Well observed my dear Quango: while we humans have an unparallelled ability to cause problems, we also have a remarkable ability to solve them.

[Edited on 17-5-2003 by Estragon]

ummm, that was my point

"50/50 huh? So either we will survive...or we won't? Gee....this guy's a genius!"

lmao
is that supposed to be funny!?

Originally posted by Netchicken
There have been prophets of doom from the 70's on, yet it has come to nothing. We didn't run out of water, pollute ourselves to death, all die of starvation, or get fried with the ozone hole.

I think I have more faith in the ability of humanity to get itself out of a crisis.

Good way to sell a book though, just get negative and scare people.

I think NetChicken's dead on right with this one. The disaster-ism has been going on for centuries. First it was the plague that would wipe us out, then comets, then overpopulation (thank you, Malthus), then nuclear war, and all of it interspersed with varioius figures declaring their deities were going to put an end to this horrible planet just any second now.

If we had no opposable thumbs (and therefore couldn't make anything complex) or had brains the size of a horse's and couldn't modify our environments or band together to change things (like the Clean Air act), then we'd have been doomed long before this.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Seems there is another Y2K similar issue with this date as well. At least there are 47 years to correct it this time... I know with our software, we can't have anyone use dates past 2049....

That's only if you're using computers running Unix and haven't upgraded them OR the version of Unix since 1985.

There's a teeny-tiny chance that someone will be running something on a 60 year old computer with a 60 year old operating system. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.