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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 3/20/2008 10:36:11 PM | Tigerlily, it looks to me you have done a wonderful job raising your boys.
It is not that important what value-system you have raised them with, as long as they got some sort of structure or belief system, they will grow and develop their own.
Believing in Spirituality and harmonious Co-existance between species is a great - and ultimately superior - foundation to raise your children in.
Because only those who understand true responsibility will be able to correct their ways and grow.
Personally, i really appreciate your comments and have a seat for you on my space ship. lol. | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 3/21/2008 11:09:07 PM | From my understanding, the geological record shows that if we talk about life vs the planet in evolution, if life can't adapt, you have extinction and a new species will take its place. The planet itself always wins hands down.
Even if we go extinct, the Earth will go on, and so probably will life, even if there is some catastrophe which takes everything back to the single cell level of complexity (bacteria and viruses). | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 3/24/2008 7:41:38 PM | So hypothetically, a large asteroid would be hurling down at us at an enormous speed - and by chance we would see it coming - and we would predict its collision with our loved planet to be lets say in 50 years time.
The size, density and speed of that sucker would not allow for a "Hollywood" solution.
Scary but perfectly possible.
On the other hand we have experimented with self-sufficient bio-domes for decades, the Russians had humans living in space for decades, the international space station hasnt fallen apart yet, we cant create life but we sure as hell know how to play with genetics and cloning, we can synthesize most things we need, we have learned how to disassemble selected molecular chains to release energy, we have the technology today to use ions for propulsion . . . etc, etc.
It wouldnt be any more about the survival of the individual but survival of all living things, - species of bacteria, plants and animals on this planet.
So while we are the biggest threat to ourselves, nature and all living things, we are also our biggest hope as long as we dont loose ourselves in squabbling but stay focused on the big picture. | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 3/31/2008 7:24:00 AM | Guys, having read science fiction exclusively for decades, as well as having a physics background, I would like to add my two cents worth to the discussion.
First, the planet doesn't care. It has been here for approximately 3B years and will probably still be here when our sun leaves the main sequence and expands to a cool red giant and then explodes. The good news is that that is expected in stellar lifetimes - in the order of 10B years or so. Where do you think all the heavy metals on our planet came from? They are the product of billions of years of stellar evolution.
Given that timescale, what do you think humanity's chances are of surviving 1M years? 100K years? Any scientist knows about population die back. Its what happens when you destroy your food supply by overpopulation, and destroy your environment by poluting it with your waste products. The predominant cause of global warming is human population growth - but make sure you turn your lights off for an hour: that will really solve the problem!
A more serious occurrence is an extinction event. Scientists estimate that between 5-20 extinction events, ie the extinction of over 50% of all species currently alive, have occurred that they can identify. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event)
A number of them are attributed to meteors hitting the earth. The number of reported hits, and the size of these meteors is somewhat scary. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event)
As to space ships, any physicist can tell you the escape velocity required of a given mass to escape the Earth's gravity field - 11km/s. A considerably greater velocity is required to escape the sun's gravity field - 42km/s (to date, only a handful of man-made objects have left - the Voyager spacecraft). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics)
There are abundant resources within our solar system, but there are not abundant energy sources. So there is just simply no way to power the required space ships to "save humanity". Unfortunately, that is the primary shortfall of science fiction, and why they always invent a hyper-drive that avoids all the problems of energy, time and distance between stellar objects.
So we have one planet. We'd better learn to live wisely on it, or else we wont. Actually, in the long run, we wont anyway. | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 3/31/2008 2:05:45 PM | | Well the sun has about another 5 billion years left before it dies (which will take our whole solar system with it in the explosion) but I think the human race will be long gone by then unless one of two things happen. We either need to stop pollution and fix the damage we have done in all our bad practices or we need to develop space travel and find another planet to gradually destroy. Unfortunately both of these options are very unlikely!! | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 4/5/2008 12:43:18 AM | Paul60, thank you for your very informative contribution.
Looking at the sequence of events on this planet and solar system and putting them in perspective to existing problems is a good way of removing all the unnecessary drama.
I personally would even take it further and say that if we look at past challenges and how humanity overcame them we can get a better understanding of the problems we are facing.
Humanity - if it evolved - has no chance of surviving the future unless it keeps evolving. I do see no reason why that should change. Reptiles are an old species group we say, fine but now we are above the crocs in the feed chain and i dont see a reason why we cant become an 'old species' continously evolving.
Everything being equal, we are only a young species and are already exploring life beyond our home planet.
Compared to crocs, apes, horses, dogs, cats and even toads we do ok.
You are right, getting off the planet is expensive on energy - but energy is the one thing we have abundend.
We have oceans full of hydrogen and oxygen and a power source - as 'Dark Stanley' pointed out that will be around for another 5 billion years before it dies.
Using the huge energy input from the sun we could have generated (split) hydrogen and oxygen from water for decades/centuries now ?
Its not economical right now, because its still chaeper to burn fossil fuels and because nobody has really commited to it yet.
Technically most things have already been solved - its politics and positioning for revenue and profits that stops development.
The russians have lived for decades in MIR and our International Space Station hasent fallen apart yet.
Geostationary satellites have functioned reliable for decades.
The 'Space Elevator' which was just a crazy and impossible dream few decades ago (see Arthur C. Clarke's novel, The Fountains of Paradise) is an option they now seriously explore, since we have nanotubes.
You are right, escaping the gravitational pull of Earth is the worst part of Space exploration.
A friend of mine works as a scientist for the Australian Scram Jet Project, which in some years will give us another option of lifting payload in the upper atmoshere.
Getting away from the pull of the sun is about as hard as throwing a spanner out of the window of the ISS in a direction 'away' from the sun.
Gravitational pull, mass, centrifical pull, inertia and facing the right way are the factors to be consideret. Its not really rocket-surgery (oops), lol.
As far as extinction (and adaption) of species is concerned - thousands of species went extinct long before our 'young' race even existed, and while we are responsible to do the best we can, we certainly didnt invent Extiction, blame evolution for that!
As far as overpopulation and overheating (global warming) is concerned - the universe deals and always has dealt with those things in a fashion that reseamble a sinus curve not a linear ramp as we like to think.
Not many things in our universe are linear, but circular (ellyptical) and self regulating.
ice age - global warming - ice age - global warming - ice age - . . . . .
Overpopulation - starvation - underpopulation - growth - overpopulation - . . . .
The cycle of life.
The important thing as a species is to adapt and survive.
And stating that we couldnt possbily survive is more like the believers chant of a doomsday religion than an educated observation, because NOBODY has been around long enough and seen enough of the universe to make that call. | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 10/12/2009 4:55:58 AM | planet Vs humanity?...mmmmmm?.. tough one...
let's see...a pharrkin huge chunk of rock and iron floating in spacial orbit for an incalculable amount of time....
Vs ... squishy fragile humans clinging to the thin film stuck to the planets surface that need air cons in their cars.... and shoes on the beach..
I back the Planet to be here long after we've done our dash and everything else's dash too....... .. | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 10/12/2009 8:46:08 PM | By-the-way, do infants or animals feel guilt? .... where is a vet when you need one? ..
Yes they do but guilt is merely the fear of reprisals.....one look at the dog who unbeknownst to me has ripped my shoe, slinking, head down, tail vaguely wagging....yup fear of reprisals aka guilt for previous actions. As for infants...they are all bloody guilty, emotionally manipulative uncontrollable sh**Ts and wee wees.
no one should!!
you are all ****s
It appears that OP's premise of us all being us and not them was missed in the above ergo it looks like only gamato will survive, which is fine by me, cos who want to be around such judgemental pessimism?
Who will survive evolution? Isn't that an oxymoron........evolution means change, surviving means stasis under duress. Since the word evolution generally applies to organic things ON the planet and not the planet itself...which merely goes through somewhat severe mood swings (blows hot and cold and takes it's bloody time about it,) I would moot.....if we did survive without evolving we wouldn't have a hope on earth of surviving...if you get my drift. Am now looking for a man with six arms, who bathes in the microwave and lives under my fridge and wears a thousand island eau de cologne. | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 10/12/2009 9:31:51 PM | yep my moneys on what paul said
we are all destined to go back from which we came
star-dust for the poets and nuclear waste for the scientists
but just when our Earth is consumed by the big firey red ball, I am converting to Scientology and getting onboard my DC8 spaceship with Xenu, and I'm off to live on planet Endore with the Wookies. fcuk the birds and bees and bean sprouts,screw you guys Im goin home | |
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| If only one can survive evolution, the planet or humanity, who should survive?
Posted: 10/14/2009 4:58:31 AM | picking up on the OP's notion of..'Pro-Planet' and 'Anti-People'.
on Earth..it seems there are one group of humans that are quite happy to live on the planet.... and never sought to mess with it too much.. revere the Earth as a mother, studied and recorded the heavens in detail..even.... looked after it as best they could.... we're here for the long haul...
and another group who seem to be trying to get off the planet.... using a progression of flying devices constantly improved upon as materials/technology catches up....a bit of "slavery" here and there for labour.. but we're going!!!.... building a better "raft" to get past the "reef"...?....
interestingly the latter group are mainly white westerners...
and the former mostly everyone else....
for example our own indigenous culture had enough resources and minerals in the land here to have spent the last 40,000 years trying to build rockets to get off the planet if they had reason too...
yet in a much shorter space of time... white westeners are building systems to get off the planet.... "back" into space perhaps?...
are there two schools of thought sharing this planet....?.. two "different" groups of people?...
the "Robinson Crusoes" and the "Fridays"?.... just a thought... | |
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