DollyVarden2021 t1_ixfiwo4 wrote on November 23, 2022 at 1:29 AM

Reply to comment by yaykarin in Do you agree with Stephen Hawking about Earth being unsustainable? by yaykarin

Climate change is manageable, but our population levels are way out of control. 8 billion people and counting. We will annihilate everything natural to feed ourselves and make fancy electronics to amuse ourselves.

Nuclear weapons will be our undoing, and we could permanently damage the planet.

rottencakepowder t1_ixfqm75 wrote on November 23, 2022 at 2:32 AM

The Atom is our Savior. Only when we bathe in its light will there be hope for humanity.

oxiraneobx t1_ixg7jb1 wrote on November 23, 2022 at 5:03 AM

I totally agree with humans being the likely weapon of our own demise, and we may very well cause damage to the planet that lasts tens of thousands of years, even a hundred thousand years, but that's a miniscule amount of time the Earth has left as a habitable planet.

Best estimates are approximately 500 million year to one billion years of habitable time left before the Sun heats to the point life is no longer sustainable. The Earth has plenty of time to heal itself and allow other species to rise and fall.

As a planet, Earth is kinda middle-aged, 4.5 billion years old with an likely life of 7.5 - 8.0 billion years. Species are the fragile things here, not the Earth. It's fine, we're screwed, LOL!

As I write these numbers out and think generally how we are presently behaving as a species, I'm hoping we get to next Tuesday. Not worried the Earth, though.

DollyVarden2021 t1_ixhsfgd wrote on November 23, 2022 at 3:28 PM

Excellent discussion. Unusual for this platform. 100k years is permanent in human terms. We could ignite enough nukes to destroy the atmosphere. Forever. Like Mars potentially. I like to think that you are correct, but, I think we could do end-game damage with the nukes we have. Hopefully, I am wrong.