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4 11

"It's the end of the world as we know it... and I feel fine" (REM)

NASA confirms end of the world date theorized by Stephen Hawking - and it's closer than you might think. The article says we could be toast by the year 2600 if we don't change our ways. And it's going to take more than recycling plastic bags. What do you think? (Link below)

[irishstar.com]

TheoryNumber3 8 Oct 30
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6

2000 is the end of the world!
Haley's Comet heralds The End (everytime it passes by)
The Mayans predicted the end of the world!
The Rapture is coming next Tuesday!(pick any Tuesday you like, there's one every week)
Annnnd etc.......

I appreciate that, but our current mode of living is clearly unsustainable in the days, decades, centuries beyond our existence. We've denied it long enough. We have to change our ways. Now try convincing big pharma, big oil and big money.

1

We have lately been experiencing the initial stages of climate change and already it is like a day-hike through the Book of Revelations: πŸ”₯πŸŒŠπŸŒžπŸŒ€πŸŒͺ️🦟☠️ off-the-charts fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, mosquito-bourne diseases, and extinction rates among flora and fauna. And this is only the beginning! Geologists have pieced together a pretty comprehensive chronicle of Earth's climate over the last few hundred million years, and the big takeaway is that things can change very drastically very quickly. Now just keep that thought while I remind you that everything about modern civilization depends on stability. For instance, in agriculture (the foundation of all human civilizations). In order to make decisions about when and where to plant food crops, you kind of have to be able to count on the rains coming at certain times and in certain amounts; and temperatures varying only within a certain narrow range. That predictability is fast becoming a quaint anachronism. And again, what we have seen so far is only a little taste of what is to come if we keep on burning fossil fuels. So far, we have dumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to push the temperature up a little more than one degree Celsius. But if the natural feedback loops in the climate system kick in, the average global temperature could go up another 10Β°C. At some point, most life in the oceans dies, and from the dark waters emerges a massive cloud of toxic hydrogen sulfide gas that envelopes the land, killing most of the creatures there too. These hostile conditions, vastly different from those under which our species evolved and thrived, would persist for thousands of years. But not to worry. The wars spawned by the initial famine and pestilence would have wiped us out long before the end stages of climate Armageddon. πŸ™‚

Because we never had tornados and floods and hurricanes and mudslides and so on before, right?
I See climate change in the Fact that my grandmother's daffodils, and many other flowering species, bloom a month earlier than they used to...you can't fool daffodils, nor are they swayed by rhetoric. They show up when it is warm enough, period
But the weather has Always been a problem for people who think building on flood plains, seashores and Tornado paths is a fine idea.....and in fact because there are so many more people, it is now a Big problem.

@annewimsey500 It's true that there are more people than ever, and many of them are building in places where they shouldn't. It's also true that there has been a big increase in the frequency and magnitude of all the climate disasters I mentioned above. It's been measured and documented.
(There is a whole "new" science, called attribution science, concerned with parsing out the extent to which the probability of any given climate event was caused by anthropomorphic climate change.) And again, we have only (ONLY?πŸ˜‚) raised the temperature by 1.2Β°C so far. The temperature can spike way higher. We want to avoid that if at all possible.

6

I certainly won't be in this form to see it. I'll have returned to star dust by then. Never reproduced so no great grand kiddies to worry about.

We are, literally, star stuff! πŸ˜ƒβ˜€οΈ

So no concern about other people's grandchildren?

@TheoryNumber3 I think we should not leave a blasted planet for future generations. But I fear that's exactly what we are going to do.

@TheoryNumber3 Why do you think I care about the planet, science and who gets control on Nov.5th?
I wish humans would not be so greedy or uncaring about trashing the earth. Hey if folks listened to my opinion we would not have had trump win in 2016. Chances of them listening to me about over population and our species extinction are very low.

10

The expected extinction of humans does not bother me and by 2600, there will most likely be only a handful of humans left. I fear for the lives my grandchildren will have as adults and issues of the immediate future, but 600 years is as far removed as the Middle Ages.

I hope that we do not blow up the world or make it a totally barren landscape. Perhaps the next dominant species will do a better job than we will have done. And maybe we will take all life along with us.

Problem is, this will not happen suddenly but gradually. Right now climate change not only is making conditions worse for us but other species thousands of which are going extinct. We have created the sixth greatest extinction of this planet. Many of us are very concerned but it seems a typical reaction to many is to simply deny the problem and are going ahead full steam.

@pedigojr Many do not seem to realize, or not want to realize, what is going on. In this respect we are much like the frog that can be boiled in a slow heating pan of water. They tell me he did not know to jump out. I admit that greed is a driver in all of this and the greedy are there to tell us nothing is going on. It is not real, etc. People today have what I call a Burger King attitude. They want it their way and they want it right now. If people are conditioned not to see anything going on then nothing is really happening. This will do us all in.

@DenoPenno I agree and the boiling frog syndrome has been around a long time. Too bad most humans are very short sighted.

I agree.

Nice to see you again. Anything you post has not been available to me. Missed you. πŸ€—

@DenoPenno Absolutely. We are our own worst enemies. The individual who says "I'm only one person... how much damage can I do"... and the greedy capitalist who ravishes the planet with impunity.

@pedigojr indeed--as TS Eliot wrote:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. 

@Gwen_Wanderer

Nor did it start with a bang.

@yvilletom Tom, you mean no big explosion? Too many think our world and universe started when a tiny package was opened up with a bang. IDK coz I was not there. Maybe no sound at all except that I do read it is all still expanding and they have an ongoing sound recording of it. I also read that space stinks. It reportedly has a burnt smell.

@DenoPenno

Though I majored in math and minored in economics, I studied enough physics to teach that subject at a state university before I did a year in graduate school at another university until I tired of poverty.

Like you, I have an active IDK file. It contains a inactive IHNE β€” I Have No Evidence β€” file where I keep my astrophysics stuff. Artificial and real intelligence β€” AI and RI β€” keep my IDK file in turmoil.

@yvilletom I'd like to end mine with a bang πŸ™‚

@TheoryNumber3

Two people I met later started mine with a bang. If I had been there I would have told them to instead take cold water showers.

@yvilletom I majored in Geology. πŸŒŽπŸ™‚

We probably do not take ALL life down with us. In every mass extinction, there have always been a few survivors.

@DenoPenno There is no sound in a vacuum, because there is nothing to carry the vibrations. Nor is there any smell, for similar reasons. There is, however, residual heat from the Big Bang, and it is known as the cosmic background microwave radiation. The image that the Hubble space telescope took of this radiation is sometimes called the Universe's baby picture.

@yvilletom, @DenoPenno cosmic background microwave radiation

@pedigojr Extinction is the Norm, not the exception, throughout all of the Earth's existence.

@annewimsey500 Oh yes, there is always extinction. But MASS extinction, where 80 to 95 percent of species go extinct within a relatively short period of time, has only happened 5 times in the last 400 million years.

@Flyingsaucesir

Those are pix of something that someone wants you to believe is CMBR.

Some other people want you to believe there’s a god out there.

@annewimsey500 I'm well aware of that and there are only a fraction less than one percent of life forms still around. I predict ours will be one of the shorter ones and it's totally of our doing.

@pedigojr sooner or later, we will be extinct. And if we don't kill ourselves, we will evolve into "something else." I think we will die before evolving.

@Gwen_Wanderer Problem is evolution never stops. We would have continued to evolve past our natural, selfish impulses were we to pass this present hurdle. As you probably know, evolution has several blocks to keep going and those least able to survive go extinct. It is not about power it is about recognizing our place in the greater scheme of things.

@pedigojr but of course.

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