10 of the Biggest Threats to Human Existence

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/10-biggest-threats-human-existence



1. Global Climate Change

Climate change is the Big Kahuna of all scenarios in which our presence on Earth is ended. Despite what the climate change deniers would have you believe, climate change is real. It is being caused by human beings, with a little help from lots of farting cows emitting methane, plus that giant well of methane lurking under the Arctic ice. As we burn carbon and increase our meat-eating ways, more and more greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere. It is pretty easy to see the end game of this scenario. Grab a telescope and look at Venus, a planet with a thick, heat-trapping atmosphere and a surface temperature high enough to, well, melt lead. A few decades ago, climate scientist James Hanson studied Venus, and saw some parallels with what was happening with the earth. What he saw alarmed him, and he testified in Congress in 1988, warning our government that unless we changed our carbon-burning ways, we were on a course for disaster. Hanson got through to a single senator: Al Gore.

***SNIP

2. Loss of Biodiversity

If we don’t melt ourselves into extinction, another possible route to end times is partly a byproduct of climate change: loss of biodiversity. Human activity is responsible for massive extinctions of countless species on Planet Earth. Environment News Service reported as far back as 1999 that, “the current extinction rate is now approaching 1,000 times the background rate [what would be considered the normal rate of extinction] and may climb to 10,000 times the background rate during the next century, if present trends continue [resulting in] a loss that would easily equal those of past extinctions.”

***SNIP


3. Bee Decline

Bees are dying—a lot of them, due to CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. “One of every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on pollinators, especially bees, for a successful harvest,” says Elizabeth Grossman, author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health. Plants depend on spreading their pollen to produce food. Bees are pollinators. No bees, no food (or at least much less). As many as 50% of the hives in the United States and Europe have collapsed in the past 10 years. The suspect in bee deaths is a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, pesticides used on a massive scale in commercial farming. It is believed the chemicals impair the bees’ sense of direction, preventing them from returning to the hive.

***SNIP

4. Bat Decline

Bees aren’t the only pollinators dying off. Bats, too, are dropping like flies. As a result of deforestation, habitat destruction and hunting, combined with a fatal fungal disease spreading among the bat population called White Nose Syndrome, bats are disappearing at an alarming rate. Besides contributing to the pollination crisis, the dwindling bat population brings about another possible human extinction scenario. As their habitats are destroyed, bats are increasingly crossing paths with the human population, in search of food and shelter. With bats come bat viruses. "It's very easy to see how pathogens can jump from animals to humans," says Jon Epstein, at the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit agency dedicated to conservation and biodiversity. Every year, on average, five new infectious diseases pop up, and about 75% of these new diseases come from animals. It is already suspected that human killers like Ebola emerged from the bat population. Might some new human-killing pathogen mutate from bats to humans and decimate mankind?

[Harolynn]

1. I think we will be around for a while.

If we were going to be responsible for our demise, i am pretty sure we would have offed ourselves already. I think as our generations continue we be more innovative and intelligent when it comes to all of the above mentioned. Our grandchildren will probably be able to grow bees in labs.

[chervilant]

3. Way more comfortable to believe

humans will prevail, isn't it?

[Scootaloo]

6. What labs?

H. sapiens probably has at least two hundred thousand more years left to it. Most of that, is going to be not too dissimilar from hiw we lived just ten thousand years ago, and beyond.

Our current level of technology simply is not sustainable as-is, and it's not going to magically become sustainable as it grows more advanced. Even a swap of energy sources from fossil to solar will just prolong the inevitable, because our technology still relies wholly on nonrenewable resources, to sustain a world population that is already overtaxing what renewable resources we have.

There is no miracle fix. No applied phlebotinum, no deposits of "unobtanium" on some moon a galaxy away. We're on Earth, and Earth is limited with what it can spare for us. We've breached the limit already, and show no sign of stopping - and even if we did stop, the ramifications of what's already been done are going to keep going for a long time to come.

[rhett o rick]

11. I think you are trying to use reason with someone that believes there is a higher power,

"If we were going to be responsible for our demise". Sounds to me like they think it's been determined that we humans aren't going to be responsible for our demise.

My question (for which I get ridiculed) is, will our demise come before or after the robot/computer singularity? I see a strange irony if our demise happens just hours before the singularity.

[MH1]

12. Russian roulette? "It hasn't killed me yet so it won't"?

Really ??

Just curious - Do you also think that the capacity of the planet to support human life is infinite? So that we can keep reproducing into the trillions? If you don't think that, what do you think might be the capacity limit?

[KansDem]

2. Chelyabinsk asteroid...

[SkatmanRoth]

4. I would have put Republicans at the top of the list

Number two would have been right wing conservative war mongers followed by the Military Industrial Complex.

But that is just me.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, xchrom.

[Triana]

7. #1: Human existence

(Just IMO man's biggest enemy is himself).

hi xchrom!

Oh. DU Rec bytheway.

[truebluegreen]

8. yep.

Our civilization can't survive the path we're on, and I have my doubts about the species.

What provokes me to blinding rage, however, is that we are destroying the miraculous array of life along with ourselves (and no, the knowledge that cockroaches or bacteria might survive is not a consolation).

[smirkymonkey]

9. K&R!

Scary. Thanks!

[flamingdem]

10. Every person under 30 should make these issues their life's work

but of course no one wants to be that realistic.. It would take that kind of commitment to change anything. The future belongs to the young yet they seem fairly blase. Maybe it will be the generation being born now since they'll be the ones to endure massive impacts in 50-75 years.

[MisterP]

13. oo, they forgot the fungus from "The Last of Us" (and the Museum of Jurassic Technology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps

[Tuesday Afternoon]

14. DU Rec.

[MoonRiver]

15. Corruption and greed will be our demise, no doubt about it.

Every species, except human apparently, knows you don't soil your own nest.

[Roy Serohz]

16. #11

"Reality" TV.

[Duppers]

17. k&r