", "Climate change is a catastrophe. Extinction is now happening up to 100 times faster than the natural evolutionary rate, but the issue is about more than the loss of individual species. As Kemp hinted before, it's unlikely that a mass extinction event would result from a single calamity like a nuclear war or pandemic. From just a few, six billion sprang. It isn't just a bottleneck, it's a bottleneck under pressure. Possible causes: global cooling and sea-level drop; and/or a Gamma-ray burst. Yes. If the dates coincide, you might be onto something. The probability of a human extinction event within 10 years is 50/50, a guess! 85. This reduces genetic diversity, since every member of the species from then on is descended from this limited number of progenitors. To some, this makes future warnings seem less credible. This may result either from natural causes or due to anthropogenic (human) causes, but the risks of extinction through natural disaster, such as a meteorite impact or large-scale volcanism, are generally considered to be comparatively low. This social feature of the bird which had protected it for so long, made it easy prey for human hunters. And a really lethal virus would kill its host and wipe itself out before causing human extinction. These alarming extinction trends are driven by one key factor: humans. Late Devonian extinction (375-360 Ma): The second-largest extinction in Earth’s history. Yet the risk of human extinction due to climate change—or an accidental nuclear war, or a meteor—could be much higher than that. Scientists can spot near-extinctions by correlating several different pieces of evidence. Scientists believe two major events resulted in this extinction: glaciation and falling sea levels. The probability of anthropogenic human extinction within the next hundred years is the topic of an active debate. At this time in the history of Earth, life was in its early stages. COVID-19 would have to mutate into something really lethal to get to extinction level. Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking... People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, "Well, maybe the human species doesn't really deserve to survive". [2] Multiple scholars have argued based on the size of the "cosmic endowment" that because of the inconceivably large number of potential future lives that are at stake, even small reductions of existential risk have great value. On the other hand, a planet prone to sudden, rapid ecological changes might be a good place for sentience to emerge. COVID-19 cannot cause extinction. This is not to say that the topic at hand is not a fascinating one and worthy of investigation and discussion. But it is important to know the technical limitations of a given analytical approach, the possible uncertainties can completely change the direction a discussion can or cannot take. While anthropogenic risks may contribute the most to total extinction risk natural hazard events can plausibly cause extinction.Historically, end-of-the-world scenarios have been popular topics in most cultures. This is called an extinction event – a period which sees the wholesale extinction of species of animals or plants over large areas, in the sea, or on land, or both. Yes. The fourth major mass extinction event is perhaps the best-known, despite it not being the biggest. And if you imagine some kind of tribal arrangement in which a few dominant males were responsible for a lot of the procreation going on, this situation becomes even more pronounced. Now the climate is getting creepy too. If a planet is not geologically active, it might have homogeneous flora and fauna, or else some other reason why there are diverse species present. In contrast, other researchers argue that both research and other initiatives relating to existential risk are underfunded. ", "FactChecking the October Democratic Debate", "How can we reduce the risk of human extinction? But unfortunately, many analyses of what a sustainable human population level would look like presume that the goal is simply to keep the human race at a level where it has enough food and clean water to survive. This one is interesting because we don't have solid evidence of a catastrophic event during that period, so we're not sure what might have caused the population crash or where to look for more evidence. – D.H. Lawrence Abrupt climate change leading to near term human extinction is a tragedy. Humans are ushering in the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, scientists warn 'Extinction rates for birds, mammals and amphibians are similar to the five global mass-extinction events of … [79], Sociobiologist E. O. Wilson argued that: "The reason for this myopic fog, evolutionary biologists contend, is that it was actually advantageous during all but the last few millennia of the two million years of existence of the genus Homo... A premium was placed on close attention to the near future and early reproduction, and little else. The need for an evolutionarily informed approach to understanding low fertility", "You're More Likely to Die in a Human Extinction Event Than a Car Crash", "The singularity: A philosophical analysis", "Statement by the Executive Committee of the DPF on the Safety of Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Possible causes: global cooling and sea-level drop; and/or a Gamma-ray burst. At least 70% of all species were gone. That human activity is the cause of this extinction event also seems far-fetched. Scientists believe two major events resulted in this extinction: glaciation and falling sea levels. ", "EmTech: Get Ready for a New Human Species", "The Transhuman Future: Be More Than You Can Be", "WILL YOU JOIN THE TRANSHUMAN EVOLUTION? But why? [82]:453–4 Bostrom goes further, stating that if the universe is empty, then the accessible universe can support at least 1034 biological human life-years; and, if some humans were uploaded onto computers, could even support the equivalent of 1054 cybernetic human life-years. A ballooning human population, habitat destruction to make … (Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash.com) "Tragedy is like strong acid – it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth." All images & media in this story. 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