Can Humanity Wipe Out All Life on Earth?

[PIT2]

Do u think humanity can, with its current technologies, wipe out all life on earth?

 

[smurfslappa]

Of course, with all those nukes and a massive dumping of all sorts of nasty chemicals into the oceans and air at the same time, I'm sure we could make something happen. I don't think anything like that'll ever happen though, somebody doesn't want our demise to be that quick. Our current way of dealing with the life scourge seems to be working out just fine.

 

[jimmie]

Do u think humanity can, with its current technologies, wipe out all life on earth?

Perhaps, the question ought to be: "Do you believe humanity is currently wiping out all life on earth?"

 

[PIT2]

Of course, with all those nukes and a massive dumping of all sorts of nasty chemicals into the oceans and air at the same time, I'm sure we could make something happen. I don't think anything like that'll ever happen though, somebody doesn't want our demise to be that quick. Our current way of dealing with the life scourge seems to be working out just fine.

I think giant ammounts of microbes would survive any damage we did to the environment with nukes, chemicals or something else. The only way to wipe out all life could be by destroying the entire planet (maybe pushing it into the sun or a black hole).

 

[matthew baird]

no way, i think that like you said, some form of life would survive a world wide nuclear war. I would even say that humans at some part of the world would survive also. If this supposed nuclear war happened wouldn't major cities only be targeted? not every square mile where humans live no way...

 

[Curious3141]

I recall reading something that I found (at the time) fairly profound in a Michael Crichton book (Jurassic Park).

"We haven't got the power to destroy the planet -- or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves." - Ian Malcolm

 

[arildno]

Man's actions are, and will forever* remain irrelevant to the dominant portion of the Earth's biomass.



*A bit too dogmatic, perhaps.

 

[Rade]

I hold that humanity will do the exact opposite--it will translocate life from Earth throughout the universe.

 

[Skyhunter]

I hold that humanity will do the exact opposite--it will translocate life from Earth throughout the universe.

Perhaps, but only if humanity can learn to stop destroying the only inhabitable planet in our solar system.

POLLUTION is far more damaging to humans than originally thought and is causing genetic mutations which could eventually wipe us from the face of the planet, according to a leading scientist.

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=703372006

 

[Universe_Man]

Yes we have the technology to wipe out most of the complex organisms on our planet, including ourselves. And before it is said and done, we might wipe ourselves out, unless we seriously grow some brains in the next couple of centuries. It sounds a bit negative, but that's the way it goes.

 

[arildno]

The vast majority of bacteria are extremely complex organisms, so no, we are NOT able to wipe out "most" complex organisms on Earth.
It is factually wrong to say anything else than that we have the capacity to wipe out most non-bacterial life forms on Earth.

 

[Hootenanny]

The vast majority of bacteria are extremely complex organisms, so no, we are NOT able to wipe out "most" complex organisms on Earth.
It is factually wrong to say anything else than that we have the capacity to wipe out most non-bacterial life forms on Earth.

I would have to disagree with you there arildno. I would consider bacteria to be one of the simplest lifeforms. They are prokaryotics and such; they have no nucleus, only one large circular chromosome, with smaller plasmids. They have no membrane bound organelles, mitochondria for example, they respire on infoldings of the cellmembrane called mesosomes. They exhibit no cell compartmentalisation.

~H

 

[arildno]

Build a bacterium if you think it is a "simple" organism.
Otherwise, it is to be regarded as complex.

 

[Hootenanny]

Build a bacterium if you think it is a "simple" organism.
Otherwise, it is to be regarded as complex.

Would you care to point out something that you consider a simple organism that you can build?

~H

 

[arildno]

Those await construction.
Until that time, we have only complex organisms here on Earth.

 

[wolram]

I think it is more likely that all the **** humans dump will cause mutations
mostly for the worse, as for getting off this planet for greener pastures, dream on, we are on the edge of devolution.