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"The end.... of the WORLD!!!!"

That's right. After all, they say all good things come to an end. Someday, maybe not someday soon, but someday, the world on which we live will cease to exist.

But how will this come to pass? What will happen to us? What part if any, will mankind play in the destruction of the lump of rock we call our home?

There are of course many opinions on such an open subject.
Here are a few of them:

"THE WORLD WILL END IN YEAR XXXX" prophecies
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Stupidity, all of them. Most of these centred around the year 2000, an event which, obviously, never came to pass. The kind of person who comes to this conclusion, or believes this sort of thing, is just a defeatist. There is never any evidence linking a certain year with the end of the world, and indeed, the year 2000 was likely chosen simply because it was a nice round number, and something for anyone not a defeatest to look forward to. Prephetic tellings are ludicrous.


"WORLD WAR III" stuff
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Well, with today's technology, it's easilly thinkable that we could just get carried away pounding each other and accidentally blow ourselves up. But are we really that stupid? The higher echelons of the military in most civilised countries are made up of some very clued in individuals, and some tactical geniuses. Would these people seem like the types to "accidentally" blow up the planet they're standing on? It seems unlikely. But then, there are the developing countries, many of whom now have nuclear weapons, these are concievably a threat. But then, the superior firepower of other nations, and the mere concept that if one of their nuclear warheads so much as farts wrongly at a western country means a retal that will flatten them completely, should keep them in line. So I don't really see us blowing oourselves up anytime soon.


"GLOBAL WARMING" claims of doom and despair.
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Yup, that's right. the ozone layer is coming apart at the seams. Everything from cigarette smoking to car fumes to cows eating grass is producing chemicals which attack the ozone layer, and allow solar radiation to come down and pummel the earth. This is causing increased chances of developing skin cancer. At the moment it's causing very little else, but over time it has the potential to change the earth's climate, heating the North Pole, potentially melting it, which would certainly change the face of the planet. Our little island (the UK) would drop underwater like a modern day Atlantis, and all it's history will be lost. and ours wouldn't be the only island to go. A scenario like Waterworld is highly unlikely, but we certainly could see a shortage of living space. But not the end of the world. Just a harder one to live in.


"ALIENS CAN COME FROM OUTERSPACE AND ENSLAVE US" paranoia.
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Ok, so people have a right to be afraid of what they cannot understand. There may be aliens out there, there may not. NO-ONE KNOWS. Any civilisation capable of crossing the great void between world will surely be far more advanced than we are. Should they be aggressive, what could we do to stop them? Pretty much nothing really. But then, why would aliens waste the resources to cross possibly hundreds or thousands of light years to kill of a bunch of people they've never met? For the resources? No. They could go to any world, without resistance, and take whatever they wanted. They consider us a threat? Err, no. They can travel light years, we can't. They rock, we don't. The only explanation is that they do it for fun, which seems highly irrational for a species capable of such technical advancements. And surely a silly thing to do, given that there surely can't be too many species out there.

So I wouldn't say that we need to be afraid of any invasions for a while, at least until we've had some contact, and a chance to extend our warped human politics across the galaxy.

So what's left? Not much to be afraid of really is there? There is one thing more I can think of.

TIME the killer of all things.
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All things DO come to an end, time, by it's very nature is proof of this. If it has a beginning, common sense dictates it has an end. if it takes a hundred years, if it takes a thousand, or a billion, or 50 billion, eventally this world won't exist, neither will it's Sun, or even the galaxy. One day even the universe will cease to exist, and then, even time.


The world is coming to an end, it's just a matter of time.
IB

It's reasonably likely that the human race will live beyond our sun because by that time we will have the technology to terraform other planets and live there. If the ozone problem is not solved, then we will all be forced to live underground, except for anybody decended from my uncle Pete, who will seem to thrive in the searing radiation that turns most humans into charcoal lumps, so the ozone won't be a major problem (in the long run). Besides, that will only happen if people don't stop polluting and being idiots. If aliens found life here, they either left us alone because we are not intelligent life forms, or they didn't want to interfere with the development of the human race. After all, in the town were i live is a shop with a sign that sez "Ears pierced while-u-wait" I think we can be confident our descendents will live a life without fear the world could end tomorrow. After all, it can't really end slowly, there must be a day when the human race is not extinct, and the next day it isn't, and i think the warning signs will present themselves long in advance, so that we can do something about it.

Look at " A Rumour" topic. ??????

well yes, gcse exams are pretty lame. but it's the course itself that's worth taking. the qualification for having done so is worth less than a truck load of dead rats in a tampon factory.

You know, one of the questions in my geography GCSE involved reading a chart of average monthly rainfalls, and drawing a bar graph of it. It was worth two marks, and you would be deducted one if your shading went outside the lines.

I kid thee not.

VenomByte wrote:
> It quite hard to say which is the better subject, as they both provide
> essential life skills.
>
> Geography hones your colouring skills to levels most art students can
> only dream about, yet history teaches you all about things you can't
> apply to the real world. Tricky...

At GCSE level, it's definitely worth doinbg both. Geography for the basic weather pattern stuff, meteorology and what not, and erosion theory. History for it's teaching of bias, and (usually) local and relevant information.

When you hit A-levels, you want to be thinking more about what career you're going for if you intend to choose either of these. Personally, I took both at GCSE, and neither at A-level. Both have little to offer after GCSE, but the GCSE stuff is, in my opinion, invaluable.

IB

Leprachaun wrote:
> Global Warming has nothing to do with the hole in the ozone layer.
> Global warming is the increase of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide
> mainly) being produced from burning fossil fuels, which then speeds up
> the naturally occuring Greenhouse Effect. The Greenhouse effect
> happens when the surface of the earth is heated by the sun, heat tries
> to escape from the earth, but is trapped by the layer of gases. If we
> increase the layer of gases, less heat can escape, which causes the
> earth the begin climate change.
>
>
> The hole in the ozone layer is completely different and caused by CFCs
> - Harmful ulta-violent rays can get through the atmospheric layer thus
> causing more skin cancer.

Apart from the fact that you put the ozone destruction solely at the hands of CFCs, that was a good retorte. there are a lot more things attacking the ozone layer than CFCs, including carbon monoxide, and the same fossil fuels that cause the greenhouse effect. The two subjects are completely intertwined, but yes, I didn't expand my point properly, so it was misinforming.

IB

It quite hard to say which is the better subject, as they both provide essential life skills.

Geography hones your colouring skills to levels most art students can only dream about, yet history teaches you all about things you can't apply to the real world. Tricky...

Well, I do both so...fish to you.

NEVER! Geography is a poor subject. History is much better. And it's much more interesting. Though I concede Geography could possibly be more useful. Thats a possibly, mind.

*smiles* GCSE Geography has come in handy then...