How long do you think it will take before we kill ourselves off as a SPECIES???
And how do you think we'll do it???
And If you don't think that will happen, then why not?
What do you think we'll do to find a way stay alive??
June 12, 2033
shareWhy did you chose 2033 that date???
Here's part of an article that suggests we've got about 48 more years:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/06/we-have-a-pretty-good-idea-of-when-humans-will-go-extinct/
Mammalian species typically last around 1 million years before going extinct. You could argue that our species' intelligence gives us a survival edge over say, a mastodon or a rabbit, which could make us more likely to beat those odds.
But as Gott points out, our Neanderthal ancestors were around for only 300,000 years, while Homo erectus survived for about 1.6 million. They were smarter than the animals around them, but from a longevity standpoint they were completely unremarkable. Why should we be any different? Why should we be special?
there is a 50 percent chance that we are in the last half now and that its future duration is less than 48 years.”
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i see absolutely zero logic in that article.
its a whole load of statistical bullshit.
Our species is unprecidented in technology , food chain , planet killing ability
You can in no way deduce anything about our longevity by examining other species durations.
and to have a sytem that vague ( and shit) to come up with a figure that accurate (48 years) is laughable.
It may not be too far off ,in my opinion , but that is pure blind luck on their part - or a deliberate tweaking of their stats for shock value)
I see the reason why you find what it has to say to be a load of BS.
Because it is pretty convoluted and difficult to follow.
But the TIME FRAME also correlates pretty well with what others have to say about how GREENHOUSE GASES will have HEATED up the planet in another 50 years to the point where nothing (no FOOD) will be able to GROW on it anymore.
And without FOOD to eat, that probably also means BYE BYE HUMANS.
We have the ability to grow FOOD inside of INDOOR AREAS, but it's not very likely we could grow enough of it that way to FEED all of the 9 BILLION inhabitants we'll have by that time.
And They also say that we won't even have enough LAND area to feed 9 BILLION people (even IF we find a way to STOP the planet from HEATING UP).
The area of productive land required to provide for one Australian is over 7 hectares per person. The US figure is closer to 12 hectares. However, the amount of productive land per person on the planet is about 1.3 hectares and by the time we reach 9 billion it will be close to 0.8 hectares.
But we still also keep MULTIPLYING and OVER REPRODUCING ourselves anyway (as if doing so isn't also an INSANE thing to do on our part).
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Westerners know this and are only having 2 or 3 kids max. Asia is less.
The middle east and Africa however........
> there is a 50 percent chance that we are in the last half now and that its future duration is less than 48 years.
joi2040 took that out of context. Here's the full quote.
“if our location within the history of human space travel is not special, there is a 50 percent chance that we are in the last half now and that its future duration is less than 48 years.”
The "it" in "its future duration" was human space travel, not human existence. I actually agree with that, but for quite different reasons.
> its a whole load of statistical bullshit [...] to have a sytem that vague
My academic training is as a research psychologist, a field that uses a lot of statistics. I'm not active in the field anymore, but I've done peer-reviewed, published scientific research, and I know statistics. And this is quite bizarre. Let's examine this method. The steps are:
1) Disregard all other known, a priori data, and focus on the time interval only;
2) Assume, without any justification, that the time variable is governed by a linear distribution -- perhaps the most naive and fallacious mathematical assumption imaginable under the circumstances, but once you've taken step 1 you have little other choice;
3) Sacrifice precision so far and make your predictions so vague that you've got a 95% chance, nearly guaranteed, of being correct -- Nostradamus could have taken a few lessons from this dude!; and,
4) When your prediction inevitably turns out to be correct, claim you've accomplished something.
OK, sounds fun! I can play that game too!
I predict that over the next year, starting April 3, 2021 and ending April 2, 2022, the number of days in which my county will get precipitation will be between 9 and 356.
Heck, I'll go further. I predict that the same will happen in every county in this state! Not just my county, but all of the 120 counties in the state of Kentucky will get between 9 and 356 days of rain/snow/whatever over the next year.
That's my prediction. And if I'm right, I expect to be invited to the next conference of the American Meteorological Society to present my findings, and to be published in its journals!
Yeesh! On the whole, this reminds me of the horseshit Carl Sagan and others like him used to do with the Drake equation, making up numbers out of thin air to plug into it then making dire, "authoritative" predictions about humanity's future.
> You can in no way deduce anything about our longevity by examining other species durations.
Agreed, and I'll go further. Using the 200,000 year span, quoted in the article, for humanity's length of existence for this purpose is flawed reasoning; mentally, Homo sapiens circa 100,000 BC had far more in common with Pan troglodytes (chimpanzees) than with modern humans. But I've gone on for too long already.
My academic training is as a research psychologist, a field that uses a lot of statistics.
Ok MR. STATS. One already admitted the article was CONVOLUTED and wasn't very logical, but what about these other STATS that you've OVERLOOKED and didn't address:
ME AGAIN:
But the TIME FRAME also correlates pretty well with what others have to say about how GREENHOUSE GASES will have HEATED up the planet in another 50 years to the point where nothing (no FOOD) will be able to GROW on it anymore.
And without FOOD to eat, that probably also means BYE BYE HUMANS.
We have the ability to grow FOOD inside of INDOOR AREAS, but it's not very likely we could grow enough of it that way to FEED all of the 9 BILLION inhabitants we'll have by that time.
And They also say that we won't even have enough LAND area to feed 9 BILLION people (even IF we find a way to STOP the planet from HEATING UP).
The area of productive land required to provide for one Australian is over 7 hectares per person. The US figure is closer to 12 hectares. However, the amount of productive land per person on the planet is about 1.3 hectares and by the time we reach 9 billion it will be close to 0.8 hectares.
How do we deal with these FACTS Mr. STATS???
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well
Research in the 1970s by John Jeavons and the Ecology Action Organisation found that 4000 square feet (about 370 square metres) of growing space was enough land to sustain one person on a vegetarian diet for a year,
Thats a third of one hectare , so it can be done if we change our habits.
That means 36 frugal vegetarians can live off the same land a single american grows hamburgers in.
Also , this branch of this thread has devolved into lots of cross purposed posts.
If you say global warming will make farming impossible and a significant portion of the population will die - then fair enough . I dont think anyones refuting that , as yet.
The problem is the long winded crazy stat twisting article , which we probably all only skimmed , and took umbridge at various parts.
Which bit of that article was your point?
Thanks for the info about how a veggie could make it by living on less land. I was also wondering how much a hectare of land would be.
I also only SKIMMED it as well (which is why the BULL -- aka: MR. STATS -- caught me "posting out of context."
There was no point really at that point, cas I was just searching for anything that I could find on how much TIME others thought we had left.