Droughts, dying crops, global warming, pollution: will we adapt or r we heading for extinction?

Question

Droughts, dying crops, global warming, pollution: will we adapt or r we heading for extinction?

Answer 1

We are so going to be EXTINCT.

Answer 2

i think that we will adapt to the weather. We already have so much technology that we will find a way to take care of it.

Answer 3

We can't adapt this quickly. I'm scared...

Answer 4

I don't even buy your premise of doom and gloom. It is funny how when religions have preached doom and gloom they are ridiculed and their predictions are always pushed forward in time when they don't come true. This AGW doom and gloom has very similar earmarks. None of us want to live in a cesspool. Humanity has progressed towards cleaner living for thousands of years, through technology and education. Going backwards by forcing people to live without modern tech will lead to a worsening of the environment not an improvement.

Answer 5

Do you think that our race has not endeavored droughts, dying crops, and global warming in the past yrs since man's time began.  The only thing is pollution that they have not dealt with in the past.  Think of the potato famine in Ireland during the Little Ice age, that killed more people than our now global warming ever has.  This slight warming is not necessarily a bad thing.  Cold kills a lot more people and destroys more crops.  Now pollution yes, we should curve that and by all means adopt a greener life style.  Yes we can adapt to anything and have for thousands of yrs.  We'll watch and see if global warming halts then this will just be another gloom and doom theory that has happened for centuries.

Answer 6

Bob,

This "voice of doom" thing you have going is older than history.

If it's not very bad, can I say "told you so!"

Answer 7

Some people may have the ability to adapt some may not, but many people will die if we continue living the way we live right now, resources will run low, air pollution will worsen, lung diseases will thrive and much, much more. Masses of people will die, unless we change! Start recycling, save energy!

I recommend that everyone see the inconvenient truth by Al Gore. This documentary tells of how if the cycle we are in continues disaster will strike and maybe wipe out the human population.

Answer 8

extinction..

Answer 9

Humans have remarkable skills for survival - scientist will not give up so easily -do not dis pair we have a long way to go before the SUN burns out.

Answer 10

We're heading for extinction, slowly but surely. And the sad part is that a lot of people don't realise the drastic changes in climate , or maybe they're just too ignorant to care.

Answer 11

We're not headed for extinction - we're tough.

But we can make life very unpleasant for ourselves.  We were doing that in the 1960s and 1970s when the air was smoggy and often hard to breath.  And when water pollution made much of our water nasty and unsuitable for recreation.

Environmental laws saved us from that.  Now we threaten to do it again with global warming,

It won't be a Hollywood movie style disaster. Gradually coastal areas will flood and agriculture will be damaged. But it will be very bad. Rich countries will cope, but it will take huge amounts of money. In poor countries many people will die of starvation, but not all of them.

BEN O - Sorry.  I'm an old guy and I'll be gone by then.  I was there for the 60s and 70s - clearly you weren't or aren't old enough to remember.  

But when the scientists are right _you'll_ have to deal with it.  It will be better for you to deal with it now.  "Deal with reality or it will deal with you".

Skepticism about global warming in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence is a bet you don't want to make.

Answer 12

Humanity is really the culprit when it comes to the failures of environment,  and just go to our parks and beach's to see how messy humans are.  Being concerned is great,  but don't you think trying to help stop it, or slow it down would be more productive?  Good Luck and God Bless......

Answer 13

get a gun or too and go to alaska and make a cabin and make sure ytou got alot of wood and know how to live off the land

Answer 14

Nobody knows for sure. I believe that we are heading for extinction, but I'm not a genuis nor sycic. Some people believe we will adapt and it is as good of an estimate than mine, but why take the chances?

Answer 15

Consider what science tells us we've been through in the past.  Humans almost went extinct due to climate change that lasted only about 5 years (cooling due to volcanic eruption):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catast...

"According to the Toba catastrophe theory, 70,000 to 75,000 years ago a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world's human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution."

We've survived past ecological challenges in part because we were experts at living off the land and we were nomadic, able to simply move on when droughts struck, glaciers advanced, or desertification increased.  We were not dependent upon complex systems such as our current industrial-scale farming, the stability of modern economic systems and the economies underlying them, or on food deliveries to grocery stores, or on centralized power plants to heat or cool our homes.  

If past warmings have caused massive extinctions after only a few degrees of CO2 warming, how could complex modern human societies not unravel?  

The people most likely to survive will again be those who are able to adapt to the changing conditions, without relying on the existence and support of global economies (formed and stabilized under conditions that will no longer exist).  As we destroy and "modernize" indigenous cultures, we reduce the odds of human survival.  We may need to learn from them, not the other way around.

Answer 16

It is humorous that the more successful humans are, the more people with too much time on their hands predict our extinction.   Human's have never been more populous and generally healthy.  We are heading for increased numbers.  There is no indication that humans are heading toward reduced numbers except by those ignorant of history and those that insist we are running out of resouces.  Ben O is right.  There have been predictions of gloom and doom probably since there were humans walking the earth.