Ibon wrote:onlooker wrote:Sorry, but I have to side with Dohboi and take a more pessimistic outlook. Look up everyone and really research what the greatest extinction event on this planet was like and what caused it about 250 million years ago. Also, note the degraded state of the planet which is fast degrading more under the impact of our huge population. As one stark example all the nuclear reactors left unattended after a precipitous downfall of civilization spewing vast amounts of radiation unto the world environment. Will all this necessarily cause our extinction who knows. But can it? I would say yes
What is happening today as a threat to humanity that is comparable to the clubbing of millions of juvenile passenger pigeons in their brooding sites.
Nuclear radiation is not a threat to our species even if all the planets nuclear reactors melted down tomorrow. Huge increases in mutations and local die-offs are not the same as extinction. Look at Chernobyl and all the wildlife.
It's tragic if 60% of a population near a melted reactor gets thyroid cancer. But those 40% remaining can procreate fast.
We have become crazy on this site in the way we constantly drone on about our precarious situation as a species.
There is nothing out there that represents anything beyond nibbling around the edges of our over population in marginal areas.
There is nothing threatening humans on a species level at the moment and nothing in the foreseeable future.
Nothing out there that represents anything beyond nibbling around the edges of our over population in marginal areas? I have to disagree. Humans have set themselves and much of the planet for the proverbial perfect storm if we and our technology can't prevent one of many potential inflection point events. Total extinction? Maybe not, but at this point in our history, a lot of things have to go right to prevent a lot more things from going wrong, and due to the interconnected nature of all of those things that need to continue to go right, things can/will go wrong pretty swiftly.
I expect, at some point, humans somewhere will feel the necessity to use nuclear weapons to defend their tribe or preserve some semblance of their way of life, or due to just plain spite for other tribes. Assuming that there is enough sanity among our specie to prevent that is quite insane, IMO. In short, at some point we are going to blow the shit out of each other. At that point, whatever bears any resemblance to anything close to modern life will go POOF. At that point, the biological mess we've made in the name of modern medicine will be free to wreak havoc on whomever remains. Any survivors will need to be tough and lucky indeed.
Virtually all humans are capable of hate, a form of insanity likely unique to us. Hate is on the rise, in case you haven't noticed.