🚀 go-pugleaf

I agree that humanity is consuming resources at a devastating rate,
polluting the atmosphere and the oceans, and breeding at a rate that poses a
significant danger to the global ecosystem. But there is a difference
between the collapse of societies and civilization and the extinction on
mankind. We might destroy our ability to support a global industrial and
knowledge-based society and we might, through global warming, raise the sea
level by two meters so that our major cities, principal ports and commerce
centers are flooded, and we might even, through religious intolerance,
explode dirty bombs in our cities and release plague weapons over our
population. But such actions would simply make civilization as we know it
impossible or improbable or highly scattered into closed versions of the
ancient city-states. Humanity would continue. Human beings would exist
throughout the world. It would most likely take another KT or
permio-Triassic event to wipe out terrestrial populations on a global scale.

Earl


--


Earl Cox
Founder and President
Scianta Intelligence, LLC
Turn Knowledge Into Intelligence
www.scianta.com


AUTHOR:
"The Fuzzy Systems Handbook" (1994)
"Fuzzy Logic for Business and Industry" (1995)

"Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds"
(1996, with Greg Paul, Paleontologist/Artist)

"The Fuzzy Systems Handbook, 2nd Ed." (1998)
"Machine Intelligence Tools for Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery"
(due Early Summer 2004)


"Don H" <donlhumphries@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:euBkc.5909$TT.1785@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> I disagree.  My hunch is that the human species will be extinct in a
decade
> or so.  Why?  Because of the Exponential Factor.  Human population has
> "exploded" from the 1900s onwards, and is still growing.  We have the
> Vatican recently opposing abortion; as do other religions, to boost their
> own numbers and because they have a vested interest in human misery -
people
> don't pine for an Afterlife if happy in this one.
> But increase in population is linked with mass consumption of the world's
> mineral and other resources; decline in other species; mass felling of
> forests (the lungs of the Earth), global warming, and many other factors.
> Fossil fuels will soon be used up, as will mineral resources.  AIDS, SARS,
> etc, may reduce human numbers somewhat, but not enough.  Nuclear war would
> finish us off that much quicker.  The influences opposing this trend
> (Greenies, Kyoto, recycling, etc) are still too feeble, and perhaps too
> late.  The human species is clever, but has it been too clever for its own
> good?  We laugh at the extinct dinosaurs, but they existed for millions of
> years; we shall be gone in the blink of a cosmic eye.
> ==========================
> "Hostman Brevis" <apocalypse_zero@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:caeecb67.0404300017.7f68ceb8@posting.google.com...
> > "Don H" <donlhumphries@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> news:<b3bkc.4141$TT.3367@news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
> > > There is nothing
> > > "immortal" about us, even though we tend to think so.
> > > ========================
> >  I NEVER said that and I agree. I just don't think it it will be a
> > fast eradication process because of the simple fact of a 'brain size'.
> > Our cerebrum made us succesfull in the past million years even though
> > our body is so fragile so  it has proven itself again and again and
> > still there people out here thinking it's a bad thing. I think it's
> > not. This is my hypothesis if you like it or not.
>
>