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Scientists predict humans will be extinct within 100 years

scientists-predict-humans-will-be-extinct-within-100-years

Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.

If past is prologue, 70,000 years ago the human population was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis by researchers at Stanford University. The estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.” Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal. The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently. Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction,”  paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented.

Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University (ANU), says homo sapiens will not be able to survive the population explosion and “unbridled consumption,” and will become extinct, perhaps within a century, along with many other species. United Nations official figures from last year estimate the human population is 6.8 billion, and is predicted to pass seven billion next year. Fenner told he tries not to express his pessimism because people are trying to do something, but keep putting it off. He said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts.

Fenner said that climate change is only at its beginning, but is likely to be the cause of our extinction.

We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island,” he said. More people means fewer resources, and Fenner predicts “there will be a lot more wars over food.”

Easter Island is famous for its massive stone statues. Polynesian people settled there, in what was then a pristine tropical island, around the middle of the first millennium AD. The population grew slowly at first and then exploded. As the population grew the forests were wiped out and all the tree animals became extinct, both with devastating consequences. After about 1600 the civilization began to collapse, and had virtually disappeared by the mid-19th century. Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond said the parallels between what happened on Easter Island and what is occurring today on the planet as a whole are “chillingly obvious.”

While many scientists are also pessimistic, others are more optimistic. Among the latter is a colleague of Professor Fenner, retired professor Stephen Boyden, who said he still hopes awareness of the problems will rise and the required revolutionary changes will be made to achieve ecological sustainability. (DailyGalaxy)

While there’s a glimmer of hope, it’s worth working to solve the problem. We have the scientific knowledge to do it but we don’t have the political will,” Boyden said.

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24 Comments

  1. Jack Ho commented on The Watchers:

    I totally agree with you! We may not be able to decelerate the rate towards extinction as far as humans still competing with each other. The US is the best in terms of dominant nation by far. I hope that US will lead to shape a new global governor to deal with the warming up of the planet and world peace!

  2. ugly commented on The Watchers:

    The article that your link refers to is extremely racist and I surely hope you are smart enough to realize the dangers proposed by that article. For China to attempt to “take over a leadership role” in the world would moat likely be a very bad thing given the communist govt in power. China is decently behind the rest of the world as far as civil rights go. I do not want to see them take over as the dominant country as it is sure to be worse than the united states as a dominant country.

  3. Bosco Warden commented on The Watchers:

    Oh well, I had fun and I will surely be dead much sooner then that. We have become a virus like species, and we are now killing the very host that keeps us alive. We dont need to save the planet, we need to save ourselves, live within our means and cut out Global greed by the elite.

    Or we can just go underground and create neo climates with synthetic farming. Either way, I will be dead, and I havent reproduced for these very reasons. I’m good, continue to kill yourself.

  4. TTB commented on The Watchers:

    Ah, you’re old, this explains your attitude. Your points are pointless. Man didn’t have to make climate change for it to be real. Other planets, like Saturn, are heating up and going through climate changes too. Your idea that we can pack all 6.5 billion people (which doesn’t include the coming population explosion) inside Texas, doesn’t begin to speak of the disease that would run rampant in said environment, much less the facilities needed to care for that many.

    See you’re generation created a lot of the problems we battle today, ‘global warming’ or not. Proof is in the fact of your statement, “Guess you weren’t around in the fifties and early sixties when WE had tens of thousands of factories in and around cities, belching out black smoke 24/7 and pouring their waste into rivers and lakes. It was worse than China is now.” Like that somehow proves everything is ok. Empirical evidence it is not.

  5. genomega commented on The Watchers:

    How anyone can believe that a slight increase in a trace gas – 0.039% – by volume of earths atmosphere can destroy the earth is mind numbing to put it mildly. Look up the history of Greenland and you will find that at one time it was lush green farmland. Applying a little common sense will help also.

  6. runn commented on The Watchers:

    In my humble opinion, based upon all the corrupt data within global warming pseudo-science, which was to such a degree that the term was changed to global climate change to be more politically viable, especially since just recently, the NOAA “scientists” who penned the “drowning polar bears” farce, and ultimately caused polar bears to be placed on an endangered list partially based on that farce, were found to be lying, I think only an idiot could believe in man made climate change. So far, much of the “proof” of this farce, has been debunked.
    So, my question is, what causes a rational person to believe in the tooth fairy, anyway?
    Correct. His/her political views.
    Across the board, liberals believe the lies and conservatives do not.

  7. chillymanjaro commented on The Watchers:

    “With the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources, humans must actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy, and biological resources. There is a need to develop renewable energy resources. Humans everywhere must understand that rapid population growth damages the Earth’s resources and diminishes human well-being.

    http://dieoff.org/page174.htm
    http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1631
    http://www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx
    http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=653

    As the global population continues to grow…people will place greater and greater demands on the resources of our planet, including mineral and energy resources, open space, water, and plant and animal resources. A large expansion of agriculture to provide growing populations with improved diets is likely to lead to further deforestation, loss of species, soil erosion, and pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff as farming intensifies and new land is brought into production. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply according to UN study (http://www.unep.org/geo/). Fresh water supplies, on which agriculture depends, are running low worldwide. This water crisis is only expected to worsen as the population increases. So overpopulation is a FACT! The air and water had never been in so bad condition – volcanic plumes, CO2 emissions, industrial pollution, nuclear radiation, electric powergrid radiation, oxygen low zones in oceans and oxygen dead-zones, marine pollution, industrial waste, sewage, ship balast, oil spills etc, etc, and we are talking about global numbers, we are talking about billions of people adding their footprint to current situation. Pollution is a FACT! I don’t like to speak about global warming or global cooling but rather abot climate change. Climate change is a FACT! I posted earlier a great post with lots of official data collected form all over the world, talking about facts, would be great to read it ( https://watchers.news/2011/07/31/climate-research-unit-released-climate-dataset-facts-and-figures-for-anyone/ )

    I would like for you to add some facts and figures, so your arguments can be considered. And concerning prof. Frank Fenner – well, yes I agree, he is quit radical in his statements but that is hs point of view and a product of his long research based on facts and studies. I don’t agree totally about what he predicts but if we continue to act like there is no overpopulation, no air and water pollution and no climate change – that this “nut job” is right and we are nut jobs in that case cause we are blinded with are human egocentrism acting like we own the Planet! But when it’s just opposite!

  8. Sam Randall commented on The Watchers:

    Your statement about people fitting into Texas may be true, but you must consider the requirement of clean food and water, people need space for farming and agriculture.
    Secondly, what kind of evidence do you have to back up how clean the air and water are now? I mean, how could that possibly be true? There are so many pollutants and fumes from our industrial areas and let alone cars and such.
    And finally, your statement about climate change having been “discredited”. Now a lot about your comments make me think that you’re an American, but the fact that you’re denying climate change and not also evolution of man, makes me reconsider. Regardless of whether you fail to accept scientific evidence for evolution or not, climate change is happening. The methane produced in cattle and other animal farming industries alone produces enough to significantly damage the balance in the ozone layer, that has been proven.
    To disagree with someone is reasonable, but to do so without evidence to back yourself up is foolish.

  9. genomega commented on The Watchers:

    With all due respect to Professor Frank Fenner he is a nut job. There is no overpopulation, every person on the planet could could fit in the state of Texas with plenty of room left over. The air and water are cleaner than they have ever been. As for climate change it has been totally discredited.

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