Risk of Extinction High

The extinction of the Human Species is at a high risk over the next 1000 years IMHO.

The World that we live in today seems to be under the constant threat of one kind of crisis or another. Our welfare has been devastated in small ways by natural events within the recent past. Weather conditions and Geological activity have both contributed to tremendous loss of life and property. AIDs has stuck some countries very hard, especially third-world countries, where adequate treatment may not be accessable to the majority of the populations. Its completely unimaginable that any natural event has the capacity to completely wipe out the Human Species, short of a large asteroid or comet strike. Personally I feel that the world will not likely be devastated by a strike from space, if something like this doesn't happen in the next 200-300 years it may never happen. Within 300 years we may have the technological capacity and the early warning capability to prevent this kind of natural disaster.

But what other kind of natural disasters is the world facing currently? Well everyone should be aware of the global warming situation or the climate changes. Our own technological advancement may very well have contributed to accellerating this condition, but at this point it doesn't really matter so much why it is happening. The Earth's ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, this may very well cause coastal flooding in low lying regions. And the melt of fresh water may de-salinate the oceans of the world to such a degree to have an influence on the ocean currents. The ocean currents drive the Earth's climate to a large degree, and if these currents are altered the possibility of an Ice Age is very real. Even though the climate is warming currently we may end up with an Ice Age which covers most of North America with 12 inches of snow year round. And if most of the civilized regions of the world were covered with snow year round, we wouldn't be able to grow enough food to feed all the people.

The oil reserve is dwindleing, the Earth's resources of oil have nearly all been plundered. We not only depend upon oil for fueling our high mobility lifestyles, it is also the source of most of the world's plastic products. Its very very hard for me to imagine what our world might be like if there wasn't any plastic. Nearly every single product on the market today depends on plastic components in some way it seems to me. We may be able to create Hydrogen-Electric vehicles or power them with pure Ethanol, technology may provide us with some solutions.

AIDs is one kind of global plague, the possibility of more plague still exists. And with our public air transportation system reaching nearly every single corner of the globe; plague may easily become a world-wide catastrophie. The virus or penecillen resistent bacterial infection may break out in one small region and be right on your doorstep before we even know something is wrong. Of course its not really possible that some kind of natural plague could cause our complete and total extinction.

Yellowstone National park in the United States of America is one of the largest and deadliest volcanoes on the face of this Earth. There are definate signs that it is building to an eruption, it is most definately an active volcano. When this volcano does erupt large portions of the USA may be covered in volcanic ash, including regions currently being used as cropland. So much material may be ejected into our atmosphere that the Sun's energy may be blocked world-wide. A kind of volcanic winter may occur and affect every region of the world. Now it may or may not erupt within the next 1000 years, but there will definately be an eruption at some time in our future.

Inclement weather conditions may get much worse but even if they reach a plateu and even out, currently there has been much devastation from bad weather. Geological activity may very well increase, the New Madrid fault region in the USA is scheduled for a major quake sometime in our near future. All these kinds of events are commonly considered the wrath of God, but I don't believe they are the result of an angry God. In some ways events such as these can be described as neccessary conditions for life to even exist on our planet. The argument is really very simple and goes like this... All rocky core worlds experience some geological activity over the course of their lifetime. And all worlds with atmospheres have weather conditions and even sometimes severe conditions. Therefore since the rocky core planet with an atmosphere are both neccessary conditions for our kind of life to exit; all of the disasters that come with it and injure life are neccessary as well.

It appears that we may have some very bad times ahead of us, but still no concieveable natural events could wipe out the human race completely. The real threat comes to us from the possibility of a great social crisis partially driven by such events as we know will occur. Technological advancement has given us the capability to wipe out most higher forms of life from the planet. We may not be able to survive because of the human condition, which is so poor. Much of the world's population is driven or motivated by fear, anger, hatred, or greed.
And this is a condition that we will not be able to survive, that no technological advancements can save us from. We must save ourselves from one another or we will surely perish as a species on planet Earth.