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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 disagree with the premise of the article. I don't think most people are even remotely concerned about an asteroid strike.
I also disagree with the facts of the article. More people die in plane accidents than are run over by trucks. They should pick a better example of a "mundane" cause of death, like heart disease induced by obesity. They also use the fact that only one person has ever been killed by an asteroid to show it is not a concern. 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.
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.
But people win them all the time. Do we really want to gamble we'll never "win" this particular lottery?
I think the author's point is that we should be exploring for positive reasons. Sure, that's a feelgood strategy to take... but I don't put smoke alarms in my house for positive reasons.
that is on average 100 people per year, which is small, but still much larger than they imply.
So you're in fact agreeing with the facts of the article. That's the exact number they give in the article. 100 per year.
RTFA FTW.
I also disagree with the premise but in the opposite direction.
Risk is the probability of something happening times the damage if it happens.
If Damage = Death of All (functionally infinite), the Probability need only be more than infinitesimal for the Risk to be significant. Is the probability of a mankind-killer asteroid more than infinitesimal? Well, it's happened a couple times before, so while the probability appears quite small it's certainly more than infinitesimal.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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!
Having a plan to deal with an asteroid/comet strike is more like having an emergency parachute. It's FAR better to have one and not need it, than need one and not have it.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
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.
like heart disease induced by obesity
That's probably what got the woman in the picture of 'only person to be directly hit by a meteor'.
What I don't get is the jump from: 1000 people were injured in Russia two years ago, to: because only one person was ever directly hit by a meteor therefore strikes should be of no practical concern.
A detection system for the size of meteor that can injur 1000 might yeild all kinds of interesting side discoveries and technologies beyond just being a detection system.
The article is also based on some terrible reasoning, like:
Yeah, in a universe where our solar system is some sort of perfect steady state. Which, of course, it is not. Asteroids collide or - more commonly, come close to other bodies and gravitationally interact - and throw each other into different orbits. When that happens, non-Earth-crossing asteroids can become Earth-crossing ones. For example, one of the candidates for the K-Pg extinction event is a Batisma-family asteroid. This family came from an asteroid breakup 80 million years ago.
A person well versed in the field would be aware of the fact that asteroids are not in some sort of unchanging steady state. Which is why they're the ones paid to do the research on the subject.
And more to the point, we really don't have a good handle on what's out there. We have trouble making out dwarf planets in the outer solar system. We really have no bloody clue what could be on its way into the inner solar system, apart from studying how often major events happen.
And on that note, another flaw in his logic, given that until recently, the vast majority of Tunguska-style events would never even have been detected, having occurred over the oceans, remote deserts, the poles, etc. So by all means it's perfectly fair to say that the fact that an asteroid hitting earth is more likely to hit a remote uninhabited area is perfectly fair. But saying that while mentioning the rarity of inhabited areas having been hit in the past is double-counting. The historical record is evidence of how often they hit populated areas, not how often they hit Earth.
Lastly, his claim that only one person has ever been "hit by an asteroid" is ridiculous. 1500 people were injured by the Chelyabinsk one in 2013 badly enough to seek medical attention. Yes, they weren't "hit by rocks", but that's not what large asteroid impacts do; they mostly or completely vaporize by exploding in the atmosphere and/or on impact. And there's lots of reports throughout history of people getting struck by asteroids; just because they weren't documented by modern medical science doesn't mean it never happened. Seriously, what's the bloody odds that the only person to ever in historical times be hit by an asteroid would be in the 1950s in the middle of a first-world nation? Now what's the odds that someone being hit in the 1950s in the middle of a first-world nation would be well documented, publicized, and believed?
Just a lot of really bad arguments.
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