There is a distinct possibility the human species might be completely screwed.
18 replies, posted
Disclaimer: This article operates off the assumption that you understand and acknowledge the effects of global warming. If climate change as a result of human activity is something you do not believe in, it would be best not to reply - I'd rather not debate it.
I'm writing this because of the [url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1471913] thread in Sensationalist Headlines[/url] posted last month about the same article - I just felt it was a topic of magnitude enough to warrant a discussion thread in GD.
[quote=BBC News]The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded, and humans could be among the first casualties.The report, led by the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley, said vertebrates were disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal.
The findings echo those in a report published by Duke University last year.
One of the new study's authors said: "We are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event."
The last such event was 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs were wiped out, in all likelihood by a large meteor hitting Earth.[/quote]
[url=http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33209548] Link to the news article, which has a lot more to read than the small excerpt I've posted here[/url]
[url=http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253.full]Link to the report, published in Science Magazine[/url]
As long as I've lived, I've had a keen interest in the cosmos, and I used to love watching and reading science fiction as a kid. Stuff like Star Trek, and more recently, Firefly, Mass Effect, Elite and more, captured my imagination in the greatest way. To me, they were always signs of hope - Hope that we'd one day be able to break through the paradigms and technological barriers that prevented us from visiting other stars, drawing resources from other planets, and perhaps even finding other places we could call home, places to which humanity could spread and in which they could flourish as we do here on Earth. As I grew into adulthood, studied the hard science more deeply, ran the numbers and finally began to have an inkling of the true scale of our galaxy, that hope grew until it burned within me like a beacon. Even if I didn't live to see it, I wanted so badly to believe that humans would one day visit other star systems and adapt to live on other planets. To believe that we wouldn't fuck it up for ourselves, that we'd endure as a species for at least a little while longer.
Which is why it sucks so much as I finally come to realize that we're out of time, and we'll never know what we could've been.
Ladies and gents, it's been a good run. But this might be the end. Our species, in all likelihood, is [I]fucked.[/I]
To understand why, please find the time to read at least the abstract of the report.
In brief, it draws attention to the fact that, largely as a result of human activity, human-driven climate change, and deforestation, more species of flora and fauna are going extinct on our planet today than in any previous period in the history of Earth - Save only periods of mass extinction - That is, when ecosystems across the world collapsed in a cascade and most life on Earth was wiped out. Which in itself does not immediately cause a lot of alarm. Sure, we'd lose a lot of animals, but we'd survive, right? Unfortunately, it isn't looking that way. The first species that we depend on is already on the chopping block - bees.
Bees pollinate plants because of their behavior of gathering nectar. They have become the primary manner by which many, many plants across the world reproduce, and are absolutely essential for ecological stability and human survival. Today, they are beginning to die out en masse, due to an unfortunate combination of neurotoxin in human pesticide (which they come in contact with while gathering nectar), and several new parasites that attack bee hives, both domestically and in the wild. That is why it is said today that a healthy hive of honey bees is worth more than its weight in gold. According to the report, it is estimated that in about three human generations - So eighty to a hundred years - there will not be enough left to pollinate plants, and that there is no viable way to stop their decline.
[B]This is where it gets ugly.[/B]
Humans will no longer be able to grow most of their food, or feed their livestock. The wealthiest nations on the planet may be spared for a few years, but slowly, inevitably, the majority of human beings on Earth will die of starvation, waging bloody war against each other for the last usable food resources. Ecosystems worldwide that relied on plants that were pollinated by bees will collapse, and extinction of animal species will accelerate to the point that the last remaining humans will find it nearly impossible to find a steady way to feed themselves. This is where the extinction will begin to cascade beyond all control. Though a very small number of people might survive for a few centuries, living in conditions comparable to early tribal groups, their position will inevitably become untenable, and they too will slowly starve.
So that's it. Curtains for humanity in as little as three to five hundred years, [I]with the majority of humans probably dying out in just over a hundred years from today[/I]. The end of the only sapient species on the planet. It's estimated that the Earth will take millions of years to recover, by which point there will be no trace of our civilization left for any race that comes after to discover, no matter how large we build it, or what we make it out of.
As bleak as that is, that's not the most cruel part. It's this:
[quote=Report][B]Averting a dramatic decay of biodiversity and the subsequent loss of ecosystem services is still possible through intensified conservation efforts, but that window of opportunity is rapidly closing.[/B][/quote]
It's a false hope. We're not going to lift a fucking finger to stop this until it's too late, and in the end, we'll know we only had ourselves to blame. How do I know this? Because of the way humans behave. None of this is a new discovery - We've been aware for many, many years that something like this was coming, we just didn't want to imagine it'd happen so soon.
Let's use the United States as an example, simply because it is currently the world's most powerful political, economic, technological and military superpower.
Scientists and academics around the world have been lobbying the government of the United States for decades to take drastic action and implement change in environmental protection policies that might save the planet - Change that the rest of the world might follow, using the United States as an example. The reaction? Monied interests pay off a bunch of phony 'experts' to say that climate change isn't real, and suddenly the US government and half the population pretends it doesn't exist. This is something unique about our species, they way we can turn a blind eye to things that threaten our very existence simply because they're inconvenient truths, because of big oil, corporate interests, and the all-important profit margins on the stock exchange. Any threat that isn't directly tangible and in front of us, we can easily ignore, dismissing or turning a blind eye to all the empirical evidence supporting its existence. Even now, many of you reading this think I'm blowing this out of proportion, that it won't be nearly as bad as I'm making it out to be.
I wish I could believe that.
It never ceases to amaze me that in a country like the USA, a country that leads the world in science and technology by driving innovation through the minds of its best and brightest, a country in which all have access to a free primary and secondary education, people are flat out [I]denying[/I] physical, observable reality and instead filling the gap with some flowery fantasy, just because it's an uncomfortable truth. I'm sickened by the fact that in a country that claims to be best at everything it does, there are elected officials who think of climate change as a hoax, even some who believe the planet is only six thousand years old, and that evolution is a myth. [I]People in positions of power, in a first-world nation, live in a delusion.[/I] That's scary. But it proves that we as a species are boned, and that it's going to be our own fault.
What a way to go, folks. The people who do know that a disaster is coming will be forced to watch helplessly as that 'window of opportunity' closes at last, and by the time the collapse of ecosystems becomes dramatic enough that the governments of the world can no longer afford to ignore it, it'll already be far too late.
If you or I want someone to blame, we need only look in a mirror.
I'm not a religious man, but if there is a god out there who cares, please, please let me be wrong.
No fucking way the human species will go extinct from starvation.
We are one of the most adaptable species to have ever lived on this planet. We can eat almost anything, we can live in almost any temperature, we are the apex predator in every single ecosystem we enter.
Even if every single edible animal goes extinct (which it won't, we will never let chickens go extinct), there are so many plants left to eat. We could even survive on algae if we didn't have an alternative.
I'm not saying we will have it easy though. If bees go extinct we might enter a huge crisis, large nations might fall, but there is no way it would kill every single human on this planet. We would have to switch to alternative methods of pollination or switch to different plants that don't need bees.
We might even have to introduce Africanized Honey Bees to more ecosystems. They are aggressive and shitty, but nothing that could literally kill our species.
[QUOTE=Robber;48273859]
We might even have to introduce Africanized Honey Bees to more ecosystems.[/QUOTE]
I'm not qualified to speak on this, but doesn't species introduction tend to just ruin more things?
[QUOTE=ScottyWired;48273876]I'm not qualified to speak on this, but doesn't species introduction tend to just ruin more things?[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure anything we can do when the shit hits the fan might make things worse than they already are. At that point, anything's worth trying.
[QUOTE=ScottyWired;48273876]I'm not qualified to speak on this, but doesn't species introduction tend to just ruin more things?[/QUOTE]
I'm not qualified either, but I guess if we are literally fighting for survival everything that keeps us going is fair game.
I definitely remember posting in that SH thread because it really hit me hard.
[QUOTE=archangel125;48273883]I'm not sure anything we can do when the shit hits the fan might make things worse than they already are. At that point, anything's worth trying.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Robber;48273896]I'm not qualified either, but I guess if we are literally fighting for survival everything that keeps us going is fair game.[/QUOTE]
Being an IT student who is always witnessing computers as a viable solution, I'm still down for the idea of mass-producing microdrones that pollinate plants in place of bees.
Challenges of course include
-Designing them to use few poisonous metals.
-Making them unappealing to predators.
-Easy retrieval. Maybe use iron as the key material and pick them up with a fuckhuge magnet on a tractor. Or a beacon at the end of the field that they can slowly trudge towards over the course of several weeks.
-Group coordination. There's already boatloads of prototypes that can do this.
-Recognising target plant parts. Because the hardware used in Google Car detection systems ain't gonna fit in a metal insect.
[editline]23rd July 2015[/editline]
In This Thread: Facepunch posts crackpot ideas to save the human race
[QUOTE=ScottyWired;48273949]I definitely remember posting in that SH thread because it really hit me hard.
Being an IT student who is always witnessing computers as a viable solution, I'm still down for the idea of mass-producing microdrones that pollinate plants in place of bees.
Challenges of course include
-Designing them to use few poisonous metals.
-Making them unappealing to predators.
-Easy retrieval. Maybe use iron as the key material and pick them up with a fuckhuge magnet on a tractor. Or a beacon at the end of the field that they can slowly trudge towards over the course of several weeks.
-Group coordination. There's already boatloads of prototypes that can do this.
-Recognising target plant parts. Because the hardware used in Google Car detection systems ain't gonna fit in a metal insect.
[editline]23rd July 2015[/editline]
In This Thread: Facepunch posts crackpot ideas to save the human race[/QUOTE]
I was thinking genetic engineering of insects might be a better solution if we could manage it, but... I don't know.
[QUOTE=Robber;48273859]No fucking way the human species will go extinct from starvation.
We are one of the most adaptable species to have ever lived on this planet. We can eat almost anything, we can live in almost any temperature, we are the apex predator in every single ecosystem we enter.
Even if every single edible animal goes extinct (which it won't, we will never let chickens go extinct), there are so many plants left to eat. We could even survive on algae if we didn't have an alternative.
I'm not saying we will have it easy though. If bees go extinct we might enter a huge crisis, large nations might fall, but there is no way it would kill every single human on this planet. We would have to switch to alternative methods of pollination or switch to different plants that don't need bees.
We might even have to introduce Africanized Honey Bees to more ecosystems. They are aggressive and shitty, but nothing that could literally kill our species.[/QUOTE]
I have to agree with this.
Billions of people could die, low lying lands flooded, millions of square kilometers of crops ruined, but some part of the human species would survive. Worse comes to worse we start chemically converting CO2 into glucose to eat (which would be awful but survivable).
Hell, if we launched a single nuclear weapon at every city during the height of the Cold War starting with the largest and progressing to the smallest until we run out humanity would have survived.
The only thing that has any chance of destroying us is the complete destruction of the planet of a very fast moving pathogen
Yes, Global Warming will be awful. Yes, it will cause untold damage, But no, it will not kill humanity as a species.
[QUOTE=archangel125;48273960]I was thinking genetic engineering of insects might be a better solution if we could manage it, but... I don't know.[/QUOTE]
Or do modifying something drastic in the crops.
Farfetched idea #2: EXPLOSIONS.
[video=youtube;NsIojj4PzAo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsIojj4PzAo[/video]
So we got plants like this, where the seeds dry out out and fly off. So what if we did this with some crops, and they had a tiny pod that exploded and pollinates around them.
Slightly less farfetched idea: Make pollen really loose on some plants so they could become much more wind-pollinated instead of relying on insects.
[QUOTE=Robber;48273859]No fucking way the human species will go extinct from starvation.
We are one of the most adaptable species to have ever lived on this planet. We can eat almost anything, we can live in almost any temperature, we are the apex predator in every single ecosystem we enter.
Even if every single edible animal goes extinct (which it won't, we will never let chickens go extinct), there are so many plants left to eat. We could even survive on algae if we didn't have an alternative.
I'm not saying we will have it easy though. If bees go extinct we might enter a huge crisis, large nations might fall, but there is no way it would kill every single human on this planet. We would have to switch to alternative methods of pollination or switch to different plants that don't need bees.
We might even have to introduce Africanized Honey Bees to more ecosystems. They are aggressive and shitty, but nothing that could literally kill our species.[/QUOTE]
And even if worse comes to all, there is a chance cannibalism will become a major thing, which is disgusting but possible.
[editline]23rd July 2015[/editline]
Oh and we got space, so even if we have to evac, we can still live in space, I mean there are already some NASA guys living in space, so it's possible to live there, food yes would be a problem but it doesn't mean we will go extinct that quickly. Who knows, maybe in the future we can freeze ourselves for an amount of time.
By the way I am not saying this isn't going to happen, or that we don't have to worry about it.
We do have a problem, and we do have to worry about it.
It's just not going to make the human race extinct.
[QUOTE=Xonax;48274031]And even if worse comes to all, there is a chance cannibalism will become a major thing, which is disgusting but possible.[/QUOTE]
Apex predators aren't exactly a sustainable source of food.
[editline]23rd July 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Xonax;48274031]
Oh and we got space, so even if we have to evac, we can still live in space, I mean there are already some NASA guys living in space, so it's possible to live there, food yes would be a problem but it doesn't mean we will go extinct that quickly.[/QUOTE]
I think you're skipping steps here.
While being the 'last survivors' has a romantic notion to it, think less in terms of "How can [I]teeter [/I]on brink of extinction?" and more in terms of "How can we stay a[I] thousand miles away[/I] from the brink of extinction?"
I'd rather not live in a world where such drastic actions are considered by anyone except authors.
[QUOTE=ScottyWired;48274041]Apex predators aren't exactly a sustainable source of food.
[editline]23rd July 2015[/editline]
I think you're skipping steps here.
While being the 'last survivors' has a romantic notion to it, think less in terms of "How can [I]teeter [/I]on brink of extinction?" and more in terms of "How can we stay a[I] thousand miles away[/I] from the brink of extinction?"
I'd rather not live in a world where such drastic actions are considered by anyone except authors.[/QUOTE]
Good point.
Just trying to bring some hope tho.
Wouldn't some kind of cropdusting-with-pollen solution be far easier and cost effective than building drones or doing genetic engineering? I understand that it's not a very interesting solution or as close to the natural process as the alternatives, but it may serve as a simpler bandaid solution while we work on that other tech
[QUOTE=Problem;48274267]Wouldn't some kind of cropdusting-with-pollen solution be far easier and cost effective than building drones or doing genetic engineering? I understand that it's not a very interesting solution or as close to the natural process as the alternatives, but it may serve as a simpler bandaid solution while we work on that other tech[/QUOTE]
Not unless we find a way to essentially mass-manufacture pollen.
[QUOTE=ScottyWired;48273876]I'm not qualified to speak on this, but doesn't species introduction tend to just ruin more things?[/QUOTE]
People tend to think of nature as some sort of status quo, held in a delicate balance that can't be altered unless you want to throw everything out of order. But it really isn't. It's actually extremely chaotic and it's practically impossible to really ruin it. The only thing that'll stop nature from adapting and evolving would be the complete destruction of all life on the planet.
[quote]Bees pollinate plants because of their behavior of gathering nectar. They have become the primary manner by which many, many plants across the world reproduce, and are absolutely essential for ecological stability and human survival. Today, they are beginning to die out en masse, due to an unfortunate combination of neurotoxin in human pesticide (which they come in contact with while gathering nectar), and several new parasites that attack bee hives, both domestically and in the wild. That is why it is said today that a healthy hive of honey bees is worth more than its weight in gold. According to the report, it is estimated that in about three human generations - So eighty to a hundred years - there will not be enough left to pollinate plants, and that there is no viable way to stop their decline.[/quote]
Perhaps I'm missing something - if the bees didn't come into contact with this pesticide, why would they still continue to die out (aside from the parasites)?
The obvious solution then is to change the pesticide, and develop some way of protecting bee hives from these parasites. If humans can engineer a mosquito to tackle malaria, I have confidence we can eradicate a parasite or engineer bees with some resistance to this parasite
Convincing the politicians is what I fear will be the hardest part of solving any potential threat. Some don't even believe in global warming, let alone invisible parasites that threaten our food supply through a long chain of events
With that said: are bees required to grow corn etc. on a mass scale? What aspect of our food supply do they threaten and how?
[QUOTE=Trumple;48277784]Perhaps I'm missing something - if the bees didn't come into contact with this pesticide, why would they still continue to die out (aside from the parasites)?
The obvious solution then is to change the pesticide, and develop some way of protecting bee hives from these parasites. If humans can engineer a mosquito to tackle malaria, I have confidence we can eradicate a parasite or engineer bees with some resistance to this parasite
Convincing the politicians is what I fear will be the hardest part of solving any potential threat. Some don't even believe in global warming, let alone invisible parasites that threaten our food supply through a long chain of events
With that said: are bees required to grow corn etc. on a mass scale? What aspect of our food supply do they threaten and how?[/QUOTE]
The problem is that scientists haven't yet pinned down WHAT is causing the bees to die in such huge numbers. The pesticides and parasites are a contributing factor, but even together they shouldn't be having an effect of this magnitude. So without knowing why, we can't really stop it. Check this out:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqA42M4RtxE[/media]
Existence is futile.
While I understand and respect the drastic changes we can expect from our environment, and our current role in preventing or worsening these changes, I feel the need to say that your OP is all over the damn place and is making too many assumptions to be taken seriously.
Firstly, I'd ask you to look at the endangered species list, and ask yourself "do we [i]really[/i] need the Alabama cave fish and the African wild ass to continue to live our lives"? No we really dont. The fact that more species than ever before are currently going extinct, and that even more will be joining them sucks shit. It is the premise of that article. We are leading a mass extinction event, and will loose hundreds of unique species of the next dozens of years. It is an awful reality, and it is a reality that we as a species directly caused. However, it is not a reality of "all that we depend on will die". Our livestock will remain. Our agriculture will remain. It is partially [i]FOR [/i] these facets of our existence that many other species die.
I dont want to appear overly dissmissive or content with the loss of our planets biodiversity, but this thread does not seem to care for that, it only seems to care for chatting about our existence.
Allow me to quote the article:
[quote]According to the IUCN, the lemur faces a real struggle to avoid extinction in the wild in the coming years.
The group says that 94% of all lemurs are under threat, with more than a fifth of all lemur species classed as "critically endangered".[/quote]
The impact a lemur has on the current human existence is utterly moot. This is my point, the majority of what will go extinct has a non existent or utterly negligible effect on our exsitence as humans. I would never wish for them to be gone, but we wont really miss them if they are.
The scenario with the bees is much more serious, but again you overstate. The vast majority of livestock feed is made from corn. Corn is wind pollinated. There are many other crops that we rely on, that are also wind pollinated. Overlooking this is probably why so many people rated you dumb.
A quick search reveals a list of all garden crops that can be wind pollinated:
[quote]
• All leafy greens
• Brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi
• Below ground root veggies and tubers such as carrots, parsnips, salsify, potatoes, sweet potatoes, horseradish
• Ground level root veggies such as beets, turnips, rutabagas
• Most legumes including peas and beans
• Corn
• Herbs
• Celery
• Onions and leeks
• Tomatoes
[/quote]
Hardly doomsday in my opinion.
Finally, your quote:
[quote]It's a false hope. We're not going to lift a fucking finger to stop this until it's too late, and in the end, we'll know we only had ourselves to blame[/quote]
Ill quote my older post in the SH thread as I feel it's applicable:
[quote]Bear in mind that since 1900, we have increased our efforts in conservation and enviromental understanding immensely, even the fact that we are now identifying these impending catastrophes is a testament to us coming to terms with the reality we face with our enviroment. There is a long way to go, obviously, (bearing in mind that "very soon" can span 100s of years for some impacts of enviromental degradation). We cant forget that there have been victories, such as the renewal of the ozone hole over the Antarctic. The reality is very far from a "lost cause hummanities doomed within a generation" scenario, but at the same time complacency and generational procrastination cause very little progress to be made, but it is being made in some cases. [/quote]
Im not trying to downplay anything that is now occuring. What we face is serious in the utmost, and we really do need to increase the actions we are currently undertaking. However, "the end is nigh" accomplishes just as little as "climate change is a liberal hoax".
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