Exactly. We are a tiny speck in time. And yet the rate of change which we are precipitating is significantly more rapid than the environment can accommodate. Once a tipping point is reached then bottom up ecological disaster cannot be reversed. It would surely behove us all not to be so glib about the possibility of our impending extinction.
A space rock the size of the moon could smash us to bits at any second.
Certainly life alters the environment, as example, prior to the influence of plant life the atmosphere was of a composition that would have been toxic to fauna.
However the procession of natural changes have been gradual, allowing life to respond and adapt, not (in geological terms) instant, as are the changes industrialisation has effected. Perhaps life might just continue but, after a collapse of the biosphere, it would be prokaryotic microbiological life at best. It is unlikely that higher forms of life would ever evolve again. Evolution from unicellular lifeforms to the simplest multicellular lifeforms took about 1.7 billion years. The Earth will be too hot to support liquid water (essential for life) in 1 billion years.
That for the sake of fossil fuel dependency, unfettered overpopulation and disposable consumer culture we would risk all that we have achieved as a species is rather piteous.
Last edited by adorable homunculus (2014-02-25 03:12:47)
To state otherwise is to grasp stellar evolution, cf the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, a very strictly defined branch of science with a wealth of supporting evidence and well tested hypotheses.
Last edited by doghouse (2014-02-24 11:38:00)
It's all doom and gloom...Neo-Malthusianism abounds...
Technology is the answer...
Yay...!!!!!
Man may have been often wrong, as we grope our way toward a coherent understanding of the Universe, but we have been right often enough to enjoy spectacular success. The upstart rodent that cowered in burrows as the dinosaurs passed in to history eventually grew up and cobbled together the LHC.
As far as we know there is no other life anywhere, it's a shame to not give a shit about our potential demise.
Last edited by adorable homunculus (2014-02-24 11:59:03)
Whether or not something is statistically probable does not mean that it will happen - statistically there is no difference between rolling a dice on 6 a billion times in a row as the probability of rolling any other combination of numbers.
As it happens I believe that there may be life elsewhere, underneath the frozen sea of Europa seems a realistic possibility - or even something more primitive on Titan. However 'intelligent' life is another matter, that may be so rare as to be us, just us.
Using the word 'intelligent' pretty loosely.
But in all seriousness, I am certain there is other conscious life in the universe.
Certain?
Is there something you would like to share with us
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/flooding/10655005/The-flooding-of-the-Somerset-Levels-was-deliberately-engineered.html
Interesting read about recent floods in the uk
'...Newsnight had Prof Kevin Anderson from that hotbed of climate zealotry, the University of East Anglia, to tell us that despite global temperatures having remained pretty flat for 17 years, by 2100 they will somehow have leapt up by a staggering 6C...'
As we can see, a professorial chair is no bar to idiocy.
As far as I know NASA do not discount all of human history prior to their foundation. I could, however, be in error.