Dying planet? Changes in the Earth in NASA images. Scientists write about an environmental catastrophe on Earth Scientists' forecast for when the earth will die from pollution

Australian professor and eminent epidemiologist Frank Fenner said that the world community will not live to see the 22nd century.

“In a century—by 2110—humanity will completely disappear from the face of the earth,” says the famous Australian scientist Frank Fenner in the London media. “The reason is that ancient human societies were characterized by increased stability, but today’s global civilization is not. Thus, the Australian aborigines have proven that without modern scientific achievements they can survive for 40-50 thousand years. However, today's society, due to its economic and social activities, has brought homo sapience to the brink of complete extinction.

According to Fenner, the main threat to the existence of humanity comes from unbridled consumption, a sharp increase in the world's population, and rapid climate change due to global warming.” “The Industrial Revolution and industrialization gave rise to an era that, in its impact on the planet, is comparable to the consequences of the Ice Age or the collision of the Earth with a large comet,” the scientist emphasized.

“I think this is an irreversible situation. I say this not because something else is allowed to be done. People can only delay the inevitable for a certain period. Climate change is just beginning, but its irreversible nature is already clear. The human race will disappear just as the sea of ​​animal species before it disappeared.”

95-year-old Frank Fenner gained worldwide fame for his work in the field of microbiology. He became famous for being one of the men who put an end to smallpox in the 1980s. Now the professor is also dealing with the problems of human survival as a biological species.

Regarding the reasons for his current speech, Frank Fenner noted that he “does not intend to force a change in the civilizational model of humanity, which continues to follow the path of its own biological collapse despite numerous warnings.”

Last year, the world's population, according to UN estimates, was 6.8 billion people. The planet's population will exceed 7 billion next year.

If all people suddenly disappear from Earth

Will the planet disappear without our supervision? Not at all, the scientists answer; on the contrary, she will become noticeably prettier

New Scientist magazine asked well-known forecasters to imagine a fantastic situation: all 6.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth are transported somewhere in another galaxy in an instant - teleported. There's not a soul on the planet. In extreme cases, only one person remains - like the immortal Duncan MacLeod. Watch what will happen. And what will he see? How many years does it take for there to be no trace of human presence on Earth?

End of the world

“Visible changes will become noticeable in the next 24 hours,” says Gordon MASTERTON, president of the British Institute of Civil Engineers. — The lights will start to go out. After all, there will be no one to replenish fuel supplies at power plants. Nuclear power plants and hydroelectric power plants will continue to operate in automatic mode for some time. But without human participation in regulating consuming networks, accidents will occur. Water pumps will stop, sewer and cleaning systems and all equipment will stop working. In a week or two, maximum in a month, the planet will finally plunge into darkness. And in some places, even in the slop. (Let’s remember the recent sewerage accident in the west of Moscow caused by a power outage. - Ed.)

In the meantime, even from orbit you can see how the Earth sparkles with trillions of light bulbs - environmentalists call their glow light pollution. In some countries it is extremely intrusive - the starry sky is not visible. In Japan, for example, almost the entire territory is artificially illuminated. Which is not at all good for nature.

And the walls will collapse

Modern buildings, although they are designed to last at least 60 years, bridges - for 120, and dams and dams - for 250, but without proper maintenance they will become completely unusable much earlier. According to experts, in a couple of decades, hurricanes and simply bad weather will only speed up the process. An example of this is the city of Pripyat, abandoned by people after the Chernobyl disaster.

“Only 20 years have passed,” says Ronald CHESSER, a biologist from the University of Texas, “and the city has changed a lot. And only from a distance it looks “like alive.” I was there many times: wooden houses fell, the roofs of concrete and brick buildings, especially factory ones, sagged and collapsed in places, collapsing the walls behind them, and the windows burst. Bridges will soon begin to collapse. And arched and vaulted structures last the longest.

“Even when every building on Earth collapses, and the highways crack and crumble, there will still be ruins,” Masterton says. “And it will take several thousand more years for wind erosion and water flows to erase traces of everything we’ve built.” Now you can find almost complete structures and recognizable remains that are more than 3 thousand years old.

Almost 500 Chernobyls

“You don’t have to worry about the fate of radioactive waste,” says Rodney IVING, a geologist from the University of Michigan (USA), “their storage facilities are designed for many thousands of years. But 430 nuclear power plants operating around the world will explode like in Chernobyl. After the water evaporates from the cooling systems of nuclear reactors, they melt. Although the harm from such disasters will not be horrific, as some people think.

“The Chernobyl zone shows us nature’s amazing ability to self-heal,” agrees Chesser. “I expected to see a radioactive desert there.” But the local ecosystem appears to be thriving. Of course, rats, mice, and dogs multiplied first. But within a few years, the local fauna suppressed all this rabble. Now there are 15 times more wild animals in the Chernobyl zone than outside it, full of wild boars, wolves and other large predators.

Everywhere you look there is a dense forest

So, it only took 20 years of desertion for life to improve in a particular place. Other ecosystems will begin to revive at approximately the same speed. Faster in warm and humid regions. But even in the cold North or South the matter will not drag on. After all, the person did less mischief there. Mainly roads and clearings for pipelines. Canadian ecologist Brad STELFOX modeled a “humane-free” future in the northern province of Alberta on a computer. It turned out that in 50 years forests will cover 80 percent of its territory. For 200 years - almost all of it. And even now semi-wild Siberia will probably become overgrown even faster.

However, it will take nature many centuries to “heal” the vast areas occupied by parks containing one or two species of trees. And agricultural land. And some ecosystems will not recover at all.

David WILCOM, a biologist at Princeton University, gives the example of the Hawaiian Islands, where forests are “blocked” by grass that regularly burns and prevents trees from growing.

What happens to pets?

“They, of course, are going wild,” Chesser answers. - The division into breeds will disappear. Populations will also decline. For example, there is now an excess of sheep on Earth—more than 3 billion. It will be much less.

And regardless of whether humans remain on the planet or not, those animal species that have already been driven to extinction will most likely disappear. Although in general, according to scientists, a deserted Earth will give the animal world more chances to maintain biodiversity - both on land and in the oceans, where, in addition to fish, coral reefs and plankton will begin to actively recover.

Breathe easily

Nature will quickly get rid of solid muck.

“It will take several decades to clean up the nitrates and phosphates that now turn rivers and lakes into toxic broths,” says Kenneth POTTER, a hydrologist at the University of Wisconsin. “They will last longer in underground waters.” But within a hundred or two years, bacteria neutralize them.

Much faster will the smelly gases disappear - exhaust and various factory gases that accompany the creative activity of people. Within two to three weeks, MacLeod the observer will feel that it has become easier to breathe: during this time, precipitation will wash out nitrogen and sulfur oxides from the atmosphere.

It’s worse with carbon dioxide, the main culprit of global warming.

“By burning fossil fuels, humanity has already released so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it will significantly affect the environment for another 1000 years,” explains climatologist Susan SOLOMON. — The excess will remain for at least 20,000 years.

“Even if it disappears, humanity will remain guilty of ongoing warming,” says climatologist and forecaster Gerald MIIL. “And it can lead to the release of methane from under the ocean floor, which is still there in a frozen state in the form of hydrates, causing the temperature to jump even higher. And what will happen next is unknown - either a new ice age, or a global flood, or a global fire.

— Current climate models do not yet take into account the methane threat. It's about time. There is evidence that gas has already begun to leak from permafrost zones, says Peter THAN, an expert in atmospheric physics.

And no one will notice that we are no longer there

Scientists agree: in 100 thousand years there will be no visible traces of a highly developed civilization left on Earth. And in this sense, our planet will be equal to Mars. Photographs from orbit or from robotic all-terrain vehicles moving along the surface will not reveal a single artifact. Aliens will have to personally land and conduct archaeological excavations.

“The aliens will probably be surprised by the strange concentration of skeletons of large primates, neatly buried at the same distance from the surface,” forecasters gloomily joke, “and, of course, they will be puzzled by their golden teeth.”

“There may be pieces of glass, plastic and perhaps even paper,” says archaeologist William RATHIER from Stanford University. “The safety of some ancient things has always surprised me.”

And in the bottom sediments, aliens will find layers indicating a short period of massive deposition of heavy metals, especially mercury.

And somewhere 100 thousand light years from Earth, electromagnetic waves from our radio and television broadcasts will continue their journey. With some skill, residents of distant planets could catch them.

QUESTION

Is there really only harm from people? Then for what purpose did we multiply? Maybe in order to one day save the planet from an approaching asteroid by shooting it with nuclear missiles? Or are people needed for something else? What do you think, dear readers?

Global warming, asteroids, ozone holes - our planet is constantly under threat. What cataclysms will happen on Earth in the future and how will it die? Let's turn to the experts.

APOPHIS 99942 (YEAR 2029)

The current headache for astronomers is the asteroid Apophis 99942, which today poses the greatest danger to Earth. According to NASA researchers, the planet should expect an unexpected guest as early as 2029. The asteroid weighs 46 million tons and has a diameter of approximately half a kilometer. According to NASA forecasts, if this “baby” collides with our planet, it will cause a catastrophe, in comparison with which the cataclysms that destroyed the dinosaurs will seem like a mere trifle.

According to 2009 data, the risk of disaster is 1 in 250 thousand. No reason to panic? You are mistaken; by cosmic standards, such a figure is quite a significant indicator. In addition, according to William Eidor, a member of the NASA working group, this is the first time that the authorities have shown interest in asteroids.

WATER WORLD (YEAR 3000)

If humanity does not suffer from the impending cosmic threat, then civilization will be destroyed by the well-known global warming. True, “destroy” is a strong word. We'll just be living in a "water world", just like in the old Hollywood movie by Kevin Coster. Scientists predict that in a thousand years, temperatures could rise by 15 degrees Celsius, and sea levels could rise by more than 11 meters. At the same time, the inhabitants of the ocean will also have a hard time - the level of acidity in the water will increase, which will lead to mass extinction of species.

Fortunately, according to the head of the study studying the consequences of global warming, Tim Lenton, dire predictions can still be avoided. But for this, humanity will have to urgently reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions and moderate its greed in the use of resources.

GAMMA RADIATION (600 MILLION YEARS)

And yet there are such cataclysms that a person cannot avoid. True, fortunately, such a catastrophe will not happen soon, but in 600 million years. The fact is that the Earth will face an unprecedentedly powerful stream of gamma rays, which will be emitted by the Sun. This will create huge ozone holes, or rather destroy a good half of the Earth's ozone layer. The consequences are obvious - the transformation of our planet into a desert and the mass extinction of all living organisms. For example, one of the largest extinctions in the entire history of the planet - the Ordovician-Silurian extinction, which occurred 450 million years ago, according to one version, was the result of an outbreak of gamma radiation from a supernova located six thousand light years from Earth.

NEW VENUS (1 BILLION - 3.5 BILLION YEARS)

Before the planet has time to recover from the next “solar strike,” the star will give it a new surprise. According to scientists, in about 1 billion years the sun will begin its transformation into a red giant and all life on Earth will gradually be “burned out.” After some time, the Earth will turn into a second Venus, where the temperature has reached the boiling point of toxic metals, turning the entire planet into a toxic wasteland.

Scientists made this conclusion based on observations of dying planets (KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02) as part of the distant red giant KIC 05807616. By the way, Mars, which will be in the habitable zone, can become a salvation for humanity, if it still exists.

CORE (5 BILLION YEARS)

The continuation of the story of the two doomed planets, according to the publication Corriere della Sera: “does not arouse enthusiasm among astronomers.” Scientists were able to see what was left of the two planets as a result of the expansion of their “Sun”. All that was left of them were the kernels. According to NASA, the same will happen to our planet in 5 billion years, although its death will occur much earlier.

With the beginning of the transformation of our star, the solar wind will intensify, which will throw the Earth from its previous orbit, which will lead to disruption of all life processes. The Earth is too small a planet to survive such a catastrophe, unlike Jupiter and Saturn, which, according to astronomers, have a better chance. But people should not worry, 5 billion years is almost an eternity. For comparison, the history of “homo sapiens” is only 60 thousand years old.

Since the very beginning of our planet's existence, it has been constantly changing. Continents emerged from the solid ocean, mountains grew, seas formed and disappeared. All this took millions of years. But in recent years, changes on the planet have accelerated sharply.

Without a doubt, this is due to human actions and scientific and technological progress. The photographs taken by NASA scientists clearly show how quickly we are killing our planet.

Petersen Glacier, Alaska

The left photo was taken in August 1917. The photo on the right shows the same place, but 88 years later, in August 2005. There is practically no glacier.

McCarthy Glacier, Alaska

It's almost the same picture here. Both photos were taken in summer. On the left is July 1909, the photo on the right was taken relatively recently, in August 2004. The glacier has retreated more than 15 kilometers.

Scientists have been constantly monitoring glaciers since the fifties of the last century. The ice is retreating at an average rate of 1.8 meters per year, but the rate of melting has increased in the last ten years. Researchers at the University of Argentina believe that this is the fastest rate of glacier shrinkage in the last 12 thousand years.

Mount Matterhorn, Italy/Switzerland

Mount Matterhorn is located on the border of Italy and Switzerland. It has changed a lot over the past 45-50 years. Previously, it was covered with an impressive snow cap. Now only small islands remain of the snow cover.

The mountain is actively monitored by Italian meteorologist Luca Mercali. He believes that the melting of snow on the summit accelerated significantly in the summer of 2003, when there was abnormal heat there. The snow cover bound the rocks, and now that it is gone, rockfalls have become more frequent on the Mattehorn and new cracks are appearing.

Elephant Butte Reservoir, USA

This reservoir is located along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico. The situation here can be called catastrophic. The pictures show how it decreased between 1993 and 2014.

Currently, reclamation experts in the United States are developing a plan to preserve the reservoir. Elephant Butte supplies water to the city of El Paso and 35 thousand hectares of agricultural land. I must say that every year it gets worse.

Bastrop, Texas

A satellite view shows how Bastrop County, Texas, has changed. This is due to the drought of 2011 and fires that engulfed local forests. In total, about 13,111 hectares of forest and almost 20,000 residential buildings were destroyed. It was the largest fire in the state's history.

Lake Oroville, California

What can happen in three years? The child learned to speak, the puppy became a strong dog, and Lake Oroville in California lost 70% of its volume during this time. It seems unreal, but the pictures speak for themselves.

The photograph from a different angle shows the scale of the tragedy. If this continues, then in a couple of years there will be no lake at all. The US Federal Bureau of Reclamation says 2014 was the driest year in California in the last century.

Lake Shasta, California

Once California's largest lake, Lake Shasta, is now nearly empty. Where there was water is now a sun-scorched desert. The white object in the photo is a fragment of the buoy.

Lake Mar Chiquita, Argentina

The Argentine Lake Mar Chiquita is called the “small sea” because... the water in it is salty. Over the past 13 years, it has become twice as shallow due to irrigation and drought. You can already see the consequences of the lake shrinking. Every year it becomes more and more salty, which has a bad effect on its inhabitants. In addition, dust storms have become more frequent in the vicinity of the lake.

Aral Sea, Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan

The Aral Sea has been familiar to us since childhood. Back in Soviet times, the Krokodil magazine published a cartoon in which a cartographer asks his colleagues: “Should I draw the Aral?” In fact, it is a salt lake, like Mar Chiquita. It began to decline in the second half of the last century. In 1960, its area was 70 thousand square kilometers, in 1989 it was divided into two parts, and by the beginning of this century the area of ​​the two resulting seas was 14 and 20 thousand square kilometers.

The Aral Sea is drying up due to climate change, canal construction and agricultural irrigation. At the moment, almost all fish have disappeared from the Aral Sea.

Forests in Rondonia, Brazil

The state of Rondonia is one of the youngest and fastest growing in Brazil. It was built on the site of the impenetrable Amazon jungle. The faster the state grew, the more tropical forest was cut down. In the picture you can see the lands of Rondonia in 1975 and 2009.

Scientists are confident that the extreme nature of natural changes will only increase over the years. Every year people cut down a forest equal in area to the island of Ceylon. Naturally, this greatly affects the planet's climate. According to scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), between 1901 and 2010, global sea levels rose by 19 centimeters, and the earth's surface temperature increased by an average of 0.85 degrees Celsius.

Scientists are sounding the alarm, believing that we have polluted the planet so much that it has no choice but to destroy us with all the means at its disposal.

15,000 scientists made a joint statement that the Earth’s environmental problems have reached a critical level and require immediate and vigorous action aimed at preventing a global environmental catastrophe, writes the popular science multimedia portal Attic

As can be seen from the title of the joint appeal, “World Scientists Warn Humanity: Second Notice,” this is the second recent appeal by scientists. The first was published in 1992 and was signed by 1,700 scientists, most of whom were Nobel laureates of various years.

Scientists then drew people's attention to the threatening state of the atmosphere, drinking water, seas and oceans, soil and forests, as well as the living organisms living in them. The conclusion that scientists then made was this: people have reached the limit of what the biosphere can tolerate without irreversible harm. And humanity is pushing the Earth’s ecosystems beyond their ability to support existing networks.

The only exception is the adoption of effective measures to stabilize the Earth's ozone layer. All other environmental areas are deteriorating. Thus, greenhouse gas levels and temperatures continue to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels, agricultural production and deforestation. There is also a noticeable reduction in the amount of clean fresh water: over the past quarter century it has decreased by 26%.

During the same time, there has been a decline in fish catches and an increase in ocean pollution from industrial waste. Deforestation since 1992 has led to a reduction in forest land by 121 million hectares. And together, all these factors have led to a 29% decline in the number of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish worldwide. Humanity, according to scientists, has caused the sixth mass extinction of animals, replacing natural disasters like a meteorite that previously destroyed animals.

“To prevent catastrophic loss of biodiversity, humanity must move towards more sustainable practices than we currently have. This recipe was formulated by the world's leading scientists 25 years ago, but we did not heed their warning. Soon it will be too late to change the course of our erroneous trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize in our daily lives and in our governing institutions that the Earth, with all its life, is our only home,” the authors of the appeal write.

The appeal was published in the journal BioScience.

What can I say to this?

Sharing the fears of scientists about a future environmental disaster if we do not change the direction of our movement, at the same time it is worth paying attention to the erroneous ideas that are clearly being introduced into people’s minds about the causes of environmental disaster, with the goal of implementing unequal conditions of competition on the economic front. Thus, the combustion of fossil fuels, named as the main culprit in the growth of greenhouse gases and rising temperatures, in fact has virtually no effect on these factors. Many unbiased scientists are trumpeting this at the top of their voices. And today there is not an increase in temperature on the planet, but a decrease. According to many forecasts, a new ice age awaits us soon.

There has long been talk around this issue about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the sale of quotas from developing countries (for example, Russia) to developed ones, which actually means an end to their ability to catch up with technologically advanced Western countries, which ultimately risks the fact that undeveloped countries, as soon as they lose the opportunity to inflict mortal damage on the aggressor in the event of an attack, they will immediately be bombed into the Stone Age strictly according to the theory of the “golden billion”.

But what is really of paramount importance from the point of view of harmful effects on the environment is irrational human activity, as a result of which forests are destroyed in order to expand agricultural land and genetic inversions are introduced into biological organisms and plants to obtain agricultural crops that are more resistant to environmental influences. Humanity has enough technology at its disposal to feed the entire population of the planet, and not just with anything, but with environmentally friendly and safe food. The experience of Soviet breeders is quite useful here. And corporations involved in the development of GMO crops must bear a financial burden commensurate with the damage to the environment, so that society can carry out a set of restoration measures that reduce damage and eliminate the harmful consequences of GMO production.

But probably the most dangerous problem humanity will face is the reduction of fresh water. And this is also due to unreasonable human activity, which changes the local and global biogeocenoses that have developed over centuries, thereby disturbing the balance of the natural environment. Adding fuel to the fire are industrial enterprises that pursue a vicious policy of eating up profits instead of introducing environmental technologies for processing production waste or purifying it to an environmentally safe level.

However, the main task facing humanity is to change the paradigm of thinking, allowing us to realize that we have no other planet like it and that order on it needs to be restored by the whole world. Man must finally justify his high title of “crown of nature”, moving from irrepressible consumption and polluting the environment to the creation of a flourishing planet-garden in the accomplished quality of Homo sapiens.