The odds that humans will be completely extinct within 100 years are rapidly rising. The causes are complex, but mostly inter-related. We have started the process, and it will soon become irreversible, but only a relative handful of humanity is able to recognize the threat, and they are too few to effect a change of course. The result is that we are in for a very unpleasant future...
It is well established that the global ocean fisheries are depleted or collapsing. Chemical and petrochemical contamination is rapidly rendering the remaining fish poisonous, at any rate. What impact will that have on feeding the growing population of the Earth?
Here's the stark reality: land-based agriculture is anything but healthy. Dependence upon 'fossil' or non-renewable sources of water for irrigation means that production will fall. Phosphate for fertilizers will be depleted within about 100 years as well. Soil erosion is causing a steady decline in lands suitable for farming. All these problems pale in comparison when 'Peak Oil' is thrown into the mix, since energy and food production move in lock-step, and population has stuck like glue to those lines in the bell-curve of energy. Now that oil production has peaked, it will soon begin to fall. The cost of fuel for tractors, pumps, combines, processing, shipping, refrigeration, etc. etc. will skyrocket, food costs will rise beyond the ability of consumers to pay for it, and production will plunge.
On top of those problems, toss in THE BIG ONE, climate change. As the extra CO2 we produce warms the atmosphere slightly, it de-stabilizes the frozen methane clathrates, which leak enough to add their high-potency greenhouse-gas to the mix. Then it just becomes a simple feed-back loop of more melting methane = higher temperatures = more methane = higher temperatures = more methane = higher temperatures... you get the picture.
Soon the climate will make most traditional farming regions unsuitable. Forests will shrivel in the heat. The 25% reduction in Russian agriculture due to the recent heat wave is just a peak into the future.
Since there are hundreds of billions of tons of methane frozen in the Arctic and tundra soils, the climate will keep warming, faster and faster, for centuries. It will be an accelerating 'feedback loop' that will devasate our planetary ecosystem. We won't survive it, and neither will about 98% of the other species present on the earth today.
I quote from my new book, The Coming Extinction of Humanity :
Like astronauts in a space station, we are dependent upon a close balance of our supplies of air, water, and food. Unlike the space station, there are no lifeboats.
What is currently taking place is the accidental re-engineering of the Earth's atmosphere in a way that will cause marked changes in the global climate, and eventually establish a "new normal" that will be very hostile to the vast majority of life forms that exist on the Earth today.
We are in for the biggest calamity that the human race has ever faced, and we need to be ramping up our defenses at a rapid pace right now. The possibility of surviving the change is another subject, and one that I will deal with in a future post. Thanks for your interest in my thoughts, I welcome your feedback. For more details, I would invite you to my website at RJConnors.com