Thread: Stephen Hawking: Trump could push the Earth over the brink

Stephen Hawking: Trump could push the Earth over the brink

Commentary: In an interview with the BBC, the famed physicist says that the president's climate policies could turn our planet into Venus.

3 July 2017 5:45 am BST

You walk out into the streets. They're melting.

Which is strange, because it's raining. Wait, that's not rain. That's sulphuric acid. Your umbrella is melting too.

That's the dark scenario painted by famed physicist Stephen Hawking to the BBC on Sunday. And who might be responsible for this molten hell on earth? Why, Donald Trump.

"We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible," Hawking told the BBC. "Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees, and raining sulphuric acid."

He was specifically referring to Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate accord and his seeming belief that, well, the concept of global warming was invented by the Chinese for material gain.

"By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children," Hawking told the BBC.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Oddly, Hawking was speaking to the network as part of his 75th birthday celebrations. He seemed unable to muster much good cheer. Actually, he doesn't seem to have been in a chipper mood about our future for some time.

He's worried that aliens might hate us. He's insisted that we'll have to leave Earth within 100 years. And he's never felt a lump in his throat about Trump. He's confessed to being bemused by the president's success.

Even in this latest BBC interview, he cast a somber veil over our future.

"I fear evolution has inbuilt greed and aggression to the human genome," he said. "There is no sign of conflict lessening, and the development of militarized technology and weapons of mass destruction could make that disastrous."

There's certainly no sign of conflict lessening when the president is tweeting a video of him pummeling the CNN logo.

https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/stephen...ing-president/

I've really never known much about Stephen Hawking. So I decided to do a wiki on him when I saw this article.

Future of humanity

Barack Obama talking to Stephen Hawking in the White House
U.S. President Barack Obama talks with Stephen Hawking in the Blue Room of the White House before a ceremony presenting him and 15 others with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 12 August 2009

In 2006 Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?", later clarifying: "I don't know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face."[296]

Hawking has expressed concern that life on Earth is at risk from a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, global warming, or other dangers we have not yet thought of.[288][297] However, such a planet-wide disaster need not result in human extinction if the human race were to be able to colonize additional planets before the disaster.[297] Hawking views spaceflight and the colonization of space as necessary for the future of humanity.[288][298]

Hawking has stated that, given the vastness of the universe, aliens likely exist, but that contact with them should be avoided.[299][300] He warned that aliens might pillage Earth for resources.[300] In 2010 he said, "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."[300]

Hawking has warned superintelligent artificial intelligence could be pivotal in steering humanity's fate, stating that "the potential benefits are huge... Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. It might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."[301][302]

Hawking has argued that computer viruses should be considered a new form of life, and has stated that "maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."[303]

It's sad to see someone who many in the world think is so smart and through his own particular type of intelligence may get some things right to be so deft when it comes to humans and the universe.

What struck me the most was this:

Hawking has argued that computer viruses should be considered a new form of life, and has stated that "maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."[303]

Humans don't create life. We simply reproduce it through our own natural design, the same as any species. We have technology now to alter it, modify it, change it, duplicate it (cloning), but we don't create it.

The risk of the destruction of human existence on this planet is very small, and to me the greatest risks are over-population caused by over-breeding which is a negative condition and better standards of living such as medical discoveries and long world peace that have extended the lives of many which is a positive condition.

The planet is a finite space of finite resources and unless we pay closer attention to population growth and encourage people to pull back on reproduction, not just in our own country but in other countries, overpopulation will continue to be the greatest cause of a deterioration of our species the same as with any species that overpopulates.

Americans learned this back in the 60's and but for excess immigration had done a good job of voluntarily through our own choices and policies of controlling our population growth, and I see no real change in our desire to pursue that goal all these years later, which is a good thing.

Other countries however need to pay more attention to this issue and encourage the measures of education, birth control, and so forth to control theirs.

People are not property and having 10 sons and daughters you can't feed and your country can't employ holds no honor, seems to me. How could it in this day and age of tight spaces and water shortages?

Someone like Hawking seems to have missed this altogether, I guess because he was so busy measuring black holes out in space that he lost touch with our Mother Earth.

That Hawking should suggest that the Earth could become as hot as Venus is really, really bad coming from somebody who is supposed to know anything about astronomy. The fundamental basis for a planet's temperature is its distance from the sun. This is also a flaw in many of the "global warming" narratives. The only reason that Venus is so hot is because it is so close to the sun. Mercury is even closer and it is even hotter.

There is no physical way that Earth could become as hot as Venus, it would be physically impossible.

Yes, that is exactly right, pkskyali. I've known our temperatures would rise since grade school when I was taught that very fact in elementary science classes. It is very surprising that Hawking would go so far off the rails. He's sick you know. I didn't know that until I read the wiki background information. He's suffered with ALS, Lou Gehring's disease, since he was in college.

What made me interested in this was the post I made about the Chinese immigrant "mathematician" who came up with the flawed formula that almost destroyed our economy in 2008 which was a follow up to the Indian H1B visa workers claiming they're such great Tech workers. Then I saw this article about Hawkings who is a Brit, and wondered about his potential flaws when I saw the article and his wild claims.

To think major business and government policies are based on what are proving to false and/or flawed tales from foreigners, just makes you suddenly question the authenticity of many of them. And of course, Obama was hood-winked by Clock Boy ... from India .... so his hood-wink from Hawkings on climate change was probably a given. Obama is fundamentally stupid because he's never done anything. He's never had a real job.

So, it's way past time to reign in our business and government and get back to good ole solid and sound American Workers, American Tech and American Science. No one's outdone US yet, so why place your bets that one day they can or will? All these foreign scientists are on government payrolls you know. While some of ours are, most aren't, so we need to follow our own course. There will be a good idea from abroad here and there, but so far it's just the atomic bomb, which really, we all could have done without, if you ask me.