The famous physicist Mitio Kaku warns about climatic changes of an apocalyptic scale, and the biologist Richard Dawkins, who arrived in St. Petersburg, predicts famine and wars. If you believe other scientists, those who still survive will get a meteorite or an incurable virus.
The popularizer of science and the theoretical physicist Mitio Kaku warns the world’s population about impending disaster. His fears, he shared with the readers of the National Geographic Society. According to the American scientist, weather anomalies and natural disasters in recent years have increased dramatically. Earthquakes, hurricanes, storms and tornadoes occur where they have long been expected. More and more often, weather records are fixed – both positive and negative. People are frightened, but in fact, according to Kaku, you have to get used to, because the worst is yet to come.
“Despite the fact that extreme weather conditions have always been part of the climatic cycles of the earth, now we can already see and can say bluntly that the anomaly, the increase in the strength, intensity and frequency of such weather disasters is a clear and sinister sign that the approach of a global catastrophe is increasing At an alarming rate, “complains the scientist.
However, Kaku does not single out any one reason that leads to tragedy. According to him, the human factor, the influence of the cosmos, and the processes in the Earth itself can be involved here. And he does not name a specific cataclysm, which will turn into an apocalypse. But in his pessimism, the American is by no means alone. And his colleagues are happy to introduce specifics.
Mankind risks to burn out from the heat, a group of researchers from Great Britain and the USA is sure. The scientists published their conclusions on the pages of the journal Nature Climate Change. By their calculations, by the end of the XXI century, three quarters of the world’s population will face a deadly danger due to the increase in average temperature. If, of course, the emission of greenhouse gases is not drastically reduced. But so far this is not enough hope. The new US president, Donald Trump, has repeatedly stated that he does not believe in global warming, and therefore Washington will soon come out of the Paris agreement on climate.
Guest of the St. Petersburg Science Festival Geek Picnic biologist Richard Dawkins is more concerned about the problem of overpopulation of the planet. In his opinion, uncontrolled reproduction of representatives of homo sapiens can soon lead to a difficult food crisis. The scientist wrote about this 40 years ago in the book “The Selfish Gene”, which also glorified him. Since then, the world’s population has almost doubled.
“If, however, the population continues to grow at the present speed, then in less than 500 years it will reach a level at which people, standing close to each other, will cover all continents with a dense human carpet. It will be so even if all of us are very skinny, which is quite real. After a thousand years, counting from the present moment, people will have to stand on each other’s shoulders. In two thousand years the mountain of people moving in extraterrestrial space at the speed of light would reach the edge of the known universe. You, of course, realized that these are purely hypothetical calculations. In fact, nothing like this will happen for a number of quite practical reasons. The names of some of these causes are hunger, plague and war. Or, if we’re lucky, the birth control, “Dawkins writes.
But not all scientists are afraid of hunger. Some of them are sure that before the implementation of the scenarios described by Dawkins we simply will not live. And the blame for that is a collision with an asteroid. The media referring to a number of specialists called even the date of the impending cataclysm – October 12, 2017. Other scientists believe that until 2020, Earth and an asteroid called 2012 TC4 will not intersect, but recognize the potential danger of such a scenario in the future. In Russia, the threat from space has ceased to be taken lightly after the recent fall of the meteorite on Chelyabinsk.
Then more than 1600 people suffered. This time we can talk about a much larger object, and the main threat comes not so much from the very collision as from its consequences. Among them, in particular, called the strongest hurricanes.
Many remember from the school course of geography that in the center of the Earth there is a red-hot core. But this is not the worst. According to a number of scientists, it is gradually shifting, and the process is heading for an inevitable tragedy.
According to scientists, as a result, the planet will eventually be swept by a wave of strongest earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and the atmospheric pollution caused by cataclysms will kill them.
Giant super-volcanoes are also an independent threat, which carries in its bowels disastrous for the planet’s risks. Most often apocalyptic scenarios mention the Yellowstone super volcano, but in Russia there is a fellow in Kamchatka with a crater diameter of 35 km. The last time he erupted a million and a half years ago. But in the case of increased seismic activity, it can again awaken. The consequences will be no better than in the case of a collision of the planet with a large meteorite.
The rapid spread of a new infectious disease is another scenario, which you can not call incredible. Suffice it to recall the devastation that the plague has created over the centuries. In recent years, more and more often you hear about SARS, swine and bird flu, Ebola fever or HIV infection. By the 21st century, the latter became a pandemic.
Some scientists believe that the potential danger is widespread antibiotic. As a result, microbes resistant to their action are born. So stable that even human immunity can not stop them.
It remains to be believed that another popular futuristic scenario will come true earlier – about the colonization of other planets. If people manage to spread their biological species in the universe, the earthly catastrophes will cease to look so fatal.
