What is your take on "The end of the world"

reply to post by stereologist


It's a rough guestimate from this site. Over 70,000 for this year already, and only in the beginning of 7th month. Seems a bit low actually.

Worldometer

I'm pretty sure the general definition of a species is a distinct life form that is in most circumstances unable to create a non-sterile offspring from another species. Two similar species may be able to procreate, but the child is always unable to bear further offspring.

[edit on 4-7-2010 by unityemissions]

reply to post by unityemissions


Species is not as simple a definition as you give here. What about species such as bacteria that reproduce asexually? The estimate for numbers of species ranges from 2 million to 100 million. If we take 10 million as the estimate and 100k are knocked off every year, then in 10 years 1 million species are gone. In 100 years all species are gone.

It's likely that the estimate on the site you linked to is based on the Ehrlich estimate of species loss. That's the highest estimate I've seen so far. More realistic estimates are 5 to 10 times lower than that.

The gulf oil spill is how it starts. First all the fishing industry is ruined. Then as the chemicals get into the air and rain down across the land, crops will wither. Add to that, the frequent flooding which is already destroying the crops, and the increase in hurricane frequency and intensity battering our coast and spreading these toxic chemicals far and wide. Years from now people will get chronic illnesses caused by the sickening miasma spreading from the gulf and many will die. The gulf coast states will fail and people will migrate away into other states. Those states already face crippling economic woes but with all the new refugees, it will be much worse. Many states will become totally bankrupt. A double dip depression will take root and stay for a long long time. Pandemic diseases will crop up like swine flu or the morgellons disease and the weakened states will fail to resist it's spread adding to the mass die off of humanity. Then as 2012 approaches the increased solar activity will destroy all our satellites and our power grid. Without food, without power, the people will quickly devolve into savages tearing each other apart for a scrap of food or a few drops of untainted water. The methane spewing from the gulf oil spill is a potent greenhouse gas which will accelerate global warming. Places that were green will become deserts. Eventually earth will become like mars, a dead world incapable of sustaining life.

To prevent this, we would have to stop using oil, stop burning coal, clean up the oceans of all the oil and plastic and garbage, scrub the excess greenhouse gasses from our atmosphere, begin aggressive wildlife protection programs to bring back the flora and fauna from the brink of extinction. We would have to erradicate our consumer mentality and return to the rennaisance mentality where people built things to last forever, not built cheaply to be used once and disposed of.

It will be like returning to the stone age or the medieval dark age.

To reply to the question of the OP, what do I feel of the end of the world...
The End of the world means the start of a new one, with or without us.

reply to post by guyopitz


You've got a lot of predictions piled in there. I doubt that the hurricanes would be able to move noticeable quantities of oil inland. By the time a hurricane spreads the materials on land the materials have been severely diluted. You do not consider that the material are not inert. There are microorganisms that consume petroleum. I also think your migration claims are based on little evidence. There are other industries in the besides fishing. Those industries will not fail. There won't be a need for people to move.

The increase of solar activity is not expected to peak till 2013. It is extremely unlikely that the power grid would be destroyed today. There are ways to protect terrestrial systems. We know the danger and we know the protection.

I was never sure what to think of the end of the world, till I went to Denmark for my honeymoon with my wife.

There we were, on our last night, lying in bed in the hotel room, watching a Sandra Bullock movie with danish subtitles. In the movie, Sandra Bullock played the role of a higly intelligent woman who crafted word puzzles for a newspaper. The movie itself doesn't matter. My epiphany came at the very end of it.

After the last scene, the screen faded to black and a small crossword puzzle showed the letters:

T
H
E N D

Right at the bottom of the screen, the subtitle showed the word in danish that translates the english expression THE END.

The danish word was: S L U T. I kid you not. CHeck the dictionary. That's when it hit me. Life is a B****. The sooner you accept it, the better.

This is something i very often think of..'the end of days' type of scene..
Its something generation after generation have cried out the world over that it is soon to come.. as far back as known time itself, this seem to have always been in the future somewhere.. 'the end of the world' (-said in spooky voice) ..and though a part of me feels that the same wolf crying of previous times is all thats going on now, another part of me cant help but feel that its got to eventually manifest in some way..the system can not go on forever, the establishment will fall eventually, chaos will probably over take for some time before mankind gets its act together.. well, hopefully at least..i dont believe its the end of anything other than our currently established way of life.. things will change, they constantly do..and times may become exceedingly difficult for a period..but we are adaptable creatures and can make the most of any situation if we choose to..but we will make it.. as a species we will continue to plague this beautiful Earth..

Everything in cycles, including our time here on earth. After the next cycle i don't believe we as humans will be here.

Why do people claim that everything moves in cycles. They don't. Some things move in cycles. There is the annual cycle which drives a lot of our weather. The daily cycle that drives a lot of our weather. But earthquakes are not cyclical. Events of cumulative. Last year's events and yesterday's events affect today. That cumulative effect is not cyclical.