http://www.eutimes.net/2010/06/human-race-will-be-extinct-within-100-years-claims-leading-scientist/
EU Times on Jun 21st, 2010
As the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.
And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and ‘unbridled consumption.’
Fenner told The Australian newspaper that ‘homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.’
‘A lot of other animals will, too,’ he added.
‘It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.’
Since humans entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene – the time since industrialisation – we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any…
View original post 445 more words
Exposing the Big Game 
“…determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous.”
Has never happened in the history of mankind, so I doubt it will in the supposed ten years we have left! Especially when the world’s wealth is only in the hands of a very few – and that has remained fairly consistent over time as well.
I threw my hands up in disgust and walked away years ago – and now devote any time, political energy and money to saving what’s left of the planet’s biodiversity, at every turn. Humanity and its endless problems will drain your energy like vampires.
I just checked with my husband to be sure, and he says the last time there was peace and prosperity was 1946 to 1949.
Before my time, unfortunately…
Coincidentally, the world’s population was about 2.56 billion in 1946, so it has tripled since then.
And humans were still having world wars…What does that say of the crowded world we’re in now?
The Earth could ‘care’ no less whether one species or another, or any at all, persist. It’s a rocky planet, that happened to have a great set of circumstances that spawned life. It also spawned a species that could understand “the big picture,” but could not overcome its greed, and its sense of self-importance to the exclusion of any other species not considered ‘useful’. I have asked multiple biologists, and environmental activists, whether they think that mankind can last another millennium, the consensus is ‘no’. Certainly this article is far more pessimistic; I believe that with our momentum, we will persist for more than a century, but a 1,000 years seems unlikely to me.
H. sapiens have created beautiful art, and our sciences have enlightened those of us that care. But overall, failure seems our destiny. I regret that we will wipe out charismatic mega-fauna on our road to self-annihilation. Apex predators (and primary producers) regulated the biosphere for eons before humans. In a relatively short period of time we have removed many top-down regulators, and the post-human world will be far different as remaining species compete in a new evolutionary environment.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
I don’t know the answer to Blake’s question, but I know who’s ruined the frame.
I agree with all yousay here. but I regret that we will wipe out the rest of the charismatic mega-fauna (the ones not wiped out in the megafaunal extinction events when our species first spread out to new islands and continents) on our road to self-annihilation.