Is Stephen Hawking Right?

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Unless humans take care of this planet there's not going to be any humans left to travel anywhere or return to a home. Humans are destroying this planet at an alarming rate so by traveling somewhere else will only lead to another planet that they will screw up as well. Unless humans learn to take care of what they already have they should never travel anywhere just to do the same destruction over and over .:(
 
cosmictraveler said:
Unless humans take care of this planet there's not going to be any humans left to travel anywhere or return to a home. Humans are destroying this planet at an alarming rate so by traveling somewhere else will only lead to another planet that they will screw up as well. Unless humans learn to take care of what they already have they should never travel anywhere just to do the same destruction over and over .:(
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I will admit we need to do better with what we have. However that's not really the point of the article. In order for the human race to do better it has to survive and like Hawking, I believe we need to have other places to live besides the one place we have now. I am using the term 'we' rather loosely in that no matter how many places we find to live off planet, most of us will still be stuck on planet. It's not like we will find another place to live and everybody will pack up to leave. For most of us Earth is the only place we will ever live on.
 
By then conservatives or those with natural somatic biases might be the only ones left that would need the current environment replicated elsewhere. The others would have gradually engineered themselves into transhuman or posthuman species (the ultimate bling enhancements and body mutilations fad). Such artificial bodies could tolerate a variety of conditions, including an incredibly fouled or dilapidated Earth, with hopefully the innate desire to reproduce like rabbits having also been discarded. But this outcome, of course, would depend on both traditional and modified human descendents not being completely eradicated and replaced by any legit nanotech-based robotic or AI life finally being developed, that acquires an agenda of its own.
 
C C said:
By then conservatives or those with natural somatic biases might be the only ones left that would need the current environment replicated elsewhere. The others would have gradually engineered themselves into transhuman or posthuman species (the ultimate bling enhancements and body mutilations fad). Such artificial bodies could tolerate a variety of conditions, including an incredibly fouled or dilapidated Earth, with hopefully the innate desire to reproduce like rabbits having also been discarded. But this outcome, of course, would depend on both traditional and modified human descendents not being completely eradicated and replaced by any legit nanotech-based robotic or AI life finally being developed, that acquires an agenda of its own.
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Not sure what your point is, but it sounds more like a rant. As far as the humans adapting to new environments, well that's evolution and it looks like humans are positioned to go many different ways at about the same time. Only the successful adaptations will be around to think about what happened in the future or maybe there won't be any humans at all, but only self aware intelligent robotic life trying to figure out how they came to be in the first place.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
Not sure what your point is, but it sounds more like a rant.
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I was just noting the quaintness of his outlook, Hawking expecting a familiar "human race" to still be around a couple of centuries from now and ready to survive further in space if they could just gut that period out. :)
 
C C said:
I was just noting the quaintness of his outlook, Hawking expecting a familiar "human race" to still be around a couple of centuries from now and ready to survive further in space if they could just gut that period out. :)
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An excellent point, IMO, C C.

Do you suppose that anyone around in 1811 could have possibly imagined even contemplating our species getting beyond the gravity of earth, never mind colonizing other worlds?
 
C C said:
I was just noting the quaintness of his outlook, Hawking expecting a familiar "human race" to still be around a couple of centuries from now and ready to survive further in space if they could just gut that period out. :)
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Good point, 200 years is a bit of a stretch, but he did qualify by saying “if”. I will be very surprised if we can get to the next century intact and still advancing. But then I have to say that to keep up my pessimistic image of the human race.

I do think there is a tipping point coming up this century for humans as a species. Whether we get past the tipping point is still up to us in the actions we take. At this moment in time I don't see us making the choices that will get us past the tipping point. But humans can be very surprising at times of great need. I just hope they recognize the great need in time to make a difference.
 
Anyone thinking they have a clue about what life on earth will be like 200 years from now is clueless.
 
There have been many times in earths history where we as a people believed that we would not survive the coming centuries, mostly through "war's" destructive powers, though the slow destruction of the planet is the one point that we may not be able to avoid if we do not change actions ourselves.
 
I'd still rather humans take care of the problems that they have beset themselves with here on Earth rather than waste allot of time and money to just fly to Mars to have a colony that needed Earth to resupply it every year or two. That should be done after humans clean up the mess they have created so that they have at least this planet to live upon because if this planet is destroyed ecologically , humans really won't have anything else to come home to.
 
MicroCubedX3 said:
There have been many times in earths history where we as a people believed that we would not survive the coming centuries, mostly through "war's" destructive powers, though the slow destruction of the planet is the one point that we may not be able to avoid if we do not change actions ourselves.
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How long we have on this world is still up for debate, but if we can't find a way to live off world our fate is a forgone conclusion. It's only a matter of time.
 
cosmictraveler said:
I'd still rather humans take care of the problems that they have beset themselves with here on Earth rather than waste allot of time and money to just fly to Mars to have a colony that needed Earth to resupply it every year or two. That should be done after humans clean up the mess they have created so that they have at least this planet to live upon because if this planet is destroyed ecologically , humans really won't have anything else to come home to.
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You talk like the entire human population can only do one thing or the other. I'd like to think we can do both things at the same time.
 
It depends on how much cocky and peepee the world can withstand.

One, tow, three kids ok but 12...14...18 per peson is a shit load of effluent.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
You talk like the entire human population can only do one thing or the other. I'd like to think we can do both things at the same time.
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While there is ways to do both I'd rather monies be used to first get this place going the right direction ecologically speaking. Robotic spacecraft can do much of the advancements in thrust, safety and reducing costs overall so that say in 50 years from now the costs will be brought down considerably and we can also be using most monies to fix what we need to on Earth.
 
cosmictraveler said:
While there is ways to do both I'd rather monies be used to first get this place going the right direction ecologically speaking. Robotic spacecraft can do much of the advancements in thrust, safety and reducing costs overall so that say in 50 years from now the costs will be brought down considerably and we can also be using most monies to fix what we need to on Earth.
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Sounds to me like your doing both things at once, but your prioritizing how to allocate resources. I don't have a problem with that.
 
John99 said:
It depends on how much cocky and peepee the world can withstand.

One, tow, three kids ok but 12...14...18 per peson is a shit load of effluent.
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No SHIT! Don't drink the water. Don't swim in the water, and don't eat anything you catch in the water.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
No SHIT! Don't drink the water. Don't swim in the water, and don't eat anything you catch in the water.
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Or build sewage treatment plants all over the world. I think they do a decent job but not really sure. Main thing is just to not dump it all into the waterways. There has to be some practical use for treated sewage. Maybe put a hardener in it and use it for roads.
 
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