OT: What is the biggest

[TerranC]

Originally posted by capnq:

quote:

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Humans, of course: Homo Homini Lupus Est!
Humans are the wolves?

"Man is a wolf to(wards) Man."

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OOOOOooooh. Thanks.

[Dragonswrd]

I personally am not worried about an astroid. If one hit, we would be dead before most people would know about it. Running out of resources kinda worries me. My main concern is polution. Who cares if we run out of oil in 15 years, when the air will be unbreathable in 50 to 100 years. Why should we care if the rich oil companies go out of business when most of the worlds animals will be extinct because we care more about a making a quick buck than spending a little more to make it safer for our home, the Earth. In our lifetimes we will never have a permanent colony on another planet. Our only hope is if we get our heads out of a@#$% and realize there are more important things than money and who owns what. Unless we evolve beyond greed, we are doomed and so is this whole planet.

[ March 29, 2004, 00:26: Message edited by: Dragonswrd ]

[President Lomax]

I dont think the entire planet will become extinct in like 50 years. I think that before all the oil resources on Earth are gone, that there will be some sort of replacement for it. Hydrogen fuel cells are in development, not quite perfected yet, but we are getting there. Humans will not die out just because we run out of oil or anything. And the earth will most definatly not be destroyed anytime soon. Asteroid or not.

[Dragonswrd]

I didn't mean we would die because of running out of oil. I meant we have almost reach the point of no return on polution and such. We will run out of oil in about 15 to 20 years. Hydrogen fuels cells are non polluting but to produce them is very polluting (sorry on the bad english). We can run out of oil and survive, but if we cut most of the trees down and kill most of the corral reefs (which we are very close to doing), and kill most of the algea (again we are fairly close to doing) we will run out of air. And Last time a checked we needed that.

[President Lomax]

lol yea. i didnt want to spark a debate or anything about how messed up we made the panet or anything...but alot of people dont care about what happens. they figure. "hell! Im gonna die in a couple years! why not make it a living hell for everyone who is born after this point in time!"

[primitive]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
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The asteroid threat is quite real, but we don't know how imminent. That's why we need to spend a little bit (a very little bit in government terms) to at least continue to search for near earth objects. The naysayers are exhibiting a classic misunderstanding of what statistics are about.

Statistics are not laws of nature, they are just observations about averages. The "odds are" there won't be anyone coming the other way the next time you are approaching some rural 4-way stop between some fully grown cornfields where you can't see the road on the right or left. Are you gonna just charge through it at 60 mph without stopping since 'the odds' are in your favor? Or are you smart enough to realize that if there actually is a car coming the other way you'll be just as dead as if you'd driven actoss a busy highway without stopping? Statistics don't tell you about reality. They just give averages. You have to look for yourself to see what is actually the case right now. It doesn't matter what the 'odds' are per year of an asteroid hitting the earth. If there is one on course to hit us next year it WILL hit us next year.

In relative terms it really would cost very, very little to keep of a good search for asteroids that might hit us. A few tens of millions of dollars when NASA gets about $15 billion a year Last I heard?

Bad example Baron M.
Statistically, the faster you drive the less chance you have to hit someone at a blind intersection. On the other hand, driving faster will give a more severe accident so it will probably be wise to do the snails pace anyway

As for the Asteroids; the chance of them hitting is so small its ridiculous to worry about. There are hundreds of potential disasters more capable of exterminating all/most intelligent: Nuclear war, pollution, diseases (both natural and genetically tailored and wilfully released), country music.

The real danger: Lack of energy.
There are simply not enough energy sources available to upgrade everyone on the planet to “western” living standards. At the moment it is other factors that keep the poor down, but sooner or later it will come down to the availability of energy. Then the tough question will be: Keep it for ourselves and expect local conflicts and terrorism to skyrocket, or share it and live with the *****ing of the people who have to park their SUVs. Gonna be a tossup.

[EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro]

Biggest threat I would say is pollution. More specifically pollution and depletion of our ground water. For those places who get water from snow run off then the problem would be air pollution that would pollute the snow runoff.

Beyond that in general I would say the second biggest threat would be Fundamentalism. Get a group of people together and they'll find a reason to hate, kill, or repress another group of people and say that it's god's will. I find myself drifting that way sometimes. When the Arab world says that all Infidels should be killed, I think the only way to eradicate the threat would be to kill all of them. Hope I don't go that way for real!

I also worry about rising sea levels. Not me personally but just a few more feet (1 or 2) and many people will be displaced. Beautiful islands will be inundated and those peoples culture and homes gone till the next ice age.

Maybe a Nuclear Winter will counter Global Warming!