Isn't climate change perpetual Sharonna? And hasn't it always been so? If the prediction of the miniaturized, easily portable, nuclear explosive device in the hands of 'terrorists' comes to fruition, then for me this could outweigh all other considerations for a world catastrophe. A random nuclear detonation in any urban environment, at anytime, maybe with ever increasing frequency, would render our present way of life unbearable and, probably, untenable.
No. It has not been so. I am no scientist. My talent lies in knowing where the best minds of our kind are. When I find someone who knows what climate change is because that is his field of study and when the person has medals of mental prowess under his belt, I tend to believe people like Stephen Hawking and Noam Chomsky. You see, I listen to their lectures and their proof of such claim. I also have been following National Geographic Magazine for decades and followed their alarming warnings from the 60's on to today with all of their claims being proven as the time marched on. So, this is a unique time in history. Unlike any other.
We are overpopulated, we are clogging all manner of clean air and water supplies.
Etc., etc.
I said Nuclear Holocost as number 2. But you are correct here. If at any time that button is pressed, who cares how many baby seals we club?
3. The warming of the atmosphere. All of its related effects, from droughts to storms to rising seas. ThIs is settled science. It is ongoing.
2.The ever diminishing supply of fresh groundwater. What isn’t being contaminated from runoff is being drawn for use faster than it is being replaced. Ancient aquifers are disappearing. All terrestrial life on earth requires water, and there is less and less of it fit to drink.
1. Homo Sapiens. The lone species whose environmental impact, overpopulation and overconsumption and waste is wreaking a ”biological annihilation“; an ongoing and unprecedented loss of living species, in what is now being called the Holocene Extinction. Human influence on the planet is now so pervasive, science has declared a new geogical epoch, the Anthropocine, has arrived. We sit at the controls, with the capability to destroy it all, or to preserve it.
IMO -Absent a sudden coming to our collective senses, and we all don’t quickly die in Nuclear Winter, we will eventually exceed our planet’s capability to support us, then its depletion will bring about our demise.
This post was edited by Don Barzini at February 27, 2018 9:35 PM MST
No matter how hard man tries, nothing so far can be considered terribly potent. The very worst is plastic in the ocean, and that is only a nuisance, and only in the Pacific, and not a great one. All the other things you keep hearing about are nothing more than overly emotional outbursts. The planet is not threatened at all.
The last time Earth saw warming of this magnitude was at the end of the Permian period, 250mya. The Siberian Traps erupted over a period of 50,000 years or so. 97% of all life on Earth (and in the oceans) perished. This time, we're doing it - and it's skyrocketed over a mere 200 years, a geological eyeblink.
Life ALMOST didn't. When did you last see a trilobite or brachiopod? Catastrophic mass extinction events have happened before, but never caused by the actions of a single species. Only once has it happened so rapidly, too - when a big rock clobbered the planet just off the coast of Mexico 63mya. If Trump and Jong Un allow their pointless d!ck-measuring contest to escalate, it could mean curtains, permanently. A nuclear holocaust, should it become global, could well render Earth untenable for organic life at all.
Stemmata949 