Stephen Hawking, British astrophysicist, says the human race must expand into outer space in the coming century or face possible extinction. The renowned scientist said he fears mankind is in great danger and its future "must be in space" if it is to survive, The Daily Telegraph reported Sunday.
War, resource depletion and overpopulation threaten the existence of the human race as never before, he said, advocating colonizing space to continue human existence.
"Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space," Hawking said.
http://www.thirdage.com/...
Global climate change as a result of the greenhouse effect, extensive deforestation and environmental pollution could cause Human extinction.
Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Iowa and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.
It is happening.
RUSSIA
It's been the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia, with Moscow temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees C) for the first time. Russia's drought has sparked hundreds of wildfires in forests and dried peat bogs, blanketing Moscow with a toxic smog that finally lifted Thursday after six days. The Russian capital's death rate doubled to 700 people a day at one point. The drought reduced the wheat harvest by more than one-third.
The 2007 IPCC report predicted a doubling of disastrous droughts in Russia this century and cited studies foreseeing catastrophic fires during dry years. It also said Russia would suffer large crop losses.
PAKISTAN
The heaviest monsoon rains on record — 12 inches (300 millimeters) in one 36-hour period — have sent rivers rampaging over huge swaths of countryside, flooding thousands of villages. It has left 14 million Pakistanis homeless or otherwise affected, and killed 1,500. The government calls it the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.
A warmer atmosphere can hold — and discharge — more water. The 2007 IPCC report said rains have grown heavier for 40 years over north Pakistan and predicted greater flooding this century in south Asia's monsoon region.
CHINA
China is witnessing its worst floods in decades, the WMO says, particularly in the northwest province of Gansu. There, floods and landslides last weekend killed at least 1,100 people and left more than 600 missing, feared swept away or buried beneath mud and debris.
The IPCC reported in 2007 that rains had increased in northwest China by up to 33 percent since 1961, and floods nationwide had increased sevenfold since the 1950s. It predicted still more frequent flooding this century.
UNITED STATES
In Iowa, soaked by its wettest 36-month period in 127 years of recordkeeping, floodwaters from three nights of rain this week forced hundreds from their homes and killed a 16-year-old girl.
The international climate panel projected increased U.S. precipitation this century — except for the Southwest — and more extreme rain events causing flooding.
ARCTIC
Researchers last week spotted a 100-square-mile (260-square-kilometer) chunk of ice calved off from the great Petermann Glacier in Greenland's far northwest. It was the most massive ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation.
http://www.google.com/...
We may have already long gone past the point of no return.
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.
http://www.independent.co.uk/...
It is happening faster than anyone thought that it would.
Computer models have also predicted totally ice-free summers in the Arctic by 2070, but many scientists now believe that the first ice-free summer could occur far earlier than this, perhaps within the next 20 years.
Humans are ridiculous creatures. We have rapidly industrialized and, in the process, obliterated our forests, poisoned our seas, and suffocated our skies. The profiteers will swear blind that there is nothing wrong, and if there was, their exploitations had nothing to do with it.
The science has been politicized, the public has been polarized and progress has been paralyzed.
It’s all because of what we are. We are stupid and just not quite advanced enough not to hurt ourselves.
I thought we, as a species, had almost come to the position where we would recognize and proceed toward a different ending but with the global financial crunch, the environment lost priority to the economy – not that it ever had priority.
Now, I believe that the only course forward is mitigation.
We must continue to feed the hungry as the grain fails and shelter the homeless as the weather rages.
But most importantly we must comfort the uncomfortable and discomfort the comfortable.
Stephen Hawking is a smart guy and all but we do not have the time or the resources to evacuate several billion people off planet, and besides, there is no Planet B.