A prominent Australian scientist is predicting mankind will be extinct within a century.Frank Fenner, a professor emeritus
The next evolutionary step after tenure.
at the Australian National University, said no human beings will be able to survive the population explosion, "unbridled consumption" and climate change that is coming and will go extinct within a century along with many other species.
In case you were keeping track, the global population is about 6.8 billion.
According to The Australian, Fenner said he always has hopes he's wrong ... but at 93, he will be long dead and gone in case anybody wants to tease him if his prediction is inaccurate.
Any steps we may take now to reduce consumption, or the population growth or climate change is too late he said -- so we might as well prepare for the end.
He says the Earth has entered the Anthropocene. Although it is not an official epoch on the geological timescale, the Anthropocene is entering scientific terminology. It spans the time since industrialization, when our species started to rival ice ages and comet impacts in driving the climate on a planetary scale.
Fenner says the real trouble is the population explosion and "unbridled consumption".
Consumption - there's your problem right there.
The number of Homo sapiens is projected to exceed 6.9 billion this year, according to the UN. With delays in firm action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Fenner is pessimistic.
"We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island," he says. "Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing remarkable changes in the weather already.
"The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years. But the world can't. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we've seen disappear.
"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he says. "A lot of other animals will, too. It's an irreversible situation
™.
I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.
"Mitigation would slow things down a bit, but there are too many people here already."
It's an opinion shared by some scientists but drowned out by the row between climate change sceptics and believers.
Eh, we've had a good run. At least now I feel more comfortable with the downsides of Global Warming.
