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Asteroid Risk Greatly Overestimated By Almost Everyone
StartsWithABang writes: When it comes to risk assessment, there's one type that humans are notoriously bad at: the very low-frequency but high-consequence risks and rewards. It's why so many of us are so eager to play the lottery, and simultaneously why we're catastrophically afraid of ebola and plane crashes, when we're far more likely to die from something mundane, like getting hit by a truck. One of the examples where science and this type of fear-based fallacy intersect is the science of asteroid strikes. With all we know about asteroids today, here's the actual risk to humanity, and it's much lower than anyone cares to admit.
I skimmed TFA, and it seems a lot of it talks about why I shouldn't be afraid of dying to an asteroid strike.
I'm NOT. Never have been. My risk is so close to zero as to not even matter, so it would be purely irrational to fear that. But that's not the point! Every hundred of million years or so, an extinction class impact does happen. The risk to humanity as a whole over the short run is also very small, but over the long run, it becomes large.
Yes, there are other ways we can take ourselves out, some of which are much more likely, but many of those are in our own hands. By making smarter choices we can reduce those risks, and either we'll learn to do so, or get what we deserved. But asteroid impacts are an external risk, something that just comes along and smites us down. It seems worth devoting a minuscule amount of our species' resources to studying what to do about that. And minuscule effort is all we're doing.
The risk year over year is almost zero. The consequences are the ultimate ones for our species and every other large animal life form on the planet.
How exactly does one evaluate the overall risk when that very-low-probability is multiplied by global extinction?
An asteroid may kill a lot of people, but it will not cause global extinction. No asteroid strike has ever completely wiped out life on earth. The closest was the Permain Extinction, and it isn't even clear if an asteroid was the root cause. People are far better prepared to survive a strike than other species. We are dispersed all over the planet. We can build shelters, stockpile food, etc. Since any asteroid big enough to be an ELE will be easily detectable, we will have many months, and more likely, years or even decades of warning. Sure, it will kill billions, but it will not kill everyone. In terms of survivability, humans are more like cockroaches than dodo birds.
My biggest fear regarding dying from an asteroid strike is not about the asteroid hitting me or the city I am in, but from unintended, extemporaneous consequences like someone in Russia or China panicking and launching a nuke at it, missing, and hitting France or the US or some other nuclear-capable nation and starting WWIII. Or an asteroid hit in Pakistan or India being intentionally/accidentally mistaken as a nuclear strike by its neighbor, and starting WWIII. Or an asteroid hitting a defunct Russian spy satellite, which was really a nuclear launch platform, and setting off the bombs, and starting WWIII. Or any asteroid strike anywhere being used as a convenient excuse by anyone to start WWIII.
So, in summary, the most worrisome unintended consequence of an asteroid strike is WWIII. Let's see the TFA's author gin-up some odds on that one.
I can take action to mitigate being hit by a truck by looking both ways, not texting, crossing at the green. I can minimize my chances of dying on the roads by buying a large safe car, driving defensively, wearing my seatbelt, etc. If I am in an airplane in trouble, there is nothing I can do. If an asteroid in on its way, there is nothing I can do.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
We are much more likely to experience catastrophic death counts and other horrors from Yellowstone erupting. In fact, it is guaranteed. It is just a matter of time, and Yellowstone is already overdue.
In theory, we would get a good decade or more advanced notice. But even so....nobody is scared of that, even though we know for a fact that it will happen, it will kill most of north America, and it will plunge the entire planet into a year-long winter. Guaranteed.
But...OMG ASTEROIDS!
But if a big one comes, it could kill everyone, or nearly everyone. An ELE shows up about every 60 million years. If it kills 6 billion people, then that is on average 100 people per year, which is small, but still much larger than they imply.
Thank you, that is just it...
I don't "fear" this as a cause of death for myself, the odds of this happening to me personally are almost nil.
The real concern is the big one, which is NOT likely to happen in our lifetimes, but on the off chance that it does, it renders everything else we do pointless.
It is a very binary outcome, if it hits, we're gone and all our "save the children, save the planet" efforts amount to nothing.
A large impact in a shallow ocean area might well in every human dying within a decade. Most immediately. It would also first steam clean the planet, and then set an ice age in motion.
Now I'll grant that this is unlikely in any century, less likely by far, in fact, than that we'll do the same thing to ourselves via war or some other means. (War seems the most likely, but it's not the only contender. An escape from a biological warfare lab is a possibility. I'm not counting natural evolution as "doing it to ourselves", but it's happened to other species. In fact it is currently happening to a large number of amphibian species, some of which have already gone extinct.)
But I do consider asteroid impacts worth worrying about. Not worth obsessing about, however, as they are a bit down the ladder when it comes to humanity exterminators.
I also question his method of assigning proper degree of concern. And the reliability of his assertions. E.g. he claims that only one person has ever been hit by a meteor, but there's no evidence that that's true. He should have said only one person is known to have been hit by a meteor. But how many people in remote areas of the planet could have been hit and the reason for death, or even the fact of death, not officially acknowledged? And clearly nobody could cite an instance before around 1700, as even the existence of meteors was denied. So you need to ask what is the probability of someone being hit by a meteor and the fact being officially recognized. This is a quite different question. He performs the same type of factual manipulation (less obviously) in a few other places.
That said, it's not a major concern while other concerns rate higher. But a species ending event is worthy of particular concern over and above the concern over the individual lives lost, as you also need to consider the future lost, and not just a few personal futures, but all human futures.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What a stupid argument. If I kill you tomorrow you won't care because you're dead. So why worry about if I'm out to kill you?
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....