It's been around for a long time. Much longer than us. Quite frankly, all humanity is capable of doing as far as 'threats' go, is destroying of biodiversity and helping contribute to climate changes with our gas emissions. We over populate, consume more land, over populate again, so we consume more land for various purposes, grow in population, consume more land for the bigger population, then the next year grow in population again. It's a viscious cycle. This lifestyle is self destructive. Limiting biodiversity is a bad thing, right? Well, yeah thinking in short term. I posted this in another similar thread, which I suggest to read. There's some interesting posts in it... So here's the quote: "More food = more people = more space. We've been doing this system for 10,000 years, and now we're everywhere, consuming tons of resources other than land and food, but also oil, etc. (Ex... knocking down the amazon to drill for oil, pushing for new oil drills in alaskan wildife preserve). As we grow, we destroy and kill off species. In ecology we learn nature needs biodiversity to have balance. We are limiting biodiversity considerably. When you kill the frog in the pond, nobody's there to eat the insects. When the insects eat the plants you grow around the pond, you have no more food. You starve... OR move onto the next place, and repeat the process..." Eventually the culture is going to collapse, because it was born broken. It's only a matter of time. So, when biodiversity ends and the biosphere's balance collapses, humans will fall along with it. Slowly, surely, new species will arise, biodiversity will heal, the planet will continue for eons, and we will be left to become, in all the world's greatest irony, fossil fuels. So, there it is. Nothing to worry about really as far as Earth is concerned. As far as humans are concerned, we've got a lot to be concerned about! It's time to really take a hard look on our way of life and begin to retrace our steps. Begin to learn our place again on earth, as we once understood it to be. It's up to us to save ourselves.
good luck. i give the human race less than 200 years before extinction (or at least a massive population reduction). shit's speeding up and mother earth is gonna snap sooner or later. perhaps an uncontrollable virus?
This is assuming we don't all destroy each other in some kind of religious hatred. There is a lot to go wrong really. Maybe in a couple of hundred years, everybody is actually living happily with one another, ecologically disaster has been narrowly everted, and just then... out of nowhere... a huge comet comes and destroys instead.
Man, I agree. It is so obvious that we are destroying the planet that sustains us humans. it doesn't even take much intelligence to see this trend. i don't understand why so many people are so ignorant. I guess its the "not in my lifetime" frame of mind that perpetuates it. So, yes "Save the people" the planet will survive on its own just fine!
I totally agree with you. You can't destroy this planet. You can't even come close. Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on thes planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals - the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties ofd creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving... Endless constant and violent change... Even today, the greatest geographical feature on the planet comes from two great continents colliding, buckling to make the Himalayan mountain range over millions of years. The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us. Suppose there was a radiation accident. Let's say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the Earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere - under the soil, or perhaps frozen in arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain it's present variety, and of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the Earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we think it wouldn't. What if the ozone layer gets thinner? There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what? UV radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. There was a time where even oxygen wasn't necessary for life, but oxygen is actuall a metabolic poison. It's a corrosive gas, like flourine, and when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells - say, around three billion years ago - it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plants were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On Earth, the concentration was going up rapidly - five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life! My point is not that modern pollutants will also be incorperated. My point is that life on Earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time, but to the Earth a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine it's slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, and we very well might be, the Earth will not miss us. Let's be clear. I'm not saying we shouldn't care about the environment, but the planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet- or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.
Disagree with this. I think our activities are capable of seriosly disrupting the climate. And to say 'only' destroying bio-diversity is actually a bit sick. But not only that - modern industrial capitalism has led to many humans being forced to live under wholly artificial conditions, and as a result, we have a totally disfunctional society where people have lost any sense of their connection with nature. Lives are governed not by nature's cycles and rythyms, but by the demands of industrial capitalism. That is, if you can get to work on the gridlocked roads. And when you do arrive at work, you can spend your time in some repetitive and de-humanising task, which very probably contributes even more to the destruction of the environment. Of course, if you are a success, you'll be able to buy a bigger car, and thus produce even more co2 emissions, whilst at the same time, stealing from future generations. I'm afraid that the world does indeed need to be saved.
actually...we are already overdue and ice age....and that volcano under yellowstone is about 30K years overdue a pop.... life on earth, as we know it.....is fucked either way....wether it's us who pollutes the planet or the planet itself kicking up a racket....we ain't gonna go on like we are for a (relatively) long time
well the world is getting worse and worse by humans and i think humans should do something about it. But even if the world turned for the worse, eventually species will evolve to be able to cope with new tasks..and the new way of living.
i agree, the world is fucked one way or another....but we deffo shouldn't take that to mean we should treat it as we like....like a huge trashcan for example.... and yes, natural or man made...the world will change and evolve...mebbe the insects will get domination next time...who knows?
I agree with you. Scientists and Climatologists have already predicted that by 2050 we will be seeing drastic signs of what we have done to the Earth. I think we can safely say that we have fucked ourselves over.
I'm not sure about becoming extinct - somebody will almost always survive. There was a similar population reduction tens of thousands of years ago when the number of humans was reduced to just a few thousand. I was watching a documentary about it - but I can't remember what the cause was. Possibly a super volcano, or maybe a planetary impact. The people that survive will probably be the self sufficient hippyists and survivalists with a 500yr supply of baked beans.
The worms well get us all here long before many other things could happen . At the same token a meteor could slam into us in a few hours from now. our miserable life on this planet might last 90 years if your even that lucky to live that long.
lucky to live to be 90??? none of my grandparents got too that age and they had tended to fade into barely an existance at all by the age of 80 what im saying is, i wouldn't want to be fleeing the floods with a zimmer frame
After eating a 500yr supply of baked beans, I think the earth is going to face another environmental threat...
