustaining after all) ignore that we are not sustaining. Scarce resources are being consumed, with petroleum just being the most obvious example.
Global groundwater depletion is estimated at 300 gigatons per year, more than double what it already was just a few decades ago. Here’s a report showing, among other things, that India is losing 4 cm/year of water table.
Overpopulation is the root cause of several other problems, including AGW. Loss of biodiversity due to overfishing and dependence on high-tech agriculture (e.g. GMO) is caused by our high population.
While nuclear wars may pose a threat, a disaster which severely reduces human population without making us extinct might be a blessing in disguise!
me?
That is if I weren’t so lazy, or if I can ever fine what that damn cat did with my Cosmic Moon Crystal.
Worrying about disasters is useless,
Preparing for disasters is wise,
Orchestrating disasters is pure joy.
:D:cool:
Yes, Yes, Yes!!!111!! I whole heartily agree!!! Launching all missiles in 5…4…3…
:dubious::rolleyes:
The solution to any & all problems can be solve with deaths of a billion or more people!
The species survival is important but not sufficient, in my opinion. It is the quality of life that matters and what worries me is mankind’s inability to rid of its animal nature.
Global warming might be a crisis, but not a lethal one. Worst case, we’re in the Carboniferous period. Coastlines and agriculture are disrupted, but life goes on. You could argue human population would increase long term as we move in and exploit previously frigid regions.
I’d say an extinction level asteroid impact because unlike many other theoretical species threatening events we could actually do something about it, if we wanted. But it’s hardly on the radar. Like other issues I’m guessing it won’t be taken seriously until it smacks us upside the head. Maybe a big city gets blown up by a pebble, then everyone pours money into solutions. Or maybe everyone will say oh wow, so unlucky, but what are the chances it’ll happen again? And just go on business as usual.
It’s also not as sexy as other issues since there’s no opportunity for moral hand wringing like pollution or resource depletion or an apocalyptic bio-weapon where we “deserve it.” It’s just a big random rock falling out of the sky.
Not saying our hair wouldn’t get mussed, but even if every nuclear power attacked the others it’d mostly be the northern hemisphere’s problem. South America, Africa, and Oceania would be putting their feet up and watching the fireworks (unless they live next to one of the nuclear powers’ military assets). And the planet is really big compared to the effects of nuclear weapons. Even in the target countries if you’re out in the sticks you may not even notice for awhile.
I’d imagine the risk of nuclear accidents increase all the time though, especially as old tech wears out and more and more countries acquire them.
Personally, I very much doubt global thermonuclear war is on the cards in the immediate future. Asteroids are just a crapshoot, ditto other cosmic vents.
We are going to level off on population growth. Overall, we’re always better off in terms of education, religiosity, standard of living, lifespans, numbers dying in wars, etc. than we’ve been in the past. That’s provable.
Human-caused climate change, however, is already happening, isn’t going to stop, and has enough knock-on effects that it will impact the lives of all humans, if it hasn’t already dones so. No, it’s not going to lead to our extinction. But it is the biggest thing we should worry about. Not in the sense of just alarmism, or drastic change, but in the sense of making all our forward plans with it in mind.
I’d say no more than ten or twenty million killed, tops. Eh, depending on the breaks.
I’m with you.
The biggest worry is actually microscopic and thus doesn’t draw much attention. We are poisoning the planet we live on. Humans are at the top of the food chain and only survive because trillions of metazoa etc cheerfully make the soil fertile and the oceans rich in organic matter.
And they are dying from the chemicals we blissfully release into the environment. If you doubt this go to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, southern China and try drinking from any stream. Or simply breathe the air. My guess is biocollapse is imminent but silent so we won’t notice until much later.
In the developed world we may be safe but be prepared for a wave of desperate refugees.
The cascading effects of climate change.
Climate change itself is bad enough, if you’re one unlucky millions who will be displaced, killed or will otherwise suffer direct impacts.
It also has the potential to cause far-reaching harms that trigger other ‘biggest things’ mentioned in this thread.
(Before moving on, please note the word ‘potential’.)
Consider a small shift in regional temperature and rainfall patterns away from current food production areas. It is far from a given that other geographic areas will become crop-friendly to compensate, or that even if they did, the the new areas of cultivation could ramp up production in time to prevent mass food shortages.
Further, these shifts may take place under times of severe economic stress. A country that has just had major seaports and cities inundated by storm surges may not be in the position to develop new croplands or crop technologies.
Water rights and usage are tightly related areas of concern–even if limited to exacerbating the incidence in drought-prone areas, food security and human subsistence needs over vast areas will be threatened. This will take place against a backdrop of pre-existing water issues, whether from rapidly depleting aquifers to tensions over use (crops v. humans) to cross-border tensions.
Other climate change impacts will have similar wide-scale effects and will begin to have noticeable consequences while adaptation resources are severely strained. For example, consider a disease vector that reaches into an area that had previously reached apparent homoeostasis to a particular average amount of rainfall, and area that lacks a substantial infrastructure to manage or stand up to the increased rainfall.
With just that in mind, consider how climate change will intersect with many other ideas brought up in the thread.
If climate change effects become particularly acute, it is very likely that mitigation efforts will be given a high priority. One rationale for taking early action was how much cheaper it would have been had we begun earlier. Consider just the combination of an increased urgency (and hence political will) to do something combined with the increased need to reduce or sink emissions. The resulting sharp increases in energy cost (partially offset by advances in non-carbon technologies) will arrive concurrently with the other above-mentioned effects.
Poor, hungry, thirsty, energy-starved countries go to war. War begets war.
Lotta ifs in those cascading sequences. And we are horrible at predicting stuff.
However, overpopulation is the root cause of pretty much every non-physical catastrophe we face. And we can’t really accurately predict which meteor/volcano/earthquake… is going to create havoc when.
At the root of things we can predict is overpopulation. We are a highly successful, highly invasive species and we are running over the earth. The root cause of the next war is not climate change; it’s overpopulation. The root cause of climate change is not waming gases; it’s overpopulation. The whole reason we can’t swap out the energy grid is that we simply need all the energy we can make from all sources–and even that isn’t enough. The root cause of mass starvation subsequent to catastrophic crop failure is not an unforeseen blight; it’s overpopulation.
We are living on a very thin edge, pushing the ability of the natural ecosystem to support 7 billion people (maybe 9-11 billion within 200 years). We have to re-engineer that natural ecosystem with ways to handle energy, water, crops, food and so on. We have to manage political and social boundaries against burgeoning populations not content with the boundaries to which they are born.
And all of us want to live better ourselves, even if it’s at the cost of others or future generations. We are naturally altruistic in spirit, but narcissistic in practice.
Worse, we have no idea what to do about overpopulation.
Going forward, the Tragedy of the Commons principle will ensure that we consume everything–all the energy from all sources; all the food we can create; all the natural resources to create the food and energy; all the economic resources to live well…
It’s gonna be a fun century. Right now the only Plan for overpopulation is to keep supporting humanity. That yields…more population. Nice Plan.
If we are fortunate, we can probably support several times more people than we have now. But I don’t think you’ll recognize the earth at the end of it. And overpopulation is more or less guaranteed to eventually catch up with us.
So, of the predictable things we should be worried about?
Overpopulation.
What…me worry, though? I’m nearly dead. I just need new golf clubs and a nice retirement.