Will the Sun set on the human race?: Can Homo sapiens survive - or is it doomed to extinction, a fate known to have overtaken up to 99 per cent of all life forms?
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Following Fenner was a stream of distinguished representatives from other fields, putting forward their own insights on science and the question of survival of the species. And the same themes continually emerged: science is powerful and has enabled an overconsumption of the planet's resources; we need to make a major change; and that change needs to happen soon.
"There are about 1,000 times as many people to be fed as there were before the introduction of farming about 450 generations ago," said Stephen Boyden, a worldwide authority on human ecology. "This places enormous continuing pressures on the food-producing ecosystems of the biosphere.
"During the past few generations, there has been a massive intensification of resource and energy use and technological waste production by humankind. As a species, we are now using about 12,000 times as much energy every day as when farming started. And we're discharging into the environment about 12,000 times as much greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, as well as vast amounts of other environmental pollutants."
Boyden's term for this alarming growth is "evermorism" – a term he defines as an ideology requiring 'evermore' levels of consumption and waste. "It's environmentally absurd," he said.
Then an earth scientist put the historical performance of Homo sapiens in a global geological context. "Throughout the 20th century, evidence mounted of an exponential loss in habitat and disappearance of species," said Andrew Glikson, an earth scientist at Canberra's Australian National University (ANU) and one of the organisers of the conference. "This is comparable with mass extinctions recorded in geological history at the end of Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods."
"This current extinction is different because it is caused by us," said Glikson, who added that it might be appropriate that Homo sapiens be renamed 'Homo biocidus' for its outstanding record in wiping out other forms of life.
John Chappell, another earth scientist at the university, took up the theme of extinction with a particular focus on corals.
"Coral are my exemplars," said Chappell, with a sad gleam in his eye. "These reef-builders have, over hundreds of thousands of years, weathered large, rapid changes of sea level and climate but are in widespread decline owing to rising temperatures, sediments and carbon dioxide."
Chappell's team discovered the correlation between the 1997 Indonesian wild fires – caused by unsustainable logging practices – and massive and deadly algal blooms in nearby coastal waters. Apparently, nutrients in the smoke served as a fertiliser for the algae. The algal bloom killed all the fish and coral reef over a stretch of some 400km. Examining a record of fossilised corals, Chappell's team found this red tide had been the worst in some 7,000 years.
But declines in coral reefs aren't restricted to Indonesia: they're happening all around the planet, and it's the impacts of human activity that are behind their retreat, he said. In the Caribbean, for example, there has been an 80 per cent decline of coral in recent decades. Corals have been described as our 'canary down the mineshaft'. If so, maybe we should be taking heed.
The measure of human rationality
"they were either ignored … or they spoke up too late." or they were dealing with phenomena outside the current limits of their knowledge, ethics and reason. And that same process can be observed unfolding at this very moment.
Survival of the Human species
is our extinction really such a bad thing ?
we are merely the leaseholders of the Planet, and like any itinerant tenant that insists on constantly trying their hand at home improvements to the detriment of the entire building we will be duly evicted.
Once we are gone,the Earth will heal itself and another genus will be handed a new
tenancy agreement and invited to make something with the available resources, the third such tenant since the original leaseholders, the Dinosaurs, failed to make much more of it than was given them.
Homo Sapien or killer ape, which ever description you prefer, has made it this far despite himself and his baser instincts rule his heart, which are to kill and destroy, we just can't help ourselves, even our pitiful invention, the Sky Fairies, (aka religion), has in all its guises, failed to assuage us of our self destructive instincts.
Eternity beckons for our children, and yet even at the end we will pray to the sky fairies for guidance and forgiveness. "God Help us"
Time to move on....
Well i guess scifi is near Jump in our Ftl ships and pollute some other planet ....
It's an evolution our next step is it just some impossible evolution? What about already looking at the stars for new liveable planets how about some crazy projects about traveling faster then light?
Well guess what no matter what we will find a way lol trust me a chance to destroy another planet damn right .Its our instinct and im pertty sure if we see another type of species were gonna kick them out and conquer whatever is there. Yup thats us Humans .
survival of the human species.
I love this question. We humans have done what no other creature has been able to do on this planet. we have trancended evolution even though we are still a part of it. If the question is will we still look and have the same genetic makeup as today a million years from now, the answer has to be no. but barring a total cataclysmic event on the planet, humans will be around for a long time. what we need to do is ensure our survival by moving beyond our border of this blue marble and that, will definitly will ensure our survival. even if 99 percentof the population dies off that still leaves alot of people.lr vero beach florida
Human Survival...?????????????????
..."I am not sure which weapons world war III will be fought with, but world war IV, will be fought with rocks and sticks"
...Albert Einstein.
...2 more generations at most...
..."Raupauch cautioned: "We have just two more generations, at most, to fix the problem with our climate systems."...
So folks, if we are already up to gen-"Y".
Can anyone tell me what comes after "Z" ...????????
ON A COLD AUTUMNAL .......
O nosso mundo está mudando, e se os seres humanos, num futuro próximo, nao fazer nada em relação aos desmatamento, clima, efeito estufa, estaremos todos condenados num período de curto tempo... a florestas amazonas vai virar um deserto, as terras vão ficar cada vez mais estéril para a agricultura, num futuro próximo, não mais de 25 anos, o planeta terra vai ter sérias dificuldade de relacionamento com a natureza.
O homens do nosso planeta terra, não esta pensando na preservação, sim em como lucrar no desmatamento, em uso irracional da natureza, nos dias de hoje qualquer pessoas sempre comentam, o clima não esta como era a 25 anos atras. Temos que fazer algo agora, é já... para que as concequencias não chegue a todos...
boom and bust
the economic buble is good anlog to human race. Sustainable existance is a colonization of space. But that has a problem of limiting the gene pool and hence evolution. No doubt our selfish gene will kick in and we will devolve (or evolve) to dolphins and leave the planet by our own means."So long and thanks for all the fish" - ( Douglas Adams 1978).
Respect the digital watch and now ipod bla bla...
:-) Nick