This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

BBC Four last night "The Dodo's Guide to Surviving Extinction"

Watched a documentary on BBC Four last night "The Dodo's Guide to Surviving Extinction" Did anyone else watch it? It showed a theory of which humans are becoming victims of their own success. I.E. using the planet resources at a speed that cannot be replaced in time. And ultimately humans will eventually become extinct.

What are your views on it?

Reply 1

enrico palazzo

didnt see it but overpopulation sounds like a huge problem. We should conserve enough resources for our best and brightest, cut back on waste, i think.

Reply 2

bright star

1

Dream_Catcher

Watched a documentary on BBC Four last night "The Dodo's Guide to Surviving Extinction" Did anyone else watch it? It showed a theory of which humans are becoming victims of their own success. I.E. using the planet resources at a speed that cannot be replaced in time. And ultimately humans will eventually become extinct.

What are your views on it?

meh, we all die. some other species takes our place. the great circle of life and all that jazz. i'd have thought us leaving animals in peace would make you happy.

Reply 3

Dream_Catcher

OP

1

bright star

meh, we all die. some other species takes our place. the great circle of life and all that jazz. i'd have thought us leaving animals in peace would make you happy.

Probably would but I haven’t experienced it yet and never will. Was just nice to see that finally after taking everything we wanted, we killed out our own species.

Reply 4

ali567149

1

Dream_Catcher

Probably would but I haven’t experienced it yet and never will. Was just nice to see that finally after taking everything we wanted, we killed out our own species.

the grand 'circle of life' thinks about watching the lion king again :smile:

happens to all species eventually just be thankfull that we're not herons

Reply 5

Dream_Catcher

OP

1

ali567149

the grand 'circle of life' thinks about watching the lion king again :smile:

happens to all species eventually just be thankfull that we're not herons

Well there's a good possibility that evolution, will produce another "human" like species. Wonder how long it will take, if they’ll be anything like us (sometimes people just never learn). Will we still be top of the food chain?

Off Topic: Love that movie :smile:

Reply 6

NeverMindThat

1

Dream_Catcher

Watched a documentary on BBC Four last night "The Dodo's Guide to Surviving Extinction" Did anyone else watch it? It showed a theory of which humans are becoming victims of their own success. I.E. using the planet resources at a speed that cannot be replaced in time. And ultimately humans will eventually become extinct.

What are your views on it?

I find a lot of views i agree with in the gaia theory; that humanity is kinda 'meant' to exhaust the earths resources and then drop in population massively as the earth recovers.

I dont find it frightening. I see it as an interesting period in human history. Plus, it would seem likely that most of the people doing the 'dying off' will be in undeveloped countries that are less able to adapt with technology anyway

Reply 7

Dream_Catcher

OP

1

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you think that only a few (halve) of mankind will die out. This documentary showed the theory on a huge scale: mankind to be wiped out completely. From over using the earths resources too quickly.

Reply 8

NeverMindThat

1

Dream_Catcher

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you think that only a few (halve) of mankind will die out. This documentary showed the theory on a huge scale: mankind to be wiped out completely. From over using the earths resources too quickly.

total extinction seems unlikely without some global-disaster such as a meteor; many resources are renewable and with a low enough population would last forever

Reply 9

Oswy

15

Dream_Catcher

Watched a documentary on BBC Four last night "The Dodo's Guide to Surviving Extinction" Did anyone else watch it? It showed a theory of which humans are becoming victims of their own success. I.E. using the planet resources at a speed that cannot be replaced in time. And ultimately humans will eventually become extinct.

What are your views on it?

I certainly think we are impoverishing the planet, both in terms of environmental and resource degradation and in terms of biodiversity. We are going to be leaving a much less interesting planet behind to future generations because we are rendering habitat and life forms extinct at a rate which evolution can't imaginably 'keep up with'. We are, nonethelss, a versatile species and one which can use technology to survive even where we've pretty much screwed the planet. Nevertheless, we're naive to think we're going tobe around for millions of years - and if we were we'd have evolved into something else anyway. When the sun hots up - as it gets older - nothing we do can make this planet habitable. Yes, there will be an extinction of our species one day, but probably not until we've made most other species extinct before us.

Reply 10

Radioactive Blob

As other people have said i doubt overpopulation and using resources too quickly would result in humans becoming extinct.

Owsy- By the time the sun engulfs the earth humanity will either have been destroyed or we will have advanced enough so that we would find a suitable alternative planet :p:

I think that if humans can technoloigcally advance to a certain level (where space travel becomes like going on the tube :p:

) then the chances of humanity being extinct is very low, so in theory humanity does not have to become extinct. You might argue that the time to advance to that level would take such a long time that we would have destroyed ourselves some other way. However, the rate at which technology advances has been increasing at a faster and faster rate so it might not take as long as expected. For example, think about how quickly we've progressed from the wheel to the car and then to the plane. :smile:

Reply 11

Collingwood

15

The BBC and similar news outlets like the Independent and the Guardian seem to delight in telling us that we're all going to die. I don't think it's very likely, however. The most that will happen is everything will become a bit more expensive as we switch to more intensive methods of production, and this in turn will depress birth rates, as has already happened in the developed world.

Reply 12

Oswy

15

Collingwood

The BBC and similar news outlets like the Independent and the Guardian seem to delight in telling us that we're all going to die. I don't think it's very likely, however. The most that will happen is everything will become a bit more expensive as we switch to more intensive methods of production, and this in turn will depress birth rates, as has already happened in the developed world.

I've got news for you - we are all going to die. How long we can exist as a species is not easy to predict, but we've only been around as modern humans for a couple of million years, depending on the definition you choose.

I'm not closed to the idea that humanity will use technology to get themselves out of trouble in the future but I'd paraphrase the words of Arthur C. Clarke: if we can't even get it right on the very planet we've evolved to survive on, we don't stand a chance of making success elsewhere. We also have to show a little caution in our enthusiasm for science-fiction's solutions and the ones that can actually happen - we may never develop technology which allows us to travel between star systems.

Reply 13

Collingwood

15

Oswy

I've got news for you - we are all going to die.
Yes, at different times, of natural causes, not in some vast cataclysm. I do not understand why people delight in this depressing fatalism to the extent that they wilfully distort facts to make everything seem much worse than it is.

How long we can exist as a species is not easy to predict, but we've only been around as modern humans for a couple of million years, depending on the definition you choose.

I don't see what relevance the human species' present age as a species has to its eventual age. At one point TSR was only 2 seconds old - would it be a reasonable conclusion to draw from this that it would be very lucky to survive the next hour?

I'm not closed to the idea that humanity will use technology to get themselves out of trouble in the future but I'd paraphrase the words of Arthur C. Clarke: if we can't even get it right on the very planet we've evolved to survive on, we don't stand a chance of making success elsewhere. We also have to show a little caution in our enthusiasm for science-fiction's solutions and the ones that can actually happen - we may never develop technology which allows us to travel between star systems.

Where did I mention mass migration to another planet? My whole point is that we are doing perfectly well right here, becoming the clearly dominant species and improving the span and quality of our lives immensely in a very short period. History would indicate this will continue for the forseeable future. Our abilities to overcome the potential problems of the future are not science fiction, but well-understood now, lacking only the economic need to be implemented.

Reply 14

matt@internet

12

Dream_Catcher

Probably would but I haven’t experienced it yet and never will. Was just nice to see that finally after taking everything we wanted, we killed out our own species.

We'll die out even if we don't take everything we want.