Zooming out - will humans go extinct or what?

[UndercoverElephant]

Here on PowerSwitch we spend most of our time trying to zoom in on the short and medium term future, but what about the long term? Either we mess this planet up so severely that humans go extinct, or we don't. If we don't, then some sort of human societal arrangement must come out the end of the evolutionary process we are entering. What comes out the other end cannot be capitalist-scientific-industrial civilisation as we know it, or anything resembling it, because that thing is completely unsustainable, which is the basic premise of this website.

I'd personally put the probability of humans going extinct somewhere well below 1%. We're just too clever, and there's too many places that a viable breeding population could survive. The tougher things get, the harder natural selection will kick in.

I'd be interested in a very open discussion about the long-term future, and the biggest possible picture. What do you think is the probability that Homo sapiens will survive the extinction event we are causing? What is your best guess at the low point for the population during the bottleneck? And what, if anything, do you think we can say about the ecologically-balanced/sustainable human societal organisation that will prevail long-term?

[clv101]

I think human extinction in the next 1000 years is VERY unlikely. I think we would survive a repeat of the dinosaur asteroid for example. I also think there's a huge difference between a 99% die-off and extinction. Even a 99.9% die-off still leaves some 8 million individuals.

[johnny]

I'd be interested in a very open discussion about the long-term future, and the biggest possible picture.

The Sun will hit peak hydrogen, warm up and expand, and incinerate the planet and everything on it. That is long term.

In the near term, this is already happening. The money quote on the near term effect is:

As time goes on, the amount of mass lost by the Sun will increase, particularly as it enters the giant phase of its life. But even at this relatively steady rate, the growth of helium in the Sun's core means that we will heat up here on planet Earth. After about 1-to-2 billion years, the Sun will be burning hot enough that Earth's oceans will boil away entirely, making liquid water impossible on the surface of our planet.

So both in the near term, and long term, the Sun rulz.

In the instantaneous short term, the UK will move north and east towards the pole, getting closer to land as the Channel gets narrower maybe, and Brits will interbreed with Europeans and become BriEuros or FrancoBrits or something.

You did ask for big picture.

Now, if you meant run-of-the-mill human "long term" lacking all perspective of geologic or astrological happenings and whatnot, using preppers and doomers and peakers as an example, long term for them appears to be "please Lord let it happen before I die so I can see my preparations turn into more than something the kids dismantle or sell off the day after I croak".

In the "so instant it is incomprehensible to forward looking folks" context, people will continue running around burning things, doing stupid stuff, and we'll probably go through this again. Some preppers, someday, somewhere, will be glad they did it right. Which means not the American version of collecting guns, gold and ammo.

What do you think is the probability that Homo sapiens will survive the extinction event we are causing?

Well, we are causing change, maybe we go extinct, maybe we don't, but preferentially worrying about humans is speciesism. We've already caused extinction level events and it doesn't appear to bother us in the least. Oh, we whine and talk about it, but in the context of "we be so clever bipeds, we build windmills".

I figure the keyhole event needs a minimum number of breeding pairs for genetics not to finish the job brought on by the change and pollution we are happily inflicting on the biosphere, so I'll go 50/50 on enough breeding pairs getting into and through the keyhole before the Eurasian plate deposits London somewhere closer to the North Pole, so this is my instant estimate of survival.

What is your best guess at the low point for the population during the bottleneck?

Low enough to have insufficient breeding pairs, and becoming extinct because of this event, rather than the one that caused the keyhole in the first place.

And what, if anything, do you think we can say about the ecologically-balanced/sustainable human societal organisation that will prevail long-term?

That long term it will be irrelevant unless they have fled the Solar System. Or terraformed Mars or built a Dyson Sphere. Both of those are ultimately defeated by known astrophysical events in the near and long term, so it would mostly be a holding action as the inner planets are vaporized and the oceans boil away on Earth.

[UndercoverElephant]

I'd be interested in a very open discussion about the long-term future, and the biggest possible picture.

The Sun will hit peak hydrogen, warm up and expand, and incinerate the planet and everything on it. That is long term.

It is also of no interest in terms of the question I asked. I am asking whether Homo sapiens has a long-term future, not whether the Sun will burn forever.

You did ask for big picture.

Yep. And you provided a picture frame. I am asking about biological species, not stars. I am asking about the future course of life on Earth, not the end of the planet.

Well, we are causing change, maybe we go extinct, maybe we don't,

OK, no answer then.

but preferentially worrying about humans is speciesism.

Jesus wept. Asking about the future of the human race is "speciesism"?

I figure the keyhole event needs a minimum number of breeding pairs for genetics not to finish the job brought on by the change and pollution we are happily inflicting on the biosphere, so I'll go 50/50 on enough breeding pairs getting into and through the keyhole before the Eurasian plate deposits London somewhere closer to the North Pole, so this is my instant estimate of survival.

Well, at least that is answer. Thanks.

What is your best guess at the low point for the population during the bottleneck?

Low enough to have insufficient breeding pairs, and becoming extinct because of this event, rather than the one that caused the keyhole in the first place.

Eh? You just said it was 50/50, now you are saying we will become extinct (so that is 100%).

[UndercoverElephant]

I think human extinction in the next 1000 years is VERY unlikely. I think we would survive a repeat of the dinosaur asteroid for example. I also think there's a huge difference between a 99% die-off and extinction. Even a 99.9% die-off still leaves some 8 million individuals.

Yes. Long-term the key difference is between extinction and survival of a viable population. Sounds like you think our species will survive. But that means future evolutionary changes - either cultural or biological - that are currently "unthinkable".

[BritDownUnder]

Ignoring a super volcano or asteroid impact probably not.

The problem is as Sir Fred Hoyle put it was that the 'fuel' for starting modern technological civilisation was a once only thing never to be repeated. Coal will not be formed again and the remaining coal is too deep to be mined by hand like it was in the bell pits of olden times. Oil may be produced again over millions of years but all the easy stuff is gone. It would be hard to reboot a civilisation on wood and water power in many areas.
There's also the fact that modern society has a high degree of specialisation and going to 1% of the numbers you are likely to lose all the agronomists, human rights lawyer and microchip designers. OK we can probably restart technological society without the lawyers but not the others. It might depend on how much literature gets retained.

I think there will be a general collapse of society, a return to things like slavery and piracy short term in most parts of the world. A parasitic plunder economy feeding off all the trash for a few centuries. Some areas of the world are supposed to be quite viable post collapse. Places with a lot of hydro, low population density, good weather and nice lands suitable for easy agriculture like the River Plate estuary, the Pacific Northwest and one other place I can't remember - maybe New Zealand - were mentioned. But even hydro stations need lubricants and carbon brushes and regular testing.

I doubt humans will go extinct just will need to brush up those spear throwing skills and fishing techniques. The Australian aboriginals will probably do just fine like they have for the past 60,000 years.

[clv101]

I doubt humans will go extinct just will need to brush up those spear throwing skills and fishing techniques. The Australian aboriginals will probably do just fine like they have for the past 60,000 years.

This is key and what a lot of these types of conversations miss. There's a huge difference between the frankly weird industrial/technological civilization we've 'enjoyed' for the last thousand years or so. It isn't normal, it doesn't define our species and is unlikely to endure. It's fully possible that in another thousand years or so several million humans will be doing just fine in a post industrial/technical world and could maintain the species for another hundred thousand years+ as it did before things got weird.

The wildcard for me in this is chemical pollution, if something screws up reproductive health or if a nuclear war destroyed the ozone layer and we all die of cancer.

[PS_RalphW]

Humans (modern Homo sapiens) survived and thrived as stone age hunter gatherer culture for approx. 100,000years in which period they spread to most of the major land masses. Most of the mega fauna suffered in the regions where we spread to, but was little affected in Africa, where we had evolved for less adaptable hominids. Once we learned agriculture and animal domestication we had enough spare energy and food to spend time learning and teaching our children, and settling in one place and developing civilisations. At this point we became unsustainable, and systematically trashed every environment we migrated to by over exploiting the resources we discovered. You could argue that some of the more marginal environments for human survival like the high arctic are so hostile that we have never managed to reach unsustainable populations, but that is about it. The only way I can see humans surviving long term (thousands of years) is if we are so reduced in numbers that we forget even the basics of agriculture and technology. I don’t see that happening. We have domesticated so many species of plant and animal we will always be able to harvest and control enough food and energy to retain at least basic civilisation until we have reduced the last habitable regions to desert. It will probably take a few thousand years, but each population crash will lead to smaller , simpler civilisation until the last remnants of isolated farmers are finally wiped out by hunger or climate change.

[UndercoverElephant]

Ignoring a super volcano or asteroid impact probably not.

The problem is as Sir Fred Hoyle put it was that the 'fuel' for starting modern technological civilisation was a once only thing never to be repeated. Coal will not be formed again and the remaining coal is too deep to be mined by hand like it was in the bell pits of olden times. Oil may be produced again over millions of years but all the easy stuff is gone. It would be hard to reboot a civilisation on wood and water power in many areas.

Hmmm. Why? Civilisation existed on wood and water power for millenia. Now we have much better scientific knowledge, so it ought to be easier, not harder.

There's also the fact that modern society has a high degree of specialisation and going to 1% of the numbers you are likely to lose all the agronomists, human rights lawyer and microchip designers. OK we can probably restart technological society without the lawyers but not the others. It might depend on how much literature gets retained.

All the literature will be retained. Every book that is worth saving will be saved, along with millions that weren't worth saving.

Civilisation as we know it cannot survive -- that's not what I am asking. I am asking about whether our biological species will survive, because if it does then we must assume that eventually we create a very different sort of society. Something we struggle to even imagine now.

I doubt humans will go extinct just will need to brush up those spear throwing skills and fishing techniques. The Australian aboriginals will probably do just fine like they have for the past 60,000 years.

We can't go backwards. We can't unlearn science. If the human race survives then we are going to have to invent a new way of living. We can learn from the past, of course, but we aren't going to go back to throwing spears at wild animals. Hunting wild animals won't be a successful survival strategy. In order to survive, we're going to need to learn to do much better than that.

[UndercoverElephant]

The wildcard for me in this is chemical pollution, if something screws up reproductive health or if a nuclear war destroyed the ozone layer and we all die of cancer.

I can't imagine anything screwing up reproductive health so badly that the species dies out. Even serious damage to the ozone layer would repair itself in a few decades, wouldn't it? I guess something like this is possible -- it is hard to rule it out, anyway. But it doesn't seem very likely either.

Do you happen to know what the estimates are for the worst case scenario for climate change? I seem to remember reading somewhere that as the atmosphere heats up, the relative heat loss into space increases, which puts an upper limit on potential global warming. It all points to a population bottleneck rather than extinction. I am trying to imagine what sort of new ecological order will emerge from the other end of this process. Humans have got to change into a creature that is in ecological equilibrium with that newly emerging order. I am finding it challenging to get my head around that. It is easy to dream up ways that it could happen, but none of them feel realistic.

[johnny]

but preferentially worrying about humans is speciesism.

Jesus wept. Asking about the future of the human race is "speciesism"?

Of course not. ONLY discussing the future of clever monkeys reveals the speciesism. The alternative is we should rejoice in the renewal of the jellyfish, perhaps a reemergence of the cold blooded reptiles that ruled the earth far longer than we have, or possibly ever will. But folks worried about the end are always going on about people. We do it so naturally, we react poorly when others with broader perspectives even mention it.

I figure the keyhole event needs a minimum number of breeding pairs for genetics not to finish the job brought on by the change and pollution we are happily inflicting on the biosphere, so I'll go 50/50 on enough breeding pairs getting into and through the keyhole before the Eurasian plate deposits London somewhere closer to the North Pole, so this is my instant estimate of survival.

What is your best guess at the low point for the population during the bottleneck?

Low enough to have insufficient breeding pairs, and becoming extinct because of this event, rather than the one that caused the keyhole in the first place.

Eh? You just said it was 50/50, now you are saying we will become extinct (so that is 100%).

50/50 on enough breeding pairs getting through the keyhole event. You then asked for a "low point" for the population through the bottleneck. That would be on the 50/50 side that doesn't have enough breeding pairs, and the ELE then becomes a genetic problem with too few breeding pairs, and therefore extinction. But jellyfish might just LOVE this...or the next apex predator that comes along enjoying how we've reconfigured the biosphere to suit them.

[johnny]

Ignoring a super volcano or asteroid impact probably not.

The problem is as Sir Fred Hoyle put it was that the 'fuel' for starting modern technological civilisation was a once only thing never to be repeated. Coal will not be formed again and the remaining coal is too deep to be mined by hand like it was in the bell pits of olden times. Oil may be produced again over millions of years but all the easy stuff is gone. It would be hard to reboot a civilisation on wood and water power in many areas.

All the coal, oil, everything we pretend we can't reboot civilization off of was formed within the last 570 million years from the Cambrian forward.

Prior to the oceans being boiled away by a Sun continuing to get lighter and warmer, some new gang of bipeds could come along and have everything we had before we started burning everything we could find. It isn't as though the tectonic plates are going to STOP during this time, and kill the geologic processes that turned all that organic matter into those fine hydrocarbons we use to pollute the biosphere.

[UndercoverElephant]

but preferentially worrying about humans is speciesism.

Jesus wept. Asking about the future of the human race is "speciesism"?

Of course not. ONLY discussing the future of clever monkeys reveals the speciesism.

I wish to discuss the human race, and your response is to throw the most extreme version of identity politics at me because I am not considering the mass-extinction that started over 10,000 years ago.

The alternative is we should rejoice in the renewal of the jellyfish

Jellyfish have been around for over 500 million years and will survive this extinction event too. I am interested in the future of human society.

, perhaps a reemergence of the cold blooded reptiles that ruled the earth far longer than we have, or possibly ever will.

Evolution does not go backwards. Unless the mammals are wiped out, the probability of which is close to zero, then whatever new ecological order arises will contain mammals.

But folks worried about the end are always going on about people. We do it so naturally, we react poorly when others with broader perspectives even mention it.

I think you have misunderstood what I am asking, and why. Human society needs to either change (radically) or it will die out. Either we do that voluntarily and culturally, or natural processes will do it against or will, probably physically. I am interested in the broader perspective of HUMAN evolution, precisely because whether or not humans survive will have a great deal of effect on everything else, thus it is the key question concerning that new ecological order.

It is not that I do not care about the extinction of many other species. The reason I am not asking about those other species is because it isn't them who have destabilised the existing ecological equilibrium. This is not "speciesism" (which is a dumb word in the first place, but not even appropriate here).

But jellyfish might just LOVE this...or the next apex predator that comes along enjoying how we've reconfigured the biosphere to suit them.

Humans aren't just an apex predator. It is a predator which has changed the whole game by inventing a new ecological niche: extreme brain power. We have also changed our social structure from tribes/clans to civilisations thousands of times larger. This is evolution at work, but its work is not finished. Human cleverness is too effective, and the rest of the ecosystem can't cope. Therefore it will also have to change - whether humans survive or not. It either has to reboot without us, or reboot with us.

All of this is completely natural. It is how evolution works. Equilibrium for a long time, then something comes along and changes everything. That something is sometimes external to life, like an asteroid strike or massive vulcanism, but sometimes it is evolution itself that causes it.

[BritDownUnder]

Ignoring a super volcano or asteroid impact probably not.

The problem is as Sir Fred Hoyle put it was that the 'fuel' for starting modern technological civilisation was a once only thing never to be repeated. Coal will not be formed again and the remaining coal is too deep to be mined by hand like it was in the bell pits of olden times. Oil may be produced again over millions of years but all the easy stuff is gone. It would be hard to reboot a civilisation on wood and water power in many areas.

All the coal, oil, everything we pretend we can't reboot civilization off of was formed within the last 570 million years from the Cambrian forward.

Prior to the oceans being boiled away by a Sun continuing to get lighter and warmer, some new gang of bipeds could come along and have everything we had before we started burning everything we could find. It isn't as though the tectonic plates are going to STOP during this time, and kill the geologic processes that turned all that organic matter into those fine hydrocarbons we use to pollute the biosphere.

I thought that coal cannot form again as fungi have now evolved and the wood precursor to coal will not just sit there on the forest floor waiting to be covered by later forest material but will instead get eaten by fungi. So puts coal out of the equation. Since most societies went from wood to charcoal to coal to coke to oil then maybe not having coal is a bit of a blocker to the development of a future civilisation.

100 million years for oil to come around might be a bit of a wait for any new bipeds with opposable thumbs.

[BritDownUnder]

Hmmm. Why? Civilisation existed on wood and water power for millenia. Now we have much better scientific knowledge, so it ought to be easier, not harder.

All the literature will be retained. Every book that is worth saving will be saved, along with millions that weren't worth saving.

Civilisation as we know it cannot survive -- that's not what I am asking. I am asking about whether our biological species will survive, because if it does then we must assume that eventually we create a very different sort of society. Something we struggle to even imagine now.

We can't go backwards. We can't unlearn science. If the human race survives then we are going to have to invent a new way of living. We can learn from the past, of course, but we aren't going to go back to throwing spears at wild animals. Hunting wild animals won't be a successful survival strategy. In order to survive, we're going to need to learn to do much better than that.

I suppose you did not make it very clear what civilisation you were meaning. Firewood will be a limiting factor in how much energy a civilisation can use and a technological society will need a lot of energy. The UK does not have too much hydro potential - about 1000MW could be extracted from all the rivers via water mills. This nice work gives a nice indication on how much energy that England has used over the past 500 years.
Regarding literature I am not sure how books will survive a collapse. Will there be sealed libraries to keep them nice and dry? And will means to read computer tapes, hard disks or USB drives be retained? How many Carthaginian works can you name? Inscriptions in Linear A have not been deciphered. Only about 10% of known Roman writers have had any of their works survive to the modern age.
Humanity can go backwards and has done so many times in areas of the Earth. It is just that civilisation has been kept going at some place or other on a continuous basis. Greeks have had an almost continuous run of civilisation, only being occupied by Turks for about 300 years.

I think humans will make it past a worldwide civilisation collapse but advanced civilisation cannot be rebooted.