Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Humanity's eventual effect on earth

Will human life, assisted with technology, bring eventual ruin to nature?

One may hypothesize there is no chance that will happen, as humans are capable of predicting such disasters and will be able to avert them.

One may also hypothesize that the need for fuel will lead to the eventual complete harvesting of earth and its natural resources...perhaps if resources could be synthesized by means of technology.

I would hypothesize that the progression of time would lead to an eventual dissolution or transformation of humanity as what we know of it now, so that any reasonable hypotheses of our not so distant future are relatively impossible, given our current information. Other than this hypothesis of course.

In my opinion, 'NO'. We are born here. We are not 'just created' to exist in this environment; we evolved out of the environment present here. So we cannot do anything to the environment (nature). All our actions including the acquiring of knowledge and technology are allowed by nature, are part of the nature. The idea that we can tamper with the nature is incorrect; we are just powerless to do that.

We may, out of greed, destroy ourselves. However, that does not mean that we ruined nature. The nature includes both the living and nonliving things. Among the living things, the bacteria and virus far outnumber humans. Wiping out the whole of the living beings by the humans is impossible, even if we purposefully try to do so.

We humans have lived a sustainable life from the very beginning. Now, glob-trotting, space travel, etc have become sustainable and so we do it. Gradually, these may become unsustainable if we cannot find any alternate source of energy. However, our ability to survive will not be affected (unless nature decides so) and we will again lead a sustainable life (perhaps with wind mills and animal driven carts).

Welcome to SAGG, babinkaman.

If by nature you mean the Earth, we (humanity) can do a lot of damage, we can help to make lots of species extinct, including ourselves, but Earth and its life have survived extinctions that were probably more severe than anything we can do.

I pretty much agree with the replies that have already been made. "Ruining" nature is just not possible, because nature is just the way that things are, not just now but at any time in the past or the future. The state of nature can change and has many times over the past 4.5 billion years, but it is still going strong. Humans are having a major influence on the state of nature, which has never been as stable as a lot of people think, but nature will just shift and keep on keeping on. Nature may not look quite the same in the future as it does now, but it will still be there. One thing to keep in mind is that Nature Doesn't Care.

If you are talking about the extinction of life, well life seems to be quite resilient. I don't know for sure how it started, but it has been around continuously for over 3.6 billion years here on Earth. It can be found just about everywhere you look, and there is no way that mankind can wipe out all of life.

My feeling is that mankind will be around for a long time to come. We may wipe out a large part of the population, but mankind has shown the ability to survive over a huge range of environments, and I expect even a large extinction event would leave some of us alive.

The only threat to life on Earth that I can think of is the time when the Sun starts running out of fuel and expands into a red giant. Then the Earth will be scorched and probably all life will become extinct. Of course that won't be for another 4 or 5 billion years.

Bill Gill

That summing up is excellent; nature does not care what we do.

Regarding how long humans will survive 'on earth', I have a different opinion. In my view, (based on my hypotheses, the 'Finiteness Theory'), it is the expansion that controls the evolution. According to my theory, the period of expansion is 25.7 billion years, and the middle one third period of 8.5 billion years (excluding the extreme conditions)will be suitable for complex organic molecules to exist in the universe. Out of this, a middle period of 2.8 million years represents the 'vegetative period' during which plant life will be present. A middle period of 900 million years represents the 'period of intelligence' during which animals having brain like structures will be present. A 300 million period represents the the 'period of consciousness' when life forms that are conciseness of their existence will exist, and the middle 100 million year period represents the zenith of evolution, the 'period of civilization', when life forms in various isolated regions of the universe will acquire real scientific knowledge.

At exact halfway, the average temperature of the universe will be 0K. The present temperature is 2.7K (temperature of the background radiation), and it will take nearly 7 million years for the expansion to reach halfway. Thus we are at the zenith of evolution, and this condition will exist for some 55 million years. After that, there will be gradual devolution. The maximum period that humans can expect to live here is less than 900 million years and that also with a redundant brain towards the last.

Once again I must point out that nature isn't dying. Nature is just changing. And nature has been changing ever since the creation of the universe. What you mean is that nature is changing in ways we don't necessarily like. That is where our problem lies. We need to figure out how to fix the problems we have created, or how to live with the changes.

Bill Gill

there is always some negative effect on nature when you try to control it. at present we try to control nature. but we forget that nature is not controllable. if you try that the it will must give you negative impact. it is something like energy will transformed into another format and will cause us harm. as for example nuclear energy is a great source of power but it can be harmful if we try it wrong way. as nature is changing, as it will always, we need to be cope with that. because we people are the culprit for this mess.