No one reading this will be a live in 100 years, so who cares! Live for the moment. But personally I think articles like this are just scare tactics written by looney eco-weirdos.Griffolion said:[a href="http://www.tomsguide.com/us/science-research-sustainability-end-of-the-world-collapse,news-15482.html"]So I just read this article[/a], and I'm having a hard time discerning whether this is a set of scare tactics or actually viable.
Is the earth, in the next 100 years, going to go into a cataclysmic state shift, similar in potency to the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? What do you guys think?
madster11 said:The Earth goes through these climate shifts all the time, fairly regularly. Humanity is slightly speeding the process at the moment, but overall not by anywhere near enough to cause us to kill off 1/2 our population and suddenly start using solar energy for everything.
We're fairly close to the next ice age at the moment, but 'fairly close' in terms for the planet would mean 200-400 years before we start seeing any real climate change that would affect us humans (oh no! it's like 4 degrees colder, whatever will we do? - my 40 year old son).
Simple fact is that the earth isn't static. It won't have the exact same shape and climate is has right now forever. It's constantly changing, and if you want to be really depressed now that it's almost certain that it will look like mars before the sun starts expanding.
Will this affect humans? Yes.
Will it wipe humans out? No. Even if it killed 99% of humans there's enough left to overpopulate Australia, and i strongly doubt an ice age would make, say, the Russians give even a single shit.
Will it destroy the Earth? No. Life will survive - albeit changed - for longer than humans will. Maybe in 2000 years humans will be dead and the dominant species on the planet will be Crows, who explore old human ruins and laugh at our claims to be 'intelligent'.
Does any of this affect anyone reading this right now?
...Well, unless you're 5yo girl and live in the Shimane prefecture, that's a no.
The threat to us young people right now is not our planet. It's our aging society and overpopulation, which is going to cause economic collapse all over the world and very likely kill more people than our bro of a planet ever will.
The expected end of the world in 1666 comes to mind, the end of all times of 2000 as well. At least this one isn't based in numerology.JesterRaiin said:Doomsday theories are as old as humanity itself. And guess what, we're still here.
Point is : we're not capable of predicting exact weather for next day with 100% accuracy. We can't be sure about events taking place 50-100 years ago. But we're soooooooo sure that some apocalypse is imminent because, hey, we're living in the end times of the tenths of thousands years old cycle. Hooray for science.
Yeah, right.
I see you've been looking up George Carlin lately.Bassik said:Eh, the Earth is going to be fine. It survived a whole lot more then anything we can throw at it. The Permian mass extinction comes to mind, almost all life was obliterated, and the survivers went and became fucking dinosaurs, so you just know the earth is going to be fine.
It's just us that's fucked, no biggy.![]()
Not really, but I watched him a lot in my teens, so maybe that's it. Still, it can't be an actual quote of him because I made this up this afternoon.SpaceBat said:I see you've been looking up George Carlin lately.Bassik said:Eh, the Earth is going to be fine. It survived a whole lot more then anything we can throw at it. The Permian mass extinction comes to mind, almost all life was obliterated, and the survivers went and became fucking dinosaurs, so you just know the earth is going to be fine.
It's just us that's fucked, no biggy.![]()