Slashdot Mirror
This Is the Way the World Ends
Dave Knott writes "The CBC's weekly science radio show Quirks and Quarks this week features a countdown of the top ten planetary doomsday scenarios. Nine science professors and one science fiction author are asked to give (mostly) realistic hypotheses of the ways in which the planet Earth and its inhabitants can be destroyed. These possibilities for mankind's extinction include super-volcanoes, massive gamma ray bursts, and everybody's favorite, the killer asteroid. Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue."
We still have those bombs, remember?
What about that? I think it's still much more likely than the other options listed. It wouldn't end the Earth (nor would for example Gamma burst), but it would end the civilization and/or kill all humans.
--Coder
I always love it when people say these things. Point of fact, we don't have enough data points to make this prediction. At best, that's a wild conjecture.
I sincerely hope that we'll be able to set up colonies on other planets or in other solar systems before something snuffs out life on Earth. Our survival as a species will depend on it.
A reversal of the Earth's magnetic field is not overdue, because it was never due. The universe hasn't promised in advance to flip the field every n years without fail. People shouldn't still be anthropomorphizing natural phenomena.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
because people like to store their porn on magnetic media these days
Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue.
From the record of paleomagnetism found in spreading ocean floors, the reversals are anything but periodic. Reversals recur, but the interval between reversals can be less than 25 thousand years, or longer than 35 million years. In other words, the intervals between reversals vary in duration by a factor of more than 1000.
The oceanic record is limited to the last 200 million years, at most. It has been extended further back by correlating measurements from continental rocks formed at different times, and relying on models for tectonic drift. This naturally yields inferences with lower confidence and limited time resolution. However, the results suggest that geomagnetic field has occasionally been stable for more than 50 million years at a time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_reversal
Given that their occurrence is erratic rather than periodic, and that there is no decent model for predicting their occurrence, the assertion that a magnetic reversal is "overdue" is absurd.
The scaremongering that a reversal would lead to "the end of the world" or mass extinctions is equally puerile. Reversals of the geomagnetic field show no particular correlation with extinctions in the past.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Even the most retarded religious fundamentalist understands that dropping a nuclear bomb on someone who has one, or has a country which has one for a friend, isn't such a bright idea.
snip
Even actually been to the middle east ?
Some of the fundamentalists BELIEVE in their god. They don't care if they all die, so long as they go to heaven.
Even the most retarded religious fundamentalist understands that dropping a nuclear bomb on someone who has one, or has a country which has one for a friend, isn't such a bright idea.
For some religious fanatics, it would be a bonus if the other country wiped them out in retaliation, as that would ensure all citizens a free ticket to paradise.
Usually it is not a problem, the people in the top of the hierarchies will tend to be people who are mostly interested in using religion to ensure their own power, and have no hurry to give up earthly delight for paradise. The dangerous time is right after a revolution, where you risk getting people in power who actually believe in the stuff they preach.
Overpopulation will kill us all before anything else...resources like oil and metals will be exhausted in the coming decades! the dramatic changes in the climate caused by human activity, the cutting down of rain forests will cause the populations of third world countries to migrate en mass to Europe and North America, further increasing the fights for the remaining resources...
Also don't forget that 99% of the life on earth has a lower life expectancy and thus faster propagation cycle than us. When an animal dies of cancer after 4 years that has a life expectancy of 6 and is fertile with two, life can go on.
When humans die at age 6 on average, we die out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm sure you haven't.
Some of the fundamentalists BELIEVE in their god. They don't care if they all die, so long as they go to heaven.
Right. And you know this how? The Saudis are rich enough to have bought all the nukes they wanted (from Pakistan, North Korea, say). And they're as devout as they come. But they haven't sent us all to paradise/hell.
Funny thing, fundamentalist leaders don't sacrifice themselves. And that goes for Muslims as well as Christians and Communists.
The whole nuclear winter thing is a bunch of politics getting mixed up in science. Thus far, there has been no good proof that there's any sort of reality in it. For a decent paper on it have a look at http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html he covers some of the background of the politicization of the concept.
As for Sagan himself on the issue, his research seems more speculative rather than concrete. Remember he also predicted that the first Iraq war would lead to global cooling because of the particulate matter generated from the oil fires Saddam threatened to set. Well indeed Saddam did set those fires as he threatened and it had no measurable impact on our climate.
Don't confuse scientists speculating on things with real empiricism. There's lots of interesting ideas and theories, something with mathematical or computer models to back them up. That doesn't mean any of it has a thing to do with reality. That proof is separate.
String theory would be a good example. It is, in fact, not a theory. It makes no testable prediction. It's a neat bit of math and who knows, might even be correct. However at this time all it is is a neat bit of math, a hypothesis on how things might work. It won't even be a theory until they figure out how to make some testable predictions and won't be at all something to hang your hat on until there've been some serious tests of those predictions.
The world population is increasing exponentially. Nothing increases exponentially in a limited environment, so the most likely scenario is that we will simply continue growing our consumption until we run out of the resources which allow the growth. oil, water, energy etc. Then the carrying capacity of the earth will be drastically reduced and with that goes the number of living things. In the final stages of growth humans will displace most other lifeforms which compete for resources.
You could use yeast in a bottle as an example. It grows until all the sugar is consumed, or alcohol level is too high, then it all just dies off.
Our bottle is simply larger.
Deleted
During a simulation, the operators do not receive the blocked popups prompting them to acknowledge the exercise, and upon seeing 'multiple targets' on their inbound radar, they instigate a return strike against the 'enemy'. And so it begins...
That's totally unrealistic. No self-respecting Geek would use a GUI to control nuclear weapons. He'd have a command line interface and some shell scripts to automate the more tedious processes.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Humans (the genus Homo) *have* experienced, and survived, several polarity reversals in the past: both short terms events as well as major reversals like the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal 0.8 Ma ago. Some of the smaller duration events (like the Mono Lakes, Laschamp and Blake events) happened while Homo sapiens was already around.
In other words, it seems past examples show we really do not have to fear the end of humanity when the earth geomagnetic filed reverses. There is no record of extinctions tied to reversal events.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
Almost invariably when people talk about 'how the world ends' they're actually talking about human extinction. Equating the two is the sort of massive species specific ego trip that prevents people from solving the deadly problems they create, and lets them create more daily by allowing them to evade responsibility. In most scenarios the world, if not the majority of the biosphere, will continue in a more or less normal fashion. Even is such as the planetary collision that created the moon, some parts of the biosphere survived and repopulated the planet. After most of the scenarios the Earth will continue with very little evidence remaining of the very intense but very brief infection of its surface. We might fare better if we took our example from rhinovirus rather than Ebola. Killing your host is not beneficial to survival.
There's a bit in the new version of 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' that illustrates this problem in human thinking. When asked why he came to "our planet", Klaatu responds incredulously "YOUR planet?"
The Judeo-Christian argument that 'God gave man dominion over all the animals and plants' makes the same mistake (and is probably to origin of this broken thinking). It is often taken to assume that "dominion" means 'permission to use and abuse at will without repercussion' instead of the more accurate "control or exercise of control; sovereignty". The latter implies responsibility for the outcome due to application of control. No rights exist without a concominant duty. The right to live on this planet requires exercise of the duty to preserve it, at the very least by not using more than the fair share of resources. Argue against it with words all you like, Nature will respond by evolving the biosphere to include or exclude us without saying a word, or listening to our assertions of dominance or pleas for mercy. I'm betting this will be the primary message of TDTESS, with Klaatu standing in for Nature (though I'm betting he ends up cutting us some slack).
200 years ago Thomas Malthus estimated the sustainable carrying capacity of the human environment to be two and a third billion persons. I haven't seen a convincing argument with a significantly greater estimate that doesn't mistake technology as it is currently practiced (ie. non-renewable) for sustainability. We're less than 1.5 years from having 3 times Malthus's estimate.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper,
and a gag and a cough and a choke,
and pandemics and starvation,
and "natural" disasters of our own making,
and the oxymoronic "wars for survival" for dessert.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
USA's war against terrorism triggers world war 3 and the revenge-thirst of both sides cause the whole planet to be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
A much more interesting top ten would be the myriad ways that civilization could end. The next article on the main page discusses possible environmental causes of a 50% drop in sperm counts. Double that a few more times and you get a tidy end to civilization, attrition. Then there are natural or man made pandemics, massive climate changes, global thermonuclear war. How about a subtle shift in one of the universal constants of physics? The universe isn't going to keep expanding forever either. Too far fetched? Take heart, evolution is cooking up lots of nasty little things to use against us too.
My personal favorite end-of-civilization would be the global spread of a hardy airborne virus that causes plants to be unable to photosynthesize. Fin.
Now back to the news,
-ellie
This is how suicide cults are born. Remember Heaven's Gate?
...if you're going to include a science fiction, why not include a couple biblical/religious predictions?
CBC is in Canada, not the USA.
"When presented with a choice and there is no proof either way (such as 'is there a God') you can either ignore the question, or make your best, inductive guess. Either position is reasonable."
Read, "The God Delusion". You will find, logically, that the probability of the existence of a God in infinitesimal. Much in the same way that I can write on a piece of paper that elephants are riding on pink space ships on the other side of the sun... now go prove that it does not exist, or that fairies do not exist, or that unicorns did not exist, etc... Most importantly, are the odds 50/50? No, of course not.
And yet you seem so close!
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Significant numbers of humans (say, 99%) dying would just bring us to the same global population level as during Roman Empire. Horrible, but not even close to extinction.