Why Stephen Hawking's "Insane" Predictions From Last Year Are Still Valid (Part 1)

Almost everyone who's read 'A Brief History Of Time' - Stephen Hawking's seminal popular work on black holes and the universe, gets it that Hawking is a smart guy. This, despite the fact he's never won a Nobel Prize in physics. But his insights into cosmology, not to mention contributions (especially in the field of quantum black holes) to astrophysics have certainly illuminated many aspects of modern physics..

Less well known is that Hawking is also recognized  for his insightful predictions about the future of humanity and Earth.  Sadly, it appears in some enclaves of the mainstream media there is a running theme that Prof. Hawking is "losing it" with regard to his forecasts, or going round the bend, to use the vernacular.  But is he really? Or is this the usual media huff and puff snark penned by nattering nabobs who write too much and know too little?  

This year, for example, the Oxford physics professor was claimed to have "made some of the most insane predictions to date, some of which may put a slight damper on your New Year's festivities."   Really? What are they? I will examine in turn his entries in this post and the next, arguing they all (but one)  will have carryover effect into next year and beyond. First, I give Hawking's primary warning:

 Humans have only 100 years left to survive on Earth.


The media nabobs cheekily reported "this is nearly a lifetime", as if to say, how could this guy who professes to be so bright, predict an end to humanity within what will probably be our kids' lifetimes? An end of a species equal to the length of soon-to-be human lifetime? Get real.

Well, maybe, maybe not.  If one  watches Hawking's BBC series, Tomorrow's World, he names the primary threats that have the potential to end human life as we know it in a century. These include four prime culprits: climate change, Torino class 9 asteroid strike, nuclear war and an epidemic (which could also involve a weaponized virus) . He has also recently named AI systems as a real threat. 

Based on each of these he argues we need to leave the planetary nest within the net century. This has become the basis for a BBC documentary released earlier this year entitled "Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth".  Therein Hawking makes the case for leaving Earth and repopulating somewhere else in the cosmos.

This is a huge enterprise given our current space faring technology is limited to reaching only solar system planets - and even then that entails over a half year just to send a few astronauts to Mars. So it's difficult to see how we'd get the material  wherewithal to even reach Alpha Centauri in 100 years.  It's even more difficult to see how even a fraction of the current world population can be transported.  If there is any "insanity" lurking in Hawking's warning it is not in the threats to human existence per se, but in the fact he ought to know precious few humans can be saved from whatever dire fate awaits the species in 100 years.

That said, let's look in turn at whether Hawking's predictions are viable before turning to means to effect a major repopulation project:

1-  Climate change extinction:

The danger here isn't so much that of a rapid cataclysm killing off human life, as environmental conditions becoming so unbearable it is nearly impossible for large populations (e.g. in cities) to survive.  We are talking about tiny increments of change - say in the pH of ocean water, or CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, setting us up for a slow rolling calamity.

In the worst case scenario that can be imagined, the ocean acidity (from absorption of CO2 by the oceans) becomes so great that the primary oxygen producers of the planet - phytoplankton - are killed off. Once they die, we perish too because there won't be adequate oxygen. Add in raging fires and other pollution likely present and the conditions for die off are magnified. You literally have billions of people suffocating.

It is possible that the phytoplankton might adapt over time to the changing conditions, so this extreme scenario doesn't happen. What other factors might emerge then to make human habitation intolerable?  I have listed the main ones below:

- Collapse of power grids

- Lack of potable water

- Spread of infectious diseases ("Cholera paradigm")

- Parasitic worm infestations

The first two pretty well occur together. The basic reason is that the power grids around the world - not just the U.S. - simply aren't designed to sustain the loads that will be imposed during extended heat events of the type we will face (E.g. 50 days or more with daytime highs of 115 F or more and night time lows of 90-95F)

Once the power grids go down then the water access is next. You need electric power to pump water and deliver to outlets in cities, suburbs etc   Take away power and water - as is currently the case in much of hurricane -ravaged Puerto Rico- and the spread of disease is next. 

This will entail everything from West Nile fever, to Zika, to dengue fever and cholera.  ((See, e.g. Global Climate and Infectious Disease:The Cholera Paradigm, in Science, Vol. 274, 20 December, 1996, p. 2025.)  Billions could easily perish, just from an uncontrolled cholera pandemic - spread because of the inability to provide power to even enable basic re-hydration of patients. Parasitic worm infestations almost certainly will accompany the lack of water, and this means foods will also spoil easily as well as providing an easy medium for worms - with the food then eaten to enable their invasion of the digestive tract, bowels and brain, e.g.


Worm infestations of the type shown will sap the energy from large populations already stressed by the heat and it is likely they will induce many suicides. 

The mere abundance of deformities of limbs, etc. from these parasites will be enough in most circumstances and locations to induce a sense of despair and hopelessness in the affected populations.

Lack of water to drink  in a future climate catastrophe  will sow misery orders of magnitude greater  than we are seeing in Puerto Rico with people so desperate they drink from polluted streams as well as from contaminated water at toxic waste sites. Expect then the further increase in severe water borne diseases (dysentery, diarrhea) as well as further worm infestations - say from schistosomiasis. 

2-  Torino class 9 asteroid strike:

This magnitude of asteroid strike defines your basic "planet killer". Such a calamity would most likely come from an Apollo object, especially a massive Earth orbit crossing object - perturbed out of the asteroid belt.   For example,   Gaspra (12.5 x 7 x 7.5 miles)  e.g.

This  monster asteroid's impact would obliterate all life on Earth - never to arise again. The crater and blast effects alone would eliminate most of the population on the continent it struck. An ocean strike, creating tidal waves upwards of 2 miles in height, would be even worse. The debris, for its part, would block out most solar radiation for years and probably usher in massive extinction of plants.  The size of object needed is >> 1 km, and an Explosive release: >> 100,000 megatons TNT equivalent.  It is no surprise that this kind of asteroid strike is the classic example used - as far back as Isaac Asimov in a 1976 lecture - for not putting all our "eggs in one planet".  As Asimov put in it that lecture, e.g.

"The dinosaurs were too dumb, too small-brained to avoid the asteroid catastrophe that wiped them out. But we humans can not only forecast such objects and their paths, but have developed rockets to perhaps knock them out. But these will be useless against a truly giant asteroid, so our best move is off this world."

To be continued next week...

2014 Hottest Year On Record - Oceans Threatened With Extinction: Do We Care?

One of the most disturbing pieces of news I read today, but tucked away on page 18A of The Denver Post, was entitled: 'Earth Could Become Unsafe for Humanity in Coming Decades'.  My first reaction was along the lines of 'Ho-hum, so what's new? This is just more what we already know on global warming.'  But in fact it was more, much more.

The article actually concerned the findings reported in a paper published in the journal Science by 18 researchers attempting to gauge the "breaking points" created by humans via their impacts on the natural world. These "breaking points" represent serious breaches with our environment and hence potential failures for human adaptation - which likely mean human extinction. 

The authors focused on nine planetary boundaries first identified in a 2009 paper. These boundaries set theoretical limits on the degree of changes we can impart to the environment without incurring great costs. They include: ozone depletion, freshwater use, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified organisms.

The current paper contends we have already crossed four planetary boundaries, including the extinction rate of animals, plants, deforestation, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

Coincident with this report, two other pieces of environmental news today took center stage: the disclosure that 2014 was the hottest year on record - since records have been kept, with the Earth warming by 1.24F-  and the news that the oceans are exhibiting signs of extinction.


Let's take the last first. We are now closer than ever before  to completely destroying the oceans, according to warning sounded in a major new study published Thursday in the journal Science. From whales to anchovies, writes the team of scientists, who analyzed data from hundreds of sources, humans have “profoundly decreased” the abundance of marine life; as lead author Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, put it to the New York Times, “we may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event.”

The study combines everything from fossil records to current fish counts to arrive at an encyclopedia, of sorts, of the all the great and terrible ways human activity impacts the underwater world: the destruction of coral reefs by ocean acidification, of fragile ecosystems by fish farms, and of seabeds by mining operations number among the major changes they count. And continuing acidification — a consequence of our pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — along with warming waters, they warn, threaten to accelerate the loss.

The authors compare what’s coming to what happened on land during the 1800s, when our consumption of resources led to the accelerated extinction of land-based animals. There are many parallels to be drawn: the effect of shrimp farms on mangroves are similar to how farming took over forests; seafloor mining is like an underwater gold rush.  ”All signs indicate that we may be initiating a marine industrial revolution,” McCauley told Discovery News. “We are setting ourselves up in the oceans to replay the process of wildlife Armageddon that we engineered on land.”

Of course, if the phytoplankton of the oceans are rendered extinct we will be in a truly parlous predicament given how they form the baseline of the ocean food pyramid. Hence, once they go all ocean life is likely to follow except perhaps jellyfish. Can humans subsist on diets of fried jellyfish instead of tuna or dolphins (fish not mammals)? Somehow I doubt it.

 

So consider that one planetary boundary well crossed including well into the "uncertainty zone" referenced in the current Science paper which denotes "a zone where we might take action before it's too late".

 Then there is the other report on 2014 being the hottest year ever which clearly denotes the CO2 boundary being crossed.  The effects are already here, as shown last night on a CBS News segment showing ocean water flooding streets on Miami Beach. The city has had to install massive flood pumps at a cost of nearly $300 million to try to keep the water out. As the city director said: "We're concerned and we need to do something about it now, we can't wait."


This, due to rising sea levels now - so imagine what the situation will be in ten years. (In the 1960s, no one ever saw or heard of such a thing)  In addition, the report notes that every ocean is warmer than ever before, producing melting glaciers as well as extreme weather - stronger typhoons in Asia and record drought in the U.S. West-southwest.   All this is due to the human consumption of fossil fuels, and led to 2014 being 1.24F above the 20th century average for temperatures.  (NOAA also said that last month was the hottest December on record and six months in 2014 set records for heat.)

In addition, 14 out of the 15 warmest years on record have happened since 1997. So much for the myth that warming "halted" since 1998! Only imbeciles like Jim Inhofe now buy into that bollocks, or should.

What is the cause of the boundary crossings and threats to human existence? According to the lead  author of the current Science paper, Will Steffen, of the Australian National University:

"What the science has shown is that human activities: economic growth, consumption, technology, are destabilizing the global environment".


 

He added that these are "urgent matters" - not to be taken lightly - and that the economic boom since 1950 and the globalized economy have accelerated transgression of the boundaries.
 

DO we care? Is this stuff, this news,  really getting through to us? If so, it means we need to act in concert with the information and cut down on those factors in our daily lives which exacerbate the boundary crossing trends. That includes decreasing our use of fossil fuels (incredibly,  with the price of gas falling,  many Americans are stupidly buying gas guzzlers and SUVs) and refusing to reduce consumption - including dependence on technology (Ipads, smart phones, cell phones).  All of which increase the probability of obsolescence and having to buy ever newer versions - increasing the mass of electronic waste and toxins in the environment  not to mention CO2 from production processes.

We may barely have a few years left for impactful action, which can at least stabilize the oncoming threats. But if we sit on our asses and do nothing our children and grandchildren will curse us in perpetuity - because a hellhole world is the one THEY will have to deal with. We who caused it will have long since shuffled our mortal coils.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/01/2015-will-pace-of-climate-change-be.html

Physics Today Report Indicates Ocean Acidification Increasing

A report published in the most recent issue of Physics Today (August, p. 20), discloses intense concern about the rising acidification of the oceans. The related article highlights the fact that "the oceans aren't vast enough to absorb growing amounts of carbon dioxide without ill effects to marine life and to the 1 billion people who make their living on the sea."

Other related events that have been documented include: longer heat waves, drought, rising sea levels and more intense storms.  Less well known to many is the acidification of the oceans which is projected to continue as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases. Since 2012 the evidence has been reinforced that not only is the acidity of Earth's oceans the greatest since the dawn of the Industrial revolution, but in the past 300 million years.  Indeed, according to the latest research our oceans may be acidifying faster than at any point during the last 300 million years due to industrial emissions, endangering marine life from oysters and reefs to sea-going salmon. And we won't even mention the phytoplankton which generate so much of the planet's oxygen,

As I noted in previous blog posts, the seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere forming carbonic acid. The particular chemical reaction is:

H2O + CO2 -> H2 CO3

The lower the pH level in the seas ('7' is neutral pH), the more acidic they are. This is also worrisome because mass extinctions of marine creatures in the past have been linked to instances of ocean acidification. Thus the current incremental change could also threaten important species. This according to Baerbel Hoenisch, the paleoceanographer at Columbia, when her paper first appeared in Science two years ago.

Now, according to Ove Hoegh - Guldberg of the University of Queensland, it appears that marine organisms that require carbonate ions to build their shells won't have time to adapt to the changing pH. According to Hoegh - Guldberg:

"We're taking life outside the conditions it actually evolved for."

Since the Industrial Revolution the acidity of the oceans has jumped 25 % from a pH of 8.2 to 8,.1 according to the U.S> Global Change Research Program;s 2014 National Climate Change assessment. If current trends continue unchecked the acidity will increase 100-150 percent above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, according to Carol Turley of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK, cited in the article.

The article also notes that tropical corals are especially vulnerable to the combination of acidification and warming of the oceans, noting:

"Clues to what coral reefs may look like in 2100 with unchecked CO2 emissions are available today near naturally occurring CO2 vents off Papua, New Guinea. Fewer and less diverse communities of corals exist just adjacent to those vents compared to communities just a few meters away."


Solutions?

Although reducing the carbon load in the atmosphere from anthropogenic processes is the only sure way to alleviate the problem, there are some researchers exploring atmospheric geo-engineering solutions. These would have as their prime objective increasing the pH level of the seas. The technique would involve spraying aerosols  over the ocean surface but this would do nothing to address acidification.

As the article observes:

"The scale of effort required to buffer the ocean's acidity is mind boggling. The annual mass of the compounds is about an order of magnitude more than the 2 gigatons of carbon absorbed by the oceans each year."

It seems that in terms of the oceans turning  to carbonic acid, we may have passed the point of new return - possibly altering all ocean ecology permanently. A point made by an ocean specialist on Bill Maher's Real Time two months ago who forecast nearly all fish dying, giving way to billions and billions of.....Jellyfish.