I call Jupiter!

[ZenGum]

In this regard, I think our current civilisation is screwed.

As Hawkings points out, our impact on this planet is increasing rapidly. Each year, the earth's natural systems produce a certain amount of "bounty" - goods that can be gathered without harming the productive system. Each year we exceed that amount, currently by about 30 to 40%. We make it up by nibbling at the biological capital, which gets us through this year but makes future bounties smaller. Like many other civilisations before us, we can keep doing this until the final crash when there is no more bio-capital to nibble.

There is no other habitable planet in our solar system. "Terraforming" Mars would take an enormous amount of effort and resources, which would be better spent preserving Earth. Indeed, making Mars into a second-rate copy of Earth would probably exhaust Earth entirely.

Other star systems are so far away they cannot be reached in less than many lifetimes by any technology we currently belive to be possible, let alone possess.

IMHO, the only hope for our civilisation is to transfer it to non-human technology. That *could* go and exist on Mars, or make the trek through deep space. Our ideas might spread through the galaxy, but our bodies won't.

[SamIam]

A basic tenet of ecology is "carrying capacity." This is the maximum population of any given species which can be sustained by the ecosystem in which it resides. Malthus predicted it back in the 1700's. Human population growth is rapidly reaching the point where the planet's resources can no longer sustain it - if it hasn't been surpassed already.

In addition, the "green revolution" has come at the expense of loss of much diversity in our grain crops. Mega-agriculture plants zillions of acres of the same mono-species which often can't even reproduce themselves using the seeds from the harvest. You have to buy special seed grains from big ag. This is nice for them, but a loss of genetic diversity will sooner or later prove fatal. Let a single plant virus mutate (which viruses do all the time) get loose in those fields, and everything will go because our crops have lost the benefit of what is called "hybrid vigor."

Ultimately the problem of carrying capacity and/or loss of genetic diversity in our grain crops will cause a major human population crash. It's been observed time after time with other different organisms and nature is not going to do us any special favors just because we think we're such a wonderful species - especially when we working against nature and know this, but continue to do it anyway.

But who knows? Maybe the remaining members of our species will evolve into a much more fit and adaptable homo common sensus in another 2 million years from now. Members of the new species will regard us the way we now do the neanderthals.

[jimhelm]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

IMHO, the only hope for our civilisation is to transfer it to non-human technology. That *could* go and exist on Mars, or make the trek through deep space. Our ideas might spread through the galaxy, but our bodies won't.

That's a scary and strangely alluring angle.

Our robot-progeny. Our electric, self aware children of the mind. Able to switch to stasis mode for long inter or intra stellar voyages.

Now, if we were to program them to go and find us a new home, carrying with them cryogenic-ally preserved genetic materials with which to recreate us.

and of course we would need other robots to raise us and teach us what we taught them.

lets do it!