Can Humanity Survive? Want to Bet on It?

[mcscajun]

By JOHN TIERNEY

Sixty ago years, a group of physicists concerned about nuclear weapons created the Doomsday Clock and set its hands at seven minutes to midnight. Now, the clock’s keepers, alarmed by new dangers like climate change, have moved the hands up to 11:55 p.m.

snip

But there’s one novel twist that gives me pause. When the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced two weeks ago in Washington that it was adjusting the clock, it was joined in a trans-Atlantic press conference by scientists at the Royal Society in London. One of them was the society’s president, Martin Rees, a new breed of doomsayer.

Dr. Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge and Britain’s astronomer royal, doesn’t just issue gloomy predictions. He doesn’t just move the hands of an imaginary and inscrutable clock. (Its keepers have never explained what one of their minutes equals on anyone else’s clock or calendar.)

No, Dr. Rees is braver. He gives odds on doomsday and offers to bet on disaster. In his 2003 book, “Our Final Hour,” he gives civilization no more than a 50 percent chance of surviving until 2100.

Dr. Rees is not a knee-jerk technophobe — he expects great advances as researchers around the world link their knowledge — but he fears that progress will be undone by what he calls the new global village idiots. He’s sure enough of himself to post an offer on Long Bets, a clever innovation on the Web that Stewart Brand helped start with money from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com.

A lot more at -- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/science/30tier.html?8dpc

[cain_7777]

1. No, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

with the dumbing down of america over the years, the rise of christian fundamentalists into political office, and the village idiot as pResident - we are Fucked!:nuke:

[BushOut06]

2. Christian fundamentalism versus Islamic fundamentalism

It's like we're back in the fucking Middle Ages.

[mcscajun]

4. As we started saying in the early 70s

"What goes around, comes around."

[mcscajun]

3. When I read the article, the first phrase that grabbed me, and I

thought of Bush immediately was "global village idiots"; Dr Rees certainly wasn't referring to one, but many, but I thought of the preeminent one in our own Front Yard.

[elocs]

5. Humanity is simply a blip on the screen in the history of this planet.

The Matrix was right--humanity is like a virus and the reality is that the Earth will be better when it is cured of it and maybe evolution will have better luck next time.

[mcscajun]

8. George Carlin was also right.

"The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance."

[katty]

6. agree, it's 50/50

[bemildred]

7. Nobody knows.

It's a safe bet there will be a hell of a lot fewer of us in 2100 though ...