• Question: How long do you rekon us humnas have on earth? for example if we crash into the sun or if global warmin/flooding wipes us all out?

    Asked by aliclarkson to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      I think global warming will severely limit the time that we have on the earth (at least in the high numbers we live in now) if we do not succeed in fixing the problem and using more renewable resources. A warm earth simply cannot make enough food to keep that many humans alive.

      I don’t think I know enough about the actual models of climate change to suggest a figure for how long. My answer would have to be that we probably have a long time left, but living conditions will get worse and worse as the climate gets warmer (and for the poorest people first).

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      I think this is quite a difficult thing to predict. We haven’t been around for very long though (about 100, 000 years which is not a lot of time at all on a geological time scale). Perhaps we’ll have only 1 million years left or perhaps we’ll have millions and millions! We don’t really know. Perhaps our global population will be severely reduced by global warming since we won’t have the resources to support everyone- this could take thousands of years to happen but it’s still not a nice future to contemplate!

    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I think global warming will wipe out other species before it gets us…but we might find that our lives change a great deal! So I think we might exist for a very long time, but to be honest I have no idea!

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