"100 years left for humans on earth, if we're lucky" Topic

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According to the "prophet" Stephen Hawking.

I prophesy too. We're better than this. Climate change won't wipe us out, not remotely. It could reduce our total numbers by well over fifty percent. After that, that would be a good thing actually.

Space travel would only take a select few off the planet, it wouldn't begin to save mankind on Earth.

Viruses would take our numbers down too, and the survivors would be immune to the super bugs that reduced the population. We go on.

Nukes. Yes, that is our single biggest threat. But we know it and we won't do it………….

Who made Hawking an expert on everything?

Whoever hacked his voice computer this week, that's who.

Brilliant mind, but he's not the first scientist to be off his rocker about areas outside his field. And he won't be the last, for well more than a hundred years.

I trust his expertise on black holes…..

Within his area of expertise, I trust his word implicitly. Outside of it, I give him only slightly more credit than the janitor where I work.

This story had been previously posted by another media outlet months ago. So that means we actually have less than 100 years to go.

I guess it is time to party like it's 2116. Woot! Woot!

Our single biggest threat is people telling us what our single biggest threat is.

Bring it on. I say let's just party like it's 1999!

Dan

Martian Root Canal +1

Only slightly better than politicians speaking outside their field. Yeah, I'm looking at you Al (Manbearpig) Gore.

Brilliant mind, but he's not the first scientist to be off his rocker about areas outside his field.

Yep. But to be fair he is including nuclear destruction so the 100 year guesstimate doesn't make him really off his rocker, does it? How many missing Russian warheads are there, and who has got them now?

Anyway it is an example of Argument by Authority. A logical fallacy.

The kind of dislocation that would come from cutting the world population in half would lead to wars, multiple wars, on the scale of WWII. In a world with as many nukes as this one, that is an unconscionable risk.

Maybe he has really bought into the whole "Georgia Guidestones" myth.

Dan

The current issue of NatGeo has the briefest of Q&A with Al Gore. He doesn't really answer any of the three questions allowed. His pic takes up over half of the single page he gets. I bet that the interview produced very little that NatGeo could use. And even the tiny bit they printed is woefully uninspiring.

The middle question is indicative of his inability to answer a simple question:

Q: Why have such sharp political divisions emerged over climate change?

Al: There's an old saying in Tennessee: If you see a turtle on the top of a fence post, you can be pretty sure it didn't get there on its own. A determined minority – with active financial support from a few large carbon polluters – has held up progress for quite a while. They have used lobbying power and the threat of financing primary opponents, using the same techniques we saw in the past with Big Tobacco to falsely create doubt. All of us are vulnerable to what psychologists call denial: If something is uncomfortable, it's easier to push it away, to not engage. But the solution is to listen and approach people on the basis of where they are.

What does the turtle illustration have to do with the question?

How does pointing to super rich people who got that way using capitalism (which idealizes separation from Gov't interference), answer the question? All he's doing is accusing free enterprise of destroying "solutions" to what he says is the problem. Which isn't true at all: self interest has to be addressed, and you don't address it by threatening gov't takedown of big private money people and what they own. So the political divide is caused by the overreach of so-called "solutions", which all partake of gov't control and ownership in the place of private ownership. But he won't go there.

There isn't anything about denying climate change in the political divide. Only a few kooky fringe deniers exist. The vast majority allow that the climate is changing. It always has and always will. The amount of human cause is debated. Solutions must be economically viable, even lucrative, before the big money people will invest.

How many windmills does Al Gore have on each of his mansions? Solar panels? Is his string of domiciles off the grid yet?

Come on. Give the man a break. I mean, his hot air alone could power a small nation, if channeled properly.

Dan

It's a perfectly safe statement to make. None of us will be there to tell him he was wrong.

Fortunately, you guys are waaaayyyyy smarter than Mr. Hawking. I trust your word outside your field of expertise much more than I trust his word outside his.

No there will be individual who are alive now you will still be here in 100 years.

Sure chances are they are all the age of 10 years old with the odd individual who is 10 – 20 years old.

But they will be alive in one hundred years.

Thing is Hawking will not be one of them since I am thinking he will be gone in the next 5-7 years if not sooner.

He might find a way to stick around.

Dan

I am amused that the Stump Turtle gets trotted out by both sides of the political spectrum.

First of all, has anyone here made any effort to determine what Hawking knows, and what data he is citing or basing this statement on? If you haven't, and you are calling him out, then what's your purpose?

AL Gore?!?!? Are you kidding me? You realize that "Inconvenient Truth" came out over ten years ago? Since then there have been 100s of thousands of pages of reported research on the subject of Climate Change and we're still bashing` Al Gore?

Hey, it is NatGeo reproducing Al. He has a new movie coming out next month, called, "An Inconvenient Sequel". If he won't shut up, makes stupid connections to unconnected things, then he's going to get bashed.

Maybe Hawkins is just recalling this timeline, which has WW3 taking place in 2053:

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Dan

Ice ages come and ice ages go

Ice ages come and ice ages go

Channeling Bill O'Reilly?

"Ice ages come and ice ages go"

Don't they always? It is we who think everything is constant and incapable of adapting.

Oh, by the way, extinction happens, with or without our help. So far mostly without.

Dan

Don't they always?

No, there have been 5.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

It is we who think everything is constant and incapable of adapting.

Don't include me in your "we".

Oh, by the way, extinction happens, with or without our help. So far mostly without.

Thanks Captain Obvious. No one knew that . As usual, there is a subtlety that escapes those that bleat, "Oh, but the climate has changed before, there are times where the average temperature of the Earth has been colder and hotter". Same with those that mimic what Dan said above.

It is not an issue of whether climate has changed in the past without human involvement, or that animals went extinct in the past without human involvement. In both cases, it is the unprecedented rate of change that is to be laid at out feet. For example, most of the great extinctions took place over many hundreds of thousands of years to many millions of years. In fact, most of the extinctions (with one distinct exception) were not really a single event, rather they were a long drawn out process made from a series of extinctions.

The exception, of course is the KT extinction which did in most of the dinosaurs. That seems to be caused from a meteor strike and therefore was very sudden. Scientists from Berkeley, Princeton, U of Florida, U of Mexico and Stanford are thinking we are in the beginning of a 6th die off, which is mainly our fault.

Article:

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Paper:

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"No, there have been 5."

Murphy's law?

"Don't include me in your "we"."

I meant mankind in general. But you can include or exclude yourself, if you like. :)

Dan

So you speak on behalf of all humanity? Lol! I actually think most people understand the transience of nature and life. Things change, sometimes not for the better. Acknowledging our part in that is the first step in seeking a solution.

"Acknowledging our part"? So you include yourself this time? Lol.

Dan

People won't change the climate as dramatically or suddenly as a cosmic event. If the earth survived that calamity (sans dinosaurs), how can what we are doing possibly rival that?

The oceans are warming. The ice surrounding Antarctica is melting at an unprecedented rate (for recorded history). The glaciers are cracking and calving off into the oceans. The ocean level is rising. By the end of the century it might by 13 feet higher, which will destroy large parts of some of the largest coastal cities in the world. In millennia, at this rate, the oceans will rise over a hundred feet as all that glacier pack melts away.

As if this were the end of all things, we hear constant bleating that we are evil if we don't do something NOW. All of this change will be laid at our feet.

I am not an asteroid. Earth came up with homo sapiens, according to the wisdom of the evolutionists. If the earth can come up with life that destroys itself, how does that address the assertion that "we must act NOW"!? If we are to destroy the planet, then anything we do will end up being feckless and destroy the planet.

I am sure that Nature can handle anything we can do to it. Even huge changes. But I don't accept that we are affecting huge changes. We are part of changes already slated to happen. If we make them happen faster, how is that good or bad? It just is………..

"Acknowledging our part"? So you include yourself this time? Lol.

This is hard to understand? I acknowledge that there is a human component to global warming. So do most scientists who study this topic. And about 50% of the US public, according to Gallup (from 2008, and that number has gone up according to the Yale Climate Opinion Poll) . In my country the figures are higher and also rising. What I'm not on board with is the broad sweeping generalization of you saying, "It is we who think everything is constant and incapable of adapting." My undergraduate degree is in biology, so why would I think your comment has any validity? Makes sense now?

People won't change the climate as dramatically or suddenly as a cosmic event. If the earth survived that calamity (sans dinosaurs), how can what we are doing possibly rival that?

Argumentum ad ignorantiam.

But I don't accept that we are affecting huge changes

Well I guess you'd know. That's it then, no need to worry. Whew!

@Bowman: "so why would I think your comment has any validity?"

Lol. So true. Why would you.

Dan

Worry will cause stupid decisions. How would the animals have reacted if Chicken Little had proposed a collection to brace up the sky by climbing trees and stringing netting across the tops? Then Chicken Little and Company got voted into Office on the strength of her movement. She implemented her proposal to keep the sky from hitting people as it fell in pieces. Taxes were raised to fund the treetop netting project. But that didn't cover it, so taxes were increased. Meanwhile, "the people" were cowering beneath the threatening sky every time that they went about outside. More "pieces" of sky were discovered, but nothing very big. "What is the sky, anyway?" became the debate advanced by the few doubters. But it was too late: the majority of animals were terrified by the looming danger and allowed themselves to be gouged by the new gov't. Chicken Little was a believer in her own worry and did not profit from the taxation. But many of her underlings quietly pushed the costs of the netting project up and pocketed the difference. (The followup is another story…………)

The Russians hacked it!

You know, in the olden days, an event like the forthcoming total solar eclipse across the country would be seen as a highly significant Omen, full of portent and menace. Is Manwe angered with us?

Lol. Well, good luck finding a virgin!

Dan

Well, this interpretation of the numbers is certainly interesting:

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Dan
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I wouldn't worry too much about Lomborg's opinion. He has jumped all over the place, contradicting himself……and that isn't when he has been shown to be totally wrong.

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for more info.

Oh, and as for the "Hail Science" silliness, thanks for the straw for your argument. And Lomborg is not a scientist.

Back in the reality-based world:

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And Lomborg is not a scientist.

Technically, his PhD is in Political science…

Bowman: "Oh, and as for the "Hail Science" silliness, thanks for the straw for your argument."

Any time, man. If you don't know this by now, I take very few things seriously in life. Laughter is medicine, even non-cerebral silliness, but only if you don't take yourself too seriously.

Dan

Dan, laughter is indeed medicine. However, there is a difference between finding humour in a subject and trivializing everything.