Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth

[On the Road]

By Sam Hughes

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily.

So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do not think this will be easy.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html

[BlueEyedSon]

1. You don't actually have to destroy it to make it uninhabitable (by us)

[ret5hd]

2. however, changing it from a loving mother to a drunken step-dad...

isn't so hard.

[northzax]

3. von neumann machines!

using nanotechnology. only 15 years out...

[SnoopDog]

4. It isn't how hard it is to destroy earth...

It is how easy it is to destroy LIFE on earth. We are doing it as we type...

Earth will exist until 1) big 'ol asteroid smashes it to pieces (but then it probably reconstitute) or 2) when the sun explodes.

Life will end soon: 1) global warming, 2) no water, or 3)idiot evil murderous bastards like Channey/Bush push 'the nuclear button'.

[jojo54]

5. Yep, we'll be the first to go. n/t

[Ian David]

6. See also Skeptic Magazine and "Catastrophe" by Richard Posner

That issue had a great, detailed excerpt from Richard Posner's book, "Catastrophe," as well as "Collapse" by Jared Diamond.
http://www.skeptic.com/prods/pdetail/1088.html


Catastrophe
The complete review's Review:

In Catastrophe Richard Posner certainly addresses a big and sensational topic -- catastrophes ! And he doesn't just mean those smaller everyday 'catastrophes', but rather the real deal, the life-changing (for billions of lives) and even the earth-annihilating ones. Posner argues that while the chances of many catastrophes occurring are incredibly small we should still be better prepared.
Posner isn't predicting the end of the world (or civilization), but he acknowledges that the potential is there -- and that we're not doing all we could. We should be aware that:

The number of extreme catastrophes that have a more than negligible probability of occurring in this century is alarmingly great, and their variety startling.

He uses as his prime examples only a few, but they are sensational enough: an asteroid striking the earth, a particle accelerator setting off a "strangelet disaster" (which might "transform the entire plant Earth into an inert hyperdense sphere about one hundred meteres across"), bioterrorism, nanotechnology run amok, and more. He also includes examples where the consequences (and, to some extent, the causes) aren't clear (but expected to be, at the very least, unpleasant), such as global warming.
To a varying degree, the probabilities of some of these events can be ascertained -- in the case of an asteroid strike, fairly specifically (the probability of a significant-sized asteroid hitting the earth is still ... astronomical, but the odds can be calculated), in the case of a strangelet, not so much. In the case of the human influence on climate change, opinions (and thus probabilities) range all over the place, but Posner argues that one can work with that as well. Armed with these probabilities, as well as an idea of the consequences (i.e. cost -- in human lives, damage, etc.), Posner argues we can figure out, more or less, how much energy (and cash) should be expended in trying to prevent these catastrophes (or limit the damage they might cause). So much of the book involves a cost-benefit analysis of what might (or can or should) be done now, versus the eventual price that might have to be paid. (This includes fun discussions of discount rates, since a penny spent now can be the equivalent of a dollar (or much more) in the future, which of course affects all calculations.) Unfortunately, all along the way there are more not-entirely-convincingly-based assumptions than one should be comfortable with in trying to quantify all this.
Scientific progress, Posner notes, is moving along at an ever-faster clip, which both helps and harms catastrophe-prevention (the harm coming basically from the increased potential of science (particle accelerators ! etc.) and scientists to cause catastrophes). He also notes some of the problems we have in preparing for catastrophes, including widespread scientific illiteracy (coupled with a blind belief in science and scientists). Among his suggestions, not surprisingly, is that lawyers, especially, must become more scientifically literate (since they play such a significant role in all aspects of American policy-making).
Catastrophe does usefully consider how ill-prepared we are for most catastrophes -- as well as how unaware we are of both the potential danger (in the sense of how likely some of these actually are, as well as what would happen if they come to pass) and of what might be done to better position ourselves to limit or avert these catastrophes. Posner also offers numerous suggestions, including the establishment of a "Center for Catastrophic-Risk Assessment and Response", and several of these seem entirely sensible and relatively easy to implement. Several are also more contentious -- such as his idea for a "restriction on advanced study of science by foreigners" (in the US).
Catastrophe is most interesting as a study of -- as the subtitle has it -- risk and response, and how, for a variety of reasons, humans have considerable trouble getting either right. (Catastrophes are almost all extremely low-probability events (at least in the relevant short term -- in the long term it is, for example, entirely certain that the sun will flame out and that life as we know it will no longer be possible on the earth), and people have considerable difficulty in properly assessing and dealing with low-probability events.) It's all not quite as sensational as one might hope, and it doesn't offer a blueprint for exactly what to do -- but then that's part of the point: there is no certainty here. Posner presents the material well, and his discussion is fairly thorough, but it's a lot of work and pages (and footnotes -- 706, over only 265 pages of text) that doesn't really get us too much further. A journal-article would have sufficed

More:
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/posnerr/cstrophe.htm



See also:

Risk and response.
New York Times, 2 Jan 2005, Book reviews, p.12
Peter Singer

This is a review of a new book: Catastrophe: Risk and Response by Richard Posner published by Oxford University Press, November 2004. Richard Posner is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals from the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Posner feels that we often do not take seriously low probability, high risk, events such as Global Warming, biodiversity, asteroid collisions, and terrorism. He asks us to consider the expected value of the cost of such an event. The reviewer Peter Singer remarks that most of us would asses large risks differently than small risks, remarking:

We may pay a steep price to reduce a risk of one in a thousand to one in ten thousand, but we are not much concerned about reducing a risk of one in a million to one in a billion.

Posner... suggests that the value of a human life actually varies in accordance with the degree of risk we are considering -- so that the loss of each human life in a highly improbable catastrophe should be valued only at $50,000 instead of the $5 million that it would be valued at if we were considering a more likely disaster. This is bizarre. The real worth of our lives has nothing to do with the probability of a particular cause of death.

Frank Duckworth, the editor of RSS News, and other members of the Royal Statistical Society attempted to develop a "Richter scale" that might used to indicate the degree of a risk (See Chance News 7.11). They proposed that the expected value be used for monetary risks but proposed a more complicated method of evaluating risks involving a change in quality of life or deaths.

Posner suggests possible practical recommendations for responding to catastrophic risks which the review says "seem calculated to parcel out irritation to everyone." But despite his concerns Singer concludes with:

Still, we would be well advised to set aside such minor discontents and take the message of this book seriously. We ignore it at (a small risk of) our (very great ) peril.

More:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/chance_news/current_news/current.html

[Celebration]

7. The Planet is Fine

The People are Fucked...................George Carlin

"If plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, 'Why are we here?' Plastic...asshole."

---George Carlin, The Planet is Fine