What If All Humans Vanished?

There are whole groups of "people" that firmly believe that the human race should be wiped out of existence. I wonder if there is some connection with any of these groups.

Personally, I think they should lead by example.

The original article in New Scientist is more thorough, and provides more explanation of some of the effects and the assumptions behind them.

Agreed, the New Scientist article is far more substantial, but the handy chart in the first article simply drives the issue home.

Yeah, I like the chart. I jumped the gun an posted about the New Scientist article before I saw that you already mentioned it.

I like the "After 50,000 years Mankind's tenure is mostly marked by a few archeological remains..."

In other words, just Pampers.

If you chase some of the links it is obvious this another enviromentalist creation. I'll be kind and spare the details.

I disagree. In Planet of the Apes, a well preserved, three quarter buried statue of liberty exists in 3955 AD. This is a steel structure lasting over 2000 years, and it was untended for a majority of that time as can be seen in this Planet of the Apes Timeline. Clearly there are some flaws in the New Scientist article.

Well, copper actually, at least on the outside. Maybe that explains it :-)

Well, nothing remains on earth of the great Raptor civilization that ruled the earth until the war with cold people from Titan, who won with a tossed stone.

All you can see are the remains of the lunar colonies they estabslished, but NASA hides this :)

"All you can see are the remains of the lunar colonies they estabslished, but NASA hides this"

Huh? You mean you actually believe this conspiracy-theory crap?

Even my cat knows NASA never went to the Moon!

You are citing a work of fiction as evidence? Oh, your're kidding, right?

Good one!

What would Madonna do with no one to photograph her?

Litigate!

Crack up!

Okay. Litigate. Then crack up.

At least she would have the advantage of being able to justify her claim that the only reason why she was still here - after everyone else had left - was because she was not all there.

Very handy (as I can fully appreciate in my own case).

--Europium

The last paragraph of that New Scientist article made me want to puke. Also, I love how electric light, commonly thought of as one of the most amazing inventions of the industrial era, is disdainfully reffered to as "light pollution" throughout the article.

JRocket writes: "I love how electric light, commonly thought of as one of the most amazing inventions of the industrial era, is disdainfully reffered to as "light pollution" throughout the article."

It is not clear to me (at least), where the authors of this article have deliberately attempted to equate the fact of electric light specifically to the problem of "light pollution." Certainly artificial lighting is a prerequisite for light pollution, but one could just as easily argue that the authors equated the invention of the automobile specifically, with air pollution. I don't see them having made such an indictment of 'electric light.' Although one is certainly a prerequisite for the other, whether there is an actual problem or not depends more on the application of the technology than on the fact of its existence. Light pollution is a really biggie with me, due to the nature of my job, mostly.

I work for a large astronomical observatory. While the organization itself is headquartered near downtown Austin, Texas, the observatory site itself is in far west Texas, near Fort Davis, and consists of three large (one very, very large) telescopes, and a number of smaller ones. 'Small' being those having 30 inch mirrors or less. The site is located in one of the few remaining areas in the United States where light pollution has not all-but-completely ruined the night skies. Sometimes I shuttle back and forth between the observatory site, with its gorgeous, pitch-black night skies laden with stars, and the campus in Austin, whose bleached night skies have long since garnered little more than a passing glance.

Upon returning to town after a short stay in West Texas, I never fail to be stunned by how brightly lit the night skies are here in town. Even more remarkable have been my conversations with visitors who, on their first visit to our observatory, expressed astonishment at their discovery that the night sky did not, in fact, have the ten or twenty stars they had always assumed it did, but thousands upon thousands of stars - all visible to the unaided eye - thanks to the lack of light pollution in that part of Texas. Some of these folks expressed their lifelong conviction - thanks to light pollution, as they soon discovered during their visit - that only a handful of stars were actually visible without the aid of huge telescopes. Unfortunately, I explained, no instrument yet exists which can completely cut through the thick fog of unwelcome light found in nearly all but the most remote parts of our planet. Light pollution is a real problem, particularly for astronomers, but also for all those people, like my visitors, who have never experienced the night sky in all its glory. Like the citizens of Trantor in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, these people have never once in their entire lives seen a truly dark night sky and, consequently, they have no concept at all that they are missing something so stunningly beautiful. For my part, I find this state of affairs to be quite saddening, actually. Especially in light of the fact that much of this pollution can be eliminated - and not without the added benefit of a tremendous long-term savings in energy costs. For a truly vile example, let's talk about your typical, so-called "cobra-head" street light.

How many of those cobra-head street lights have you seen in the course of your life? (And don't count any of them more than once.) Care to guess? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Remember, we're talking over the course of your life. (And please, by all means, be as conservative as you like.)

Now, how many of these so-called "street" lights could you see from your back yard? From two blocks away? From a mile? Two miles?

Twenty miles?

Allow me to point out that any street light whose light you can see from any point not on the street that it is supposed to be illuminating is wasted light. Meaning wasted energy.

Now multiply this wasted energy by the number of such street lights that you've seen in your life.

That thar is cawled "laht puh-lu-shun." There's lots of it. And it's very expensive.

Those "cobra-head" street light designs are, in my opinion, some of the best examples of Pathetic Engineering at its Very-Most-Pathetic. They are are also excellent examples of Me-Too Engineering at its Me-Too-ist: one bad design makes it to market and everyone else follows suite, like mindless, bleeting sheep, having equally-bad designs or worse. You see it all the time. A personal favorite is the related and highly-popular More-Is-Better Ethic that insists, year after year, bad design after bad design, on putting even more those totally useless buttons on VCR remotes; more obscure, unwanted, unwelcome, and confusing "features" found on nearly every microwave oven, telephone, stereo system, and every other Crapola consumer product imaginable which contains some sort of microprocessor whose presence represents the only justification for the product's otherwise pointless existence.

To its credit, Apple Corp. seems to have remained above this frey. Well above it, in fact. To see what I mean, just take a look at any iPod to find Intelligent, Simple, Powerful, Aesthetic Industrial Design at its very, very finest. Thanks, Apple!

And finally, since my crappy, me-too, cobra-head street light design is wasting so much precious energy illuminating your back yard, your neighbors' back yards, and the inside of that abandoned dog house over in the next block, you'd better give me three.

No, make that six.

No, eight.

Oh to hell with it, just SuperSize Me!

(And, by the way, I don't care how much money, energy, and resources I waste filling your night skies with my unwanted light because, after all, it is you, not me, who are footing the bill. - Cobra Head)

--Europium

Wow, obviously I touched a nerve.

"If tomorrow dawns without humans, even from orbit the change will be evident almost immediately, as the blaze of artificial light that brightens the night begins to wink out. Indeed, there are few better ways to grasp just how utterly we dominate the surface of the Earth than to look at the distribution of artificial illumination (see Graphic). By some estimates, 85 per cent of the night sky above the European Union is light-polluted; in the US it is 62 per cent and in Japan 98.5 per cent. In some countries, including Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, there is no longer any night sky untainted by light pollution."

So, ok fine, they never SPECIFICALLY state that the wonderment that is electric light is responsible for light pollution, but it's the only possible source. Whereas air pollution can come from numerous places, light pollution has pretty much one source and one source alone: electric light.

Also, I'm familiar with the Foundation Trilogy and the rest of the Foundation series, and we are a long, long way from the Megolopolis that is the planet Trantor.

As far as your ranting about those cobra head light fixtures, just talk to any police officer to find out the crime-deterrence and traffic safety benefits that are conferred by them. The only real solution I can think of to your "problem" here is to install motion detectors on each and every one of them. You noted their numerousity yourself, how much do you think such a project would cost for even the smallest of towns? How long would it be before a community recouped the cost in energy prices?

"Wow, obviously I touched a nerve."

Not really. But I rather suspect I did.

From my floor in the building in which I work, I can see the glowing diffusers on the standard-design, cobra-head street lights a block away and fifteen floors below my window. The light that I can see is shining upward directly from the street lights themselves, having never reached the street level and surrounding neighborhood at all. These street lights are much like all the other street lights one sees in town in that they all seem to be based on the same flawed design (BTW, there are much better designs which towns near observatories often use - usually in deference to the observatory's needs. In the truest sense of the word, they're "street lights." They illuminate streets, not the sky. Better yet, they're cheaper, take less energy, and they do their jobs extremely well without the extra burden of fancy motion-sensors and other such failure-prone nonsense. Dr. Einstein was absolutely right when he said that it is always easier to make something more complicated, but nearly impossible to make it simpler. Our designs are simpler. And cheaper. And they work. And they save energy. And money. You can't beat that!) BTW, where were we? Oh yes... And so, collectively speaking, we're talking about a whole lot of light that doesn't anywhere but upward and, sadly, doesn't get one single chance to deter The Bad Guys. As cities go, Austin is rather small when compared to, say, Los Angeles, which has the same problem but on a much grander scale. For my part, I could retire on the money L.A. wastes in one single night illuminating the undersides of clouds (no criminals here) and nocturnal birds (nor here. just lucky, I guess).

--Europium

After 10 years all methane is gone from the atmosphere?

Does this mean that without humans all ruminants suddenly die off?

Do these idiots have any idea how much methane is produced by your average dairy cow????

Not to mention being the chief component of "marsh gas" or "swamp gas" coming from the bacterial decay of dead vegetation.

There are also processes that remove Methane as well. Here is a good power point pesentation on the Methane Cycle.

Here is another interesting tidbit, from the encylcopedia of the UK web service "Tiscali UK":

"Methane causes about 38% of the warming of the globe through the greenhouse effect; weight for weight it is 60–70 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping solar radiation in the atmosphere and so heating the planet. The rate of increase of atmospheric methane is declining and global emissions remained relatively constant over the period 1984–96, so atmospheric levels were predicted, in 1998, to stabilize by the 2020s. An estimated 15% of all methane gas in the atmosphere is produced by cattle and other cud-chewing animals, and 20% is produced by termites that feed on soil."

Interesting, presuming, as the New Scientist article did, that domesticated animals would revert to a feral (wild) variation, they would still maintain largely the same diet, not to mention an explosion in wild deer population (another cud-chewing animal, I believe) when they are no longer hunted by humans, that these animals and termites (which man is always trying to exterminate) still account for around 35% of atmospheric methane.

It sounds like if we could convert atmospheric methane into carbon dioxide, it would lessen the global warming problem, right? Eureka! To start with, let's mount a pressure-sensitive piezo-electric igniter to all cattle behinds and burn-off that methane, unless we can capture it for use in methane powered hybrid vehicles. Isn't methane also used in fuel cell technology along with hydrogen? Oh, boy, I am on a roll now!

In terms of time, on a scale of the beginning of the earth, until now, we humans have not been here for a very long time. Are we arrogant enough to think that we are better than our ancestors or the final iteration of the development of the earth? Dream on! We are here for but a nanosecond in the true measurement of time. What will the next species be?

"But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night in which the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." [2Peter 3:10] This is when and how all traces of man(and everything else) will disappear from this planet, along with the planet itself. They will be replaced. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God..."[Revelation 21:1] You may not believe it now, but eventually the truth will be understood by all. Some may say (and have said) this is not the forum for this. I don't mean to be offensive, but someone reading this will be blessed by it. It is for that person that this is posted. Everyone else can ignore it if they so choose.

YOWZA!

That took some nerve, Buffy! High Five!

--Europium

Thanks Water Buffalo - there seem to be so many "scientists" that believe in evolution as a FACT; indeed, they talk as if it were. As one who is a Christian, I cannot accept that in light of what the Bible says. Even when I try to objectively reason how it could work, what I know of chemistry, cellular structure, and problems with dating methods, I come up with "it's impossible!" All I know is that if all human life on earth is suddenly gone, then we all who truly believe in Jesus Christ will be in a much better place!

Yes, unfortunately, the humanistic evolutionary, liberal tree-hugging, commie pinko, atheistic scientists and their comrade, fellow travelers in the liberal media who believe in evolution and global-warming played right into the hands of the conservative, bible-thumping, reactionary, born-again, right-wing Christian extremists who believe The Rapture will make all "true" Christians disappear from the earth, taken up into heaven.

I am not sure in which Gospel Jesus explicitly said this would happen, but I do know that he said there is "one way to the Father" and that was through Him. I do not personally see how a belief in some form of evolution also makes Creation impossible. God's Time is God's Time, and physical laws are part of God's plan. If the Bible says God created the Universe, maybe he did it with a Big Bang. If God created Man by setting the course of Nature so that Man would evolve from a lower primate, is that not also Creation? If God gave man dominion over the plants and animals and all of the earth, did he not also intend Man to be a good caretaker of all that he had been given?

On the other hand, it seems that some of the doomsday plots and global catastrophe scenarios (and some of the assumptions they are based on) have been overplayed a little by those with a certain agenda. I am not sure which I should be scared by more, Fire and Brimstone, or Glacier-melting and Asteroids!

Oh, by the way, GO CARDS!

I can't wait for the Rapture; I'll finally be able to get my mail and buy alcohol on Sundays.

God is a figment of man's amagination. Man's mind created God because he can't explain his existance, what happens to him after death or how all we see got started. Grow up folks and accept the fact that there's nothing before you're born and nothing after you die. You've got one shot for the gusto! Make it a good one while you are living because no matter whether you are Mother Terresa or Adolph Hitler when your dead it's over. No heaven, no rewards, no virgins, just nothing. Only a dead body that will decompose and return to the elements with no life, no spirit and no mind.

How many religions are there? Roughly one for every race, nationality, group and then some. Which one is the true god? None! They were are all just made up to control people. Do you really believe in a virgin birth, do you really believe if you sacrifice your life at the world trade center that you go to heaven to be with virgins.

For as intelligent as we supposedly are, we sure accept a lot of pure horse pucky as reality. Aliens, Bigfoot, ghosts, occult demons, gods, angels, and any other ridiculous mind driven concoction you can imagine, we humans have accepted as reality. I have lived 62 years and traveled all over the world and I'll be truthful when I say I've seen none of this crap.

What really cracks me up is Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Benny Hinn and the rest of these wackos that hear directly from God. They claim that God actually communicates with them but none of the rest of us. What a bunch of crap! If God doesn't reveal himself to the rest of us over the big PA system in the sky why would he talk to just these preachers. They all claim to be sinners like the rest of us, so why would God communicate with them and not the rest of us. Are you smelling what their shoveling here folks.

I have accepted that I only live once and I will die and there will be no reward no virgins and no boundless meadows to frolic in, just nothingness. That doesn't bother me in the least. My friends hell is really right here on Earth. Heaven? There ain't one.

If a gamma ray burst in the center of our galaxy wiped out life on Earth and it could very very easily the universe would go on like nothing happened. Why do we think we are special! A bunch of scholars in the past made this crap up to control people and they knew people would believe anything and we are a very advanced society today and we're still falling prey to this crap. Live your life and enjoy and stop listening to things meant to inslave or control you! When they preach it, just say prove it.

"Only a dead body that will decompose and return to the elements with no life, no spirit and no mind."

Sounds to me like you've already arrived.

--Europium

Was grade three the best ten years of your life?

The sewage plants would get a needed rest because humans are all full of it. Especially those on this thread.

That is the wisest post of all in this thread.


(Though the initial article that started it are an interesting intellectual exercise.)

If you're going to help someone insult people you should probably at least use proper grammar. Also, your signature is too long and it's cut off; that doesn't help either.

If you are interested in the quote it is this:

Albert Einstein famously described radiotelegraphy by saying,

"Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat."

Who says great scientists have no sense of humor? It's just a little harder to get their jokes!

I don't get it.