# Scientists: The Human Race Is Dying



## Harpo (Sep 16, 2012)

http://usahitman.com/sthrid/

*"Grim scientists have been running the numbers since the early  Seventies and for some the writing’s on the wall: unless drastic action  is taken soon the human race may quickly fade into extinction. That  terrifying fact is all too real and people could simply cease to exist  not in a timespan measured in tens of thousands of years, or even  thousands, but in as little as a handful of centuries.* The birthrate drives  the human race into the future. Despite predictions that the population  will continue to grow far beyond the current seven billion or so, the  actual projected actuarials show a much more disturbing trend:  extinction. "




Personally, I think it's a great idea - best way to save the world.


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## Snowdog (Sep 16, 2012)

All species go extinct. It's hardly a shock. Putting a time on it though is just guesswork.


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## Harpo (Sep 18, 2012)

Indeed it is, and lunchtime doubly so


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## Huttman (Sep 19, 2012)

One can only hope.


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## Huttman (Sep 19, 2012)

Oh God, when did I become so cynical?


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## Dave (Sep 19, 2012)

The author doesn't appear to know what he is talking about. Did he never play LIFE?

Adam Smith and Charles Darwin understood about the effect of the rise and fall in populations - there is nothing new here.

Catastrophic falls in population do occur, have occurred and will continue to occur, but total extinction is a rare thing, and all fluctuating patterns reach equilibrium eventually.

Our management of current resources is worrying but given human history only to be expected. We certainly cannot sustain the way we live at the moment.

But what about the colonisation of space?

However, space humans may not look much like Earth humans. No doubt we will genetically engineer hibernation for long journeys and lose those useless legs in zero-g. We will also have hard-wired internet, communication and processing devices.

At that point you could well say that homo sapiens sapiens no longer exist.


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## K. Riehl (Oct 10, 2012)

I think that baring a catastrophic collapse humans will adapt. I can see the next stage of humanity being something like the adaptations  in Greg Bears' _Darwin's Radio_


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## Huttman (Oct 15, 2012)

Dave said:


> However, space humans may not look much like Earth humans. No doubt we will genetically engineer hibernation for long journeys and lose those useless legs in zero-g. We will also have hard-wired internet, communication and processing devices.



Egad! I hope not! While I really enjoy chatting here on the chrons and other such internet diversions, I REALLY enjoy being able to turn that stuff off to do other things (not to mention big brother or hackers having access to my brain). Having a phone built into to you would also negate any possible excuse of, _"oh, sorry about that, I just couldn't get to the phone then."_ And if there is one thing I like better than my own legs, it would be my wife's.


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## anivid (Oct 15, 2012)

_Everything having a beginning, also have an end_ - in this physical/material world that is.
There having been many human races before this app. 2000 year old one.
The physical dimensions on this planet are only for the purpose of developping/learning - think of it as a summer camp/booth camp, wherefrom you eventually will return home.
It's weird seeing how physical humans preferably are thinking in material worlds, when inventing those - as non-material worlds would be much more probable.


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## Huttman (Oct 15, 2012)

anivid said:


> The physical dimensions on this planet are only for the purpose of developping/learning - think of it as a summer camp/booth camp, wherefrom you eventually will return home.



??? Um, not sure where you are from (I know it says France), but,  the Earth is our home. We were created here/evolved here-whatever you want to believe. If our home was somewhere else, why weren't we created/evolved there in the first place???


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## anivid (Oct 15, 2012)

Huttman said:


> ??? Um, not sure where you are from (I know it says France), but, the Earth is our home. We were created here/evolved here-whatever you want to believe. If our home was somewhere else, why weren't we created/evolved there in the first place???


 
I see you’re not exactly volonteering much about yourself.
_Who says we weren’t ??_
Sorry, that’s all I can say to an unidentified object J


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## Stephen4444 (Oct 15, 2012)

Usually throughout history... when population outstrips resources... then WAR... PESTILENCE>>>disease. Those are the great equalizers. These are the things that bring back balance.


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## Gordian Knot (Oct 16, 2012)

I have read nothing of any consequence that contradicts the following:

"_the number of people on the planet has doubled from 3.5 billion to seven billion in just a half century. While we’ve made great strides in educating people around the world about family planning and birth control, the global fertility rate still hovers around 2.5 children per woman. At that rate, population will grow to 11 billion by 2050 and nearly 27 billion by 2100._"

We are on an out of control population explosion. The results will not be pretty.


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## hopewrites (Oct 16, 2012)

The current version of humanity has been around a bit longer than two thousand years Anivid. Though I suppose getting your facts mixed up is a good way to strengthen your impersonation of an earthling, as we do seem to do that a lot. Blind judgment too, but that's nether here nor there for this topic.

Nature abhors a vacuum they say, and I have complete faith that every vacuum humanity creates for its mortality rate, nature will fill with something else. We used to need to have lots of kids young because people didn't live very long and infant mortality was high. The lower infant mortality rates drop the older women can feel safe in starting their families. As governments start cutting funding for the support or our aging elderly populations, people will have to look at having smaller families to afford supporting their parents as well as their kids.

All life comes at a price. Epidemics and pandemics break out where people get complacent about disease being "wiped out for good." cancers now fill the voids left by viruses and bacteria we have learned to effectively combat or avoid. War lords and mad men fill voids left by nonhuman predators. Some societies even cul themselves, removing those who's actions display tendancies unsavory to the rest.

Humans will probably never go extinct. But its disturbing to me how many of us loose our humanity along the way.


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## Parson (Oct 16, 2012)

hopewrites said:


> Humans will probably never go extinct. But its disturbing to me how many of us *loose* our humanity along the way.



I know this was a typo, but it made me think. How do we loose our humanity, as opposed to losing our better natures. (The Theologian in me wants to comment here, but a good Parson does not sermonize where it isn't desired.)


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## Gordian Knot (Oct 16, 2012)

Hopewrites "Humans will probably never go extinct."

Very curious what has drawn you to that conclusion. All life forms go extinct. Humans are no different. The time frame is certainly in question. That we WILL go extinct is not!


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## hopewrites (Oct 16, 2012)

We're parricidically adaptable. I don't believe there is anything nature can dish out that we couldn't adapt to. We are beginning to adapt ourselves to space, at will not be 'long' before we are out in space adapting it to our needs, from there it is only another step to finding and peopling other planets.

Many life forms will go extinct if their numbers drop below a certain point, some few hundreds in some cases. But I can't imagine such a tipping point for humanity. Some life forms will go extinct if the habitat they have adapted to disappears. But we are too good at adapting our habitats and ourselves to each other to fall that way.

We habitually remove what kills us from our lives, without changing too much what enables us to live. So we live longer, with lower misscarrage rates, lower infant mortality rates... 

We are our only check on expansion.


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## anivid (Oct 17, 2012)

Gordian Knot said:


> Hopewrites "Humans will probably never go extinct."
> 
> Very curious what has drawn you to that conclusion. All life forms go extinct. Humans are no different. The time frame is certainly in question. That we WILL go extinct is not!


 
Quite so 
Even what is called the civilised world left the Ptolemaic world view for the Copernican ditto with regard to the planet system some centuries ago – it’s amazing that when it comes to their own _species_, the humankind itself – the Ptolemaic view is still prevailing


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## Dave (Oct 17, 2012)

Is it really? With the exception of maybe Gorillas and Chimpanzees, only Humans have both the brain power and the spare time to sit around contemplating the meaning of life. Once we start doing that it naturally falls that we begin to question why we are here. The view that "after all, we _must_ be here because of some greater purpose, some reason, otherwise what is the point," is widespread, even among those who do not believe in a God. Otherwise why would I see it on the hoardings of churches advertising Alpha Courses I pass almost everyday. Maybe our brains are hard-wired to think that way as part of our curious nature. It is a difficult concept to bend your mind around that it was instead all just a matter of pure chance, billions of years of trying, and certain natural freaks of the original physical properties of matter. Much easier to believe in intelligent design with Man sitting at the top of a pyramid of nature. When you do consider it as chance, it seems quite arrogant of us to ever think otherwise, but nevertheless it soothes our troubled psyche to continue to believe it still.


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## Gordian Knot (Oct 17, 2012)

With respect Hope, I simply cannot agree. There are a number of things nature can dish out that we could not adapt to. 

Though the more serious threat is ourselves. We are the only species on the planet, in its 4 1/2 billion year history, capable and apparently willing, to destroy the environment we require to survive.

We are on an out of control population explosion. There are not enough resources right now to sustain all of us, and the world population is due to double in the next 40 years. Where are all those people going to live. Where is all the food required going to come from, not to mention the water, and the power grid. Resources are dwindling even as the population is exploding.

We have put our race on the brink of antibiotic overload, where there is so much use of antibiotics both within ourselves, and exponentially worse in our livestock; diseases are becoming increasingly immune to antibiotics. Newer, more virulent and more immune strains of diseases are growing at an alarming rate. Formerly controllable diseases that we will no longer have any defense against.

And despite our ability to think, an awful lot of us prefer not to do so. Here we are at the dawn of the 21st century, and the predominant mindset over most of the world seems to be a return to the religious extremism of the Middle Ages. And I don't just refer to the Middle East; religious extremism in the U.S. is more predominant than any time in the last 50 years.

None of these problems are necessarily beyond our ability to defeat. The problem is that, up till now anyway, there has been no significant desire amongst the governments or the population itself to do anything but make these matters worse.

If this defeatist? Realist? Depends on one's opinion. The bottom line for me is the previous paragraph. What concerns me is not that there are serious problems, but our lack of desire to even attempt to begin to address these problems.


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## anivid (Oct 17, 2012)

Parson said:


> I know this was a typo, but it made me think. How do we loose our humanity, as opposed to losing our better natures. (The Theologian in me wants to comment here, but a good Parson does not sermonize where it isn't desired.)


 
I think you're welcome, Parson


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## Parson (Oct 18, 2012)

Gordian Knot said:


> We are on an out of control population explosion. There are not enough resources right now to sustain all of us, and the world population is due to double in the next 40 years. Where are all those people going to live. Where is all the food required going to come from, not to mention the water, and the power grid. Resources are dwindling even as the population is exploding.


 This is an interesting point as it is the opposite of what this thread started with. I believe that the most common view of population is that it is moving toward stabilization. Perhaps at an unsustainable level, but if you are around in 40 years (I doubt I will be) I think you'll be surprised to learn that the population has not doubled. 



> And despite our ability to think, an awful lot of us prefer not to do so. Here we are at the dawn of the 21st century, and the predominant mindset over most of the world seems to be a return to the religious extremism of the Middle Ages. And I don't just refer to the Middle East; religious extremism in the U.S. is more predominant than any time in the last 50 years.


 I'm not sure I agree here. I think that the definition of "religious extremism" has changed. I pretty sure that the McCarthy era would be more rife with what we would call religious extremists today, but were seen as fairly normal perhaps even exemplary. 



> None of these problems are necessarily beyond our ability to defeat. The problem is that, up till now anyway, there has been no significant desire amongst the governments or the population itself to do anything but make these matters worse.
> 
> If this defeatist? Realist? Depends on one's opinion. The bottom line for me is the previous paragraph. What concerns me is not that there are serious problems, but our lack of desire to even attempt to begin to address these problems.


 I agree. A dark secret about humanity is that so few of us can see beyond our own self interest. A trait which may indeed lead us into extinction.


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## anivid (Oct 18, 2012)

Dave said:


> Is it really? With the exception of maybe Gorillas and Chimpanzees, only Humans have both the brain power and the spare time to sit around contemplating the meaning of life. Once we start doing that it naturally falls that we begin to question why we are here. The view that "after all, we _must_ be here because of some greater purpose, some reason, otherwise what is the point," is widespread, even among those who do not believe in a God. Otherwise why would I see it on the hoardings of churches advertising Alpha Courses I pass almost everyday. Maybe our brains are hard-wired to think that way as part of our curious nature. It is a difficult concept to bend your mind around that it was instead all just a matter of pure chance, billions of years of trying, and certain natural freaks of the original physical properties of matter. Much easier to believe in intelligent design with Man sitting at the top of a pyramid of nature. When you do consider it as chance, it seems quite arrogant of us to ever think otherwise, but nevertheless it soothes our troubled psyche to continue to believe it still.


 
May be it would be natural J
But you see Dave, « natural » isn’t exactly a criteria within the scientific (or for that matter the philosophical) methods.
Too many assumptions from the outset will limit our research, depending on exactly what we want to find out


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## anivid (Oct 20, 2012)

Well, Dave et al. – sorry for the late response beneath (life you know ), but there’s something I want you to ‘know’.
Kant wrote in his foreword to ‘Critic of Pure Reason’ something about turning things around to give them another center/point of interest.
This remark of Kant lead some philosophers to think in paradigme shift - parallel to the Ptolemaian-Copernican one in astronomy – for the purpose of transcending from the sciences to metaphysics (god etc.).
We know that what the human can grasp through his faculties are limited – hence some argues that what we think we know through the sciences might be totally insufficient too, as we wouldn’t be able to comprehend the ‘truth’ with our limited faculties.
Here I can supplement with a little story of the Russian painter Malevich :
*Malevich used to draw a cross in the sand and asking people what that was supposed to represent.*
*Most of course said : a cross J*
*But then he corrected and told them it was the shadow of an aeroplane – simply to show that what we perceived here with our limited faculties in a world of few dimensions, wasn’t the final truth.*
*He wanted to draw the attention to greater worlds with more dimensions, which only gave some reflections here – hence his notion of this world being a shadow world.*


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## hopewrites (Oct 21, 2012)

Gordian Knot said:


> With respect Hope, I simply cannot agree. There are a number of things nature can dish out that we could not adapt to.


that many individuals could not adapt to, I would more than willingly agree, but I feel that as a whole there would be enough survivors to survive anything but the total annihilation of our planet (down to space dust) while we are all still trapped on it (because I feel that space living is not so far off into the future as some people think).


Gordian Knot said:


> Though the more serious threat is ourselves...


agreed! but there are many cases where reaching such tipping points triggers off a natural check to population explosions. maybe, because we have engineered our way out of death, we have really engineered what kind of death will check our seemingly exponential growth. There are some countries where the population is declining, ether through government regulations that keep numbers below replacement, or rampant disease, or any number of other reasons.

My grandparents generation gave birth to "the baby boomers" now we hear about aging baby boomers and the cost of social medicine increasing exponentially from here on out, not just because people are living longer lives than their forebears, but because more people are living longer lives.

There has to be a tipping point. When a population explodes, its natural predators flourish for a time, checking the numbers. Then a tipping point is reached and both numbers decline for a time. It's best illustrated by the snowshoe hare and lynx populations because they have so few intervening factors, but it happens everywhere all the time.




Gordian Knot said:


> And despite our ability to think, an awful lot of us prefer not to do so.





Parson said:


> I agree. A dark secret about humanity is that so  few of us can see beyond our own self interest. A trait which may indeed  lead us into extinction.



Here, again, I would agree that this is the prevailing tragedy of our times, and the thing most likely to bring about a destruction to our current way of life, but our elimination from this planet. 

It's only been relatively recently that humans have massively destroyed areas for minimal gains. I would site the industrial age as the most obvious sign of this, but feel that the mentality that led to the industrial age is probably more to blame than that age itself. 

We are a people who abhor our own destruction, much as we are currently willing to bring it to each other. We make rules and laws by which we may destroy each other and our lands; label and demarcate what sorts of destructions are fair and which are not, which reasons are just and which are not. There is a press to judge and destroy each other and our lands with discretion, reason, and intelligence. Which is ridiculous, what part could reason or intelligence play in mass market death?

So there is a press to return to a time when people could rely on themselves, when a person could own and work their own piece of the planet. Survivalists pop up with shelters specifically designed to sustain them and a select number of loved ones, and/or useful friends, for a set number of years while the predicted anarchy restructures human interaction and governance.

These people, and these places, are the ones who will outlast whatever nature and humanity throws at the human race. We will destroy ourselves and start anew, like a phoenix, like a forest on fire, like we have done countless times before.


tl;dr: Are we destroying ourselves? Assuredly. Could we stop it? Assuredly. Are we likely to? No. 
Will we survive it? Assuredly.


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## Gordian Knot (Oct 21, 2012)

I agree with most of what you have said. The difference between your thoughts and mine, I think, is humanities ability to resurrect itself from some very bad event. Be it a global pandemic, super solar flare that fries everything with a circuit on the planet, or all out nuclear war.

In all those scenarios there is a likelihood of scattered survivors, especially in the outer fringes of the world. Like you I do believe there would be survivors.

Could those people, scattered over the far corners of the earth continue the species? That I think is where we part ways. You seem to think that humans are somehow special from every other life form that has ever lived and we will overcome.

My view is that those scattered settlements might live out a few more generations, but would eventually decline to extinction. There is a chance, a slim chance that humans could rebuild the population to a sustainable level, but I believe that chance is very small.

My only "proof" is that there is no life form higher than, say, bacteria, on planet Earth that has not gone extinct. Dinosaurs reigned for a hundred million years. They were certainly adaptable. Individual species of dinosaurs never lived that long though. It is estimated that T-Rex, for example, lived about three million years.

_As far as we know, no animals from the Cambrian (542 - 488 million years ago) or Ediacaran (635 - 542 million years ago) periods are alive today, although there are numerous fossils showing they did exist in the past_. Excerpted from the Wise Geek website.

The oldest living animal appears to be the Horseshoe Crab. The oldest living fish, the coelacanth, appears in the fossil record about 410 million years ago. Even the much vaunted cockroach is only 350 million years old (more specifically, the oldest fossil evidence of the descendants of modern species).

My question thus becomes, why do you believe humans would assuredly survive? What is special or so different about humans?


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## hopewrites (Oct 21, 2012)

I believe we will because we have. We did not always cover the face of the earth in the numbers we now possess. We have adapted ourselves to every environment we have come across, and then adapted it to our needs. We are omnivorous, inventive, and tenacious.

I feel very strongly that if earth finds a day with humans no longer upon her, it will be because we abandoned her for somewhere else, not because we were wiped out. Something I still don't see as very likely, being territorial, I doubt we would give up our planet, even if a "better" one was found and made accessible, there would be those who would not leave earth behind.


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## Dave (Oct 21, 2012)

Gordian Knot said:


> Could those people, scattered over the far corners of the earth continue the species? That I think is where we part ways. You seem to think that humans are somehow special from every other life form that has ever lived and we will overcome.
> 
> My view is that those scattered settlements might live out a few more generations, but would eventually decline to extinction. There is a chance, a slim chance that humans could rebuild the population to a sustainable level, but I believe that chance is very small.



There is a precedence for such an event though. The last The last glacial period within Ice Age saw a dramatic fall in the population of Europe, with Humans surviving in only three small refuges - in Iberia, the Balkans and the Urals. Those relict populations then went on to repopulate Europe afterwards.

And the Dinosaurs didn't go extinct; they are Birds!

I'm not saying that Humans will still be around in 300+ Million years. Of course not, but you can have instances of parallel evolution. So, a good design that perfectly fits an ecological niche can evolve again and again from different families. Several science fiction stories have postulated that an intelligent Dinosaur walking upright on two legs, with binocular vision and hands with opposable thumbs might have evolved and then went extinct.



Gordian Knot said:


> What is special or so different about humans?


That's easy. If we are cold, we wear clothes, we light fires. So we are not hungry, we farm and we store food for the lean years when the climate is less suitable. We alter the climate. We alter our environment. We can actually move mountains now. In addition, we are fast becoming a Super-organism comprising of Humans and machines and computers. Some species do alter their environments in a limited way, but no other species has ever been able to change it's environment to suit itself on such a scale as we do regularly with ease. Now you may well be right that we won't survive much longer, but I hope you are wrong...



> *Jeffrey M. Dickemann
> Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
> Sonoma State University
> Richmond, California*
> The human condition, past and future, can be better understood, biologically, as an exemplar of succession theory, derived from the study of plant community histories. A single species expands to fill its available environment, crowding out all competitors. But its Darwinian success means the exhaustion of the resources necessary to its survival. It collapses, leaving the field to other surviving species. Our intelligence, evolved primarily to exploit resources in the service of population growth, may or may not be converted to a capacity directed toward population limitation and environmental sustainability. We shall soon see


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc...we-becoming-a-superorganism/?pagination=false


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## Gordian Knot (Oct 22, 2012)

Dave said:


> There is a precedence for such an event though. The last The last glacial period within Ice Age saw a dramatic fall in the population of Europe, with Humans surviving in only three small refuges - in Iberia, the Balkans and the Urals. Those relict populations then went on to repopulate Europe afterwards.



Maybe. That was indeed a dramatic decline in population; it was not a catastrophic decline however. I'm not sure that is a good analogy.



Dave said:


> And the Dinosaurs didn't go extinct; they are Birds!



Actually the dinosaurs DID go extinct. The remnants evolved into birds. That is a significant difference.



Dave said:


> Some species do alter their environments in a limited way, but no other species has ever been able to change it's environment to suit itself on such a scale as we do regularly with ease.



To my perspective this is not a good thing! LOL. No other species has ever been so able to destroy it's environment on such a grand scale as well as we have!



Dave said:


> Now you may well be right that we won't survive much longer, but I hope you are wrong...



I never suggested that humans won't survive much longer. I am just more leery than some others of the possibility of the race coming back from a catastrophic world event. I don't think it is a guarantee.

Unfortunately, my crystal ball is on the Fritz, so I cannot say one way or the other. I guess time will tell, eh?


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## Dave (Oct 22, 2012)

Gordian Knot said:


> Maybe. That was indeed a dramatic decline in population; it was not a catastrophic decline however. I'm not sure that is a good analogy.


It wasn't an analogy, it is precisely the same kind if event that you described. It wasn't catastrophic because they used their intelligence to survive. It was a genetic bottleneck which can be measured so it is clear that very few survived. (Of course there were still Humans in Africa, and by that time Australia and the Americas so "Humans" were never in danger of extinction.)


Gordian Knot said:


> Actually the dinosaurs DID go extinct. The remnants evolved into birds. That is a significant difference.


I don't understand the difference. Do you mean the large Dinosaurs? How we classify animal phylum is a construct we have made ourselves and so we are really arguing semantics. Just Google "Dinosaur+Bird." This page has some reasons:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/2898520...inks-transition-dinosaurs-birds/#.UIWdCWcw-So

Modern classification now regards Birds as a subgroup of Dinosauria:
_^ Gauthier, Jacques; de Querioz, Kevin (2001). "Feathered dinosaurs, flying dinosaurs, crown dinosaurs, and the name 'Aves'." (PDF). New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds: Proceedings of the International Symposium in Honor of John H. Ostrom. Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University. ISBN 0-912532-57-2. Retrieved 2009-09-22.
^ Zhou, Z. (2004). "The origin and early evolution of birds: discoveries, disputes, and perspectives from fossil evidence". Naturwissenschaften 91 (10): 455–471. Bibcode 2004NW.....91..455Z. doi:10.1007/s00114-004-0570-4. PMID 15365634._

I don't mind a good argument but you can't just nay-say what I say without providing some evidence to the contrary. Otherwise we have that old Monty Python sketch.



Gordian Knot said:


> To my perspective this is not a good thing! LOL. No other species has ever been so able to destroy it's environment on such a grand scale as well as we have!


I never said it was a good thing either. You asked what made Humans different and I told you. With that power comes responsibility. We still haven't yet learnt that. We need to learn it soon.


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## hopewrites (Oct 23, 2012)

I think that we have known responsibility, we are simply not exercising it since the upswing of the industrial age.

When humans were mostly hunter/gatherer harmony with the land was a fundamental way of life. Life could not exist without it.

The centralization and condensation of humanity does no good for us, or the land we cripple in the process. A completely agrarian humanity is not what I'm advocating, but people are healthier living out of metropolises than in.


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## Dave (Oct 23, 2012)

You really think people ever lived in harmony with the land? Is that not just a romantic ideal? I don't have evidence because I wasn't there, but I think there were just less people so the environment was given time to recover.

The farmer humans still slashed and burnt forest to grow their mono-cultures, and the hunter-gatherers killed everything and then moved on to the next place. But there was still a _next place_ back then to move on to.

Now we are at the situation in the quote I posted about half a page back by the Professor of Anthropology. We have expanded to fill our available environment, crowding out all competitors. But our Darwinian success means the exhaustion of the resources necessary to our survival. Unless we can colonise somewhere else and exploit new resources our civilisation will collapse, leaving the field to other surviving species.

I disagree about the health of rural people. Urban living people are certainly healthier if you look at life expectancy rates. Modern medicine is important, but balanced diets and lack of starvation are the main reasons. Pollution of the air and water is more than made up for by the removal of viruses and bacterial infections. 

When you play _Age of Empires_ don't you feel sad at the end that all the trees and elephants are gone? Or are you impressed with your great city of temples and that your population is fed? I feel sad. We are like a plague of locusts upon the Earth (that is an analogy BTW.)


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## Parson (Oct 23, 2012)

I agree with you Dave. I would give the American Plains Indians as an example. The buffalo (American Bison) were already on the road to extinction before the "white" man came and immensely accelerated the process. Domesticating the horse (an unbelievable windfall for the Indians) tipped the balance immensely in favor of the Indian and they became too efficient as hunters for the buffalo to be sustained.


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## Gordian Knot (Oct 23, 2012)

Dave said:


> It wasn't an analogy, it is precisely the same kind if event that you described. It wasn't catastrophic because they used their intelligence to survive. It was a genetic bottleneck which can be measured so it is clear that very few survived. (Of course there were still Humans in Africa, and by that time Australia and the Americas so "Humans" were never in danger of extinction.)



I'm not sure precisely what you mean by the last glacial period. Are you referring to the end of the Last Great Glaciation, which occurred around 12,500 years ago? Also known traditionally as the Younger Dryas. I tried searching for quite a while, but could not come across any information about human population decline at this time. I know it happened, but I could not find any actual statistics.

Could you please elaborate?



Dave said:


> I don't understand the difference. Do you mean the large Dinosaurs? How we classify animal phylum is a construct we have made ourselves and so we are really arguing semantics.



Perhaps. I do not think we are debating (not arguing) semantics. My problem with this approach is that, by definition, NOTHING can ever have gone extinct. Since everything on the planet evolved from something before it. Dinoasurs in all their forms, sizes and shapes as they existed 65 million years ago are gone. Birds are here. Which is why birds are listed as a subgroup of Dinosauria.



Dave said:


> II don't mind a good argument but you can't just nay-say what I say without providing some evidence to the contrary. Otherwise we have that old Monty Python sketch.



You say that like it is a bad thing! <just kidding> Seriously, I am not just saying you are wrong. I am pointing out why I think differently than you do.



Dave said:


> I never said it was a good thing either. You asked what made Humans different and I told you. With that power comes responsibility. We still haven't yet learnt that. We need to learn it soon.



On this we agree completely!


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## Dave (Oct 23, 2012)

Parson said:


> I agree with you Dave. I would give the American Plains Indians as an example.


That is interesting, because I was thinking about what I had said and thought that maybe there was a difference between a European and a North American view on this. The Native Americans are often shown as being 'at one with nature'. There is a view that everything was fine until the arrival of the 'white' man. You are saying that isn't the truth. Yet romanticized stories such as _Pocahontas_ and _Dances with Wolves_ and _A Man Called Horse_ perpetuate it.

I, on the other hand, see a British landscape that has nothing in it that hasn't been touched by the hand of man - walled enclosures with ploughed fields, rectangular forests of coniferous trees rather than native oak, drained bogs and fens, coastal management that keeps some beaches in place but accelerates erosion elsewhere, rivers with walled embankments, or dams with flooded valleys, and floodplains that have been built upon. Everything that people believe is natural from Summer and Spring meadows to Heather moorland is only kept that way by land management. Some of the worst cases of pollution come from mine workings that are so old that no one realises they are man made and take them as being natural - Roman Lead mine spoil and acid mine drainage. 



Gordian Knot said:


> I'm not sure precisely what you mean by the last glacial period. Are you referring to the end of the Last Great Glaciation, which occurred around 12,500 years ago? Also known traditionally as the Younger Dryas. I tried searching for quite a while, but could not come across any information about human population decline at this time. I know it happened, but I could not find any actual statistics.
> 
> Could you please elaborate?


Yes, technically we are believed to live in a warm period within the current Ice Age which has not ended. The last cold period was around 12,500 years ago. 

I don't think anyone can estimate exactly how many people survived living in Europe but genetic studies show that the number was small because everyone of European descent alive today (Haplogroups R1b, I and R1a) are their ancestors and the genetic diversity is small. They survived in three refuges shown here:









Gordian Knot said:


> My problem with this approach is that, by definition, NOTHING can ever have gone extinct. Since everything on the planet evolved from something before it.


MOST species have gone extinct but it is a tree with smaller and smaller branches not a linear progression. We are not the descendents of Gorillas but we share a recent common ancestor. Birds are the ancestors of very small feathered dinosaurs that protected their eggs, but they aren't the ancestors of other Dinosaurs. Reptiles are not the descendents of Dinosaurs but they share a common ancestor much further in the past.


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## The Holy Drunk (Oct 24, 2012)

Interesting article. Naturally we need moon cities pronto.

On declining fertility, well it hasn't hampered recent population booms and if it were, modern technology does give us an advantage over rats in that a doctor can directly fertilise an embryo, so unless sperm vanish which would be very worrying, I think we're fine on that front.


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## hopewrites (Oct 28, 2012)

Dave said:


> You really think people ever lived in harmony with the land? Is that not just a romantic ideal?


It is a largely Romanticized Ideal, but I dont really put myself in that group of Romantics, they have funny views about land management that exclude humans entirely.

There have been groups that slash and burn, rape and pillage the land, but they are by and large less successful at sustaining themselves through history than those who incorporate respect for life and death into their societies. It is very true that death is necessary to sustain life, but they must be in balance. Cultures what promote this balance were able to live within their given environments longer than cultures whose ends and means were more selfish by design.

Amongst the native tribes on the Americas there were some who, as Parson says, ran about taking what they wanted from anything and everything about them, and whose ideas about sustainability consisted only of sustaining themselves for the moment. But they were not the majority (at least not amongst the tribes I have learned about). 

I think the best source for how people viewed their responsibilities (since, as you put it, neither of us were there) would be the mythologies and stories told by the people to themselves. Joseph Campbell points out that mythologies are how a people tell themselves to interact with their world, and I've found that largely to be true, the peoples I have respect for have stories about respecting life and not fearing death. And those peoples who recognize that life is interconnected. I wont claim that American Natives cornered the market on this idea ether, you can see it pop up here and there in peoples that were taken over and subjugated by their more rapacious neighbors. I wouldnt even say this is a new social development ether. Aesop noticed it, and depersonified it in the fable of the grasshopper and the ant (A Bug's Life is a cute modern version of that by the way).


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## planetocean (Nov 12, 2012)

Harpo said:


> http://usahitman.com/sthrid/
> 
> *"Grim scientists have been running the numbers since the early  Seventies and for some the writing’s on the wall: unless drastic action  is taken soon the human race may quickly fade into extinction. That  terrifying fact is all too real and people could simply cease to exist  not in a timespan measured in tens of thousands of years, or even  thousands, but in as little as a handful of centuries.* The birthrate drives  the human race into the future. Despite predictions that the population  will continue to grow far beyond the current seven billion or so, the  actual projected actuarials show a much more disturbing trend:  extinction. "
> 
> ...



*I like what you have to say. In my bio class a couple of years ago, our teacher told us the male species was actually declining and they will go extinct in the future way deep in the future. But I can see it, not that many women are giving birth, they are choosing another style of life to live. This won't happen for a while though, this probably won't be in affect for another hundred years or so maybe even a thousand years. The planet will go back to the animals, I remember watching a documentary about what life will be like when humans are no longer around and it is just animals that roam all over the place.*


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## Galacticdefender (Nov 25, 2012)

I have confidence that we will be a multi-planet species within a century or two, possibly sooner, even within the next 20 years. (Though a self sustaining colony on mars is a completely different thing) 

Though it might not save our race if something were to happen on Earth, it would be a way to spread our populations over two planets at the very least. Best case scenario, resources mined in space solve most rescource issues on Earth, including the energy crisis. Humanity I think is not at the brink of extinction. We are at the brink of of a new period of expansion. Earth is but a stepping stone, I say!

Thumbs up to NASA, ESA, Spacex, Blue Origin, Mars 1, etc.


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## Harpo (Mar 25, 2013)

If we become extinct, would that really be so terrible in the long view?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21866456


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## hopewrites (Mar 25, 2013)

I like that article. He seems to be arguing both sides though.


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## Gordian Knot (Mar 28, 2013)

Good Grief! This guy is being paid to be a science editor?????? That was the most rambling science related article I believe I have ever read. And did he have a point? Somewhere? Anywhere??? Why such a fuss about extinction? If he didn't have a clue why talk about it. And he very obviously doesn't have a clue. He bounced around all sides of the question so many times I was left dizzy.


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## Boneman (Mar 29, 2013)

I do love a good 'scientist' who projects a theory, that cannot be proven here and now. Remember global warming? Now it's become Climate Change. Highly-paid Scientists all over the world projected their doomsday theories on global warming to the point that they became accepted fact, (at least in their own circles) until one pointed out that a rise in temperature of (I think it was 3 degrees) would cause so much melting of the polar ice cap, that at least 30 percent land would be flooded (Sorry, Holland, you go altogether) by, guess what? Cold water. Global warming would reverse in a very short time...


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## jastius (Mar 29, 2013)

planetocean said:


> * In my bio class a couple of years ago, our teacher told us the male species was actually declining and they will go extinct in the future way deep in the future.*



what your science teacher was referring to was that the telomeres upon the y chromosome have been detaching and decreasing over thousands of generations. however our DNA is mostly junk anyways so this isn't actually a great problem. what is speculated is that this form of genetic drift could result in formation of a new third sex of humans. male/ female/ other. i wouldn't be too apprehensive though. governments all over the world are making long term genetic repositories which hopefully in the future can be used to turn around this phenomenon. the united states possesses a repository of genetic samples of every soldier who has died in combat ( though if it was me to choose, i would have probably gone with samples from the ones who lived (who were probably smarter)just for the sake of future intelligence quotient levels) so in the future there will still be men - just more super soldiery-type  ones.


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