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A professor famous for predicting the imminent demise of the human race at regular intervals since the 1970s has predicted the imminent demise of the human race.
Paul Ehrlich, who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says it's definitely on this time. In a tinned statement issued on Friday, the arm-waving prof lays it on the line:
There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence ... the window of opportunity is rapidly closing ...
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said ...
"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos.
The original article can be found at The Register, with coverage of the cited study coming from ScienceMag.org
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Wednesday June 24 2015, @04:07PM
What a wall of words to say very little, and very obvious. And nice reach to tie in sifi stories. You aren't helping.
The Sun will nova someday too. The idea is to not live ONLY on this rock by then.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:48PM
Is it so obvious? Apparently Malthus and Niven didn't find it so.
What's your diagnosis and suggested cure? Do you have any, or is it that you aren't going to be helpful, as you accused me? Oh, get off this rock before the sun goes nova, huh? Well, that's at least a billion years out. We have many more urgent matters than that. Maybe you mean spread out from this rock so we can once again indulge in total war and letting our greed run wild, without having to worry about killing off everyone? Make Einstein's saying "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones" not sound so eerily probable? Or perhaps you don't have a cure because your diagnosis is that we don't have any big problems, so we need not worry about anything? If so, that's lazy.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:18PM
No, it won't--unless it somehow acquires a twin star.
A nova is an accretion phenomenon associated with binary stars exchanging mass.
Sol won't supernova either.
That requires a star of at least 3.2 solar masses.
What Sol will do [wikipedia.org] is run out of hydrogen fuel, expand enormously to become a red giant (engulfing Mercury, Venus Earth, and Mars[1]), go through a helium-burning phase, then collapse to become a white dwarf.
[1] So, Mars isn't a long-term colonization solution either--even with e.g. inexhaustible fission power sources.
-- gewg_