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Stephen Hawking: We Might Have 1,000 Years Left on Earth (usatoday.com)
Stephen Hawking says the only way humankind can escape mass extinction is to find another planet. And the clock is ticking. From a report on USA Today:During a speech at Britain's Oxford University Union, Hawking detailed the history of man's understanding of the universe and reiterated that the future of humankind lies in space. "We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity," he said. "I don't think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet."
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
... says the man who has outlived his own predicted life expectancy by more than 3x.
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Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
This critical issue deserves a more subtle discussion that guesses about when humans will go extinct on earth. Without human foolishness (nuclear weapons, pollution, etc) we would expect we have millions of years. But humans are foolish, so we really don't know. I am suspicious of claims that the human future is in space. Both because there is no plausible way for sustainable human settlements off planet to be manufactured with current technology and because it enables a short sighted approach that treats this planet as a disposable stepping stone to better things. More likely, intelligent machines we make will colonize space before we do since it is much easier to design them to tolerate the harsh environment than it is to modify biology to survive off planet. Maybe we will teach them to build habitats for us, but in that case, it will really be the machines that are doing the colonizing. And this is much further off than many people suspect.
The technology we would need to survive on any other planet besides Earth would also make surviving any catastrophe that could b fall Earth -- including catastrophic climate change, nuclear winter, or a giant meteor -- trivially easy in comparison.
The worst thing that could conceivably happen to Earth, at least until the sun becomes a red giant billions of years in the future, is something like the above catastrophes would render it a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. But every other planet is already a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. If we could survive at all on any other planet, we could also survive anything that happens to Earth.
Call me when self-sustaining cities on the seafloor, Antarctica, or in the middle of the Sahara are normal things, and then we can talk about living on another planet just because it's there.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The more sustainable we become as an economy, the longer we can stay. The less sustainable we are the less likely are we able to leave. Presently, we are not able to leave. To be able to leave, we need a machine which is sustainable in all aspects. In case it is not, we run out of material we can transform and entropy will destroy the machine and subsequently all inhabitants of it (yes a space ship/ark is a machine). However, in case we achieve the goal to be sustainable in the context of such space ship, we are also able to apply that on Earth.
Fun fact, we have 34 years to get CO2 neutral (this is being sustainable with the atmosphere) or else we are fucked up. Unfortunately, the US will not go in this direction for the next 4 years. So dear US citizens, 30 years left and the clock is ticking.
Beside the CO2 problem, we have also sustainability problems in electronics, food, water, cement, fishing/oceans, ecosystem-diversity etc. All of them have a point of no return and many of them are linked to others. Therefore, we should get on with it. Now is the time. Not tomorrow. NOW.
I don't think anyone [even Stephen Hawking] can say anything meaningful about where we'll be 1000 years from now. Did anyone in the year 1016 A.D. foresee conditions today?
Trying to get Humans to curb their hardwired instinctual drive to reproduce is almost completely futile for various reasons ranging from religions frowning upon any sort of birth control methods, to people too poor to afford birth control, to people who just won't stop having kids -- and since geriatric medicine is getting better, people are living longer.
I'd agree except this has been fixed in the developed world with universal negative population growth among populations around longer than second generation immigrant. You keep talking about how people can't stop having kids... but they have.
Sure. 'Lots of species' have gone extinct in the 4.5B years of Earth's lifespan so far, but we are the the dominant, and very-much sentient, self-aware, tool-making-and-using species of Earth, that distguishes ourselves by being the only one on the planet that changes our environment to suit us, rather than allowing the environment to dictate our adaptation. Other, lesser species have gone extinct for that reason; we don't have to. Of course, we might go extinct anyway -- but only if we sit on our opposable thumbs, contemplating our navels, until it's too late to do anything about it. Another unique ability that homo sapiens has? Planning for the future.
and then walking it back.
That's not how he rolls.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Clinton wasn't going to do anything about climate change and her starting WW3 with Russia to appease the defence contractors that own her definitely wouldn't have helped the situation.
Now that's just not true! Nuclear winter would have set back global warming by decades, if not centuries. She was the only candidate willing to actually do something about global warming!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The crazy Americans are a minority
Citation needed.
Fry: This snow is beautiful. I'm glad global warming never happened.
Leela: Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter canceled it out.
Call me when the overall curve is heading downhill.
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The developed world is calling you, and the second derivative is already negative globally. The world population growth rate should hit zero around 2050 and then begin declining.
To put it another way, the number of children born per year is already declining and has been for some time. The only reason the population isn't already declining is that the global population is still skewed young. Today's population growth is entirely due to the "filling out" of the age distribution. If you divide the population into five generations, each of 20 years -- so you have the 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79 and 80-99 groups -- There are about 2B in each of the first two groups, then it drops off rapidly. As the upper groups fill out over the next 35 years or so, you'll end up with roughly 2B per generation times five generations, for a total of about 10B people. Barring significant life extension, that will be the peak. Because the supply flowing into the first generation is slowly declining, the overall population will then begin to decline.
That's if current demographic trends continue, but it's likely that they'll accelerate. The biggest factors in reducing birthrates are (1) female education (2) infant survival rate and (3) wealth. Educated women who have confidence their children will survive and the resources to invest in them tend to have few children and invest heavily in the education and development of those fewer children. Since the trends in the developing world (the areas still producing lots of babies) are toward more education, better availability of medical services and increasing wealth in the developing world, it's likely that the current birth rate numbers will be further reduced.
No, the population crisis that is coming is one of not *enough* people, rather than too many. Some northern European countries are already facing this issue, especially since their systems for supporting the elderly require that there be plenty of young people working. Denmark, for example, has been running ads for several years now, encouraging couples to do the patriotic thing for their country by having babies.
The one thing that might change this is if medical technology progresses to allow the average person to live many decades longer. Add another 2B to the peak population for every 20 years of (universally-available) life extension.
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