[url]What do you reckon?[/url]
Based on...?
Might be this? http://www.iflscience.com/space/stephen-hawking-warns-humanity-could-destroy-itself-next-100-years
I won't be here!
Chances are, mankind will cock it up well before then!
Chances are we could well get a pole shift...we are overdue! 
Chances are we could well get a pole shift...we are overdue!
That's a hypothesis, isn't it? Have you any evidence for pole shift?
The idea that we are going to kill ourselves off is based largely on climate change (and other environmental damage) and over-population. Hawking adds in man-made viruses and nuclear war (never far from the agenda, I guess).
I don't know that we'll completely die out (although that wouldn't surprise me), but I think this time scale will see an end of global civilization. I've read a few polls recently where the leading opinion seems to be that we'll get through it okay. I think this is pure wishful thinking.
The types of wars we'll see, once water and food shortages hit our up-to-now hardly touched part of the world will make most of the UK as comfortable as Syria!
Everything I've read - including your link - seems very confused about the differences between a complete polar flip, magnetic shifts (which are continual) and magnetic reversals.
About half the articles are talking about reversals. These are well known about and - as far as we can tell - are not associated with any extinction events in the past.
However, your link certainly hypes it up more than most. I can't see how any magnetic reversal can cause asteroids to fall on us. And the time scale is odd - Scientific American, for example, say 'a few thousand years', and this is what most say. Your link says, 'in our life-time'.
Everything I've read - including your link - seems very confused about the differences between a complete polar flip, magnetic shifts (which are continual) and magnetic reversals.
About half the articles are talking about reversals. These are well known about and - as far as we can tell - are not associated with any extinction events in the past.
However, your link certainly hypes it up more than most. I can't see how any magnetic reversal can cause asteroids to fall on us. And the time scale is odd - Scientific American, for example, say 'a few thousand years', and this is what most say. Your link says, 'in our life-time'.
Well my link was collated by the European Space Agency - an intergovernmental organisation focused on space exploration.
Do you not think they might be more in 'the know'?
More in the know than ....?
The European Space Agency collated the data that suggests the Earth's magnetic field is weakening. The hype and the conclusions are "neonnettle's" Is there a good scientific reason that I should believe "neonnettle" over Scientific American or the OU (admittedly the OU course was a few years ago, but it covered reversals. Why would they have got more dangerous now?)
And do you really think this is a worse threat than climate induced crop-failure, water wars or nuclear annihilation?
And do you really think this is a worse threat than climate induced crop-failure, water wars or nuclear annihilation?
Well we have no way of comparing our present situation to anything that has gone before so....the jury is out on that one!
However well-founded, speculation is still speculation. It's important that people highlight potentially dangerous trends so that action can be taken. But our emotional assessment of the speculation is a matter of individual temperament. Anyone carrying a high level of personal anxiety will tend to catastrophise. Anyone with a very low-level of self-awareness will perhaps tend to see things through rose-tinted spectacles. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle.
I am reminded of the observation (don't know who made it) that if they'd had supercomputers in Victorian times, they would have predicted that by the year 2000 the world would be 6 feet deep in horse manure. The internal combustion engine came along to save us from that fate; but it emerged out of general technological progress, not as a researched solution to the horse manure problem. I am generally optimistic that humanity has the ability to find solutions to those potential problems.
But where no solution is possible we do need to think about a Plan B. For example, I am a great believer in space exploration and colonisation: we need a way to deal with any possible extinction-level event occurring on Earth.
There is no plan B.
Yes, speculation is speculation. But it is speculation based on scientific theory and observation (well, not the pole shift). The idea that humans will get their act together in time to do anything major is, on the other hand, wishful thinking.
How long have we got? And how long will the development of space colonisation take?
It is your belief that humans will not get their act together in time; it is my belief that they will. Your belief has no better foundation than mine. I can at least point to the fact that we survived the horse-manure inundation threat 🙂
'Wishful thinking' is only harmful if it is combined with passivity. And I'm not arguing for passivity. Any potential threats that arise should be investigated and assessed, and action taken where necessary. But there's no need to run around like headless chickens squawking "We're doomed" - not until doom is an absolute certainty.
I remember the Y2K "computer meltdown" threat - the damage that might be caused by computer systems storing the year as 2 digits and thus failing to handle the fact that "(20)00" came after "(19)99". The threat was identified and a vast amount of effort was put into fixing it. And that worked - even though there were still people screaming about the likelihood of planes falling out of the sky.
As for space colonisation - we have the technology to start that right now. The only thing lacking is will and money. See the Mars One project http://www.mars-one.com/
Okay - if you can look at the world today and believe that humans will colonise space in time to 'save us', fine. You can do something I can't. Do you think that this will be able to rescue the entire human race? Or will the poor be left behind on an uninhabitable (by humans) earth?
You do know that the Y2K 'threat' is on a totally different scale?
Even if it were only will and money that were lacking, what is it that makes you think the governments of the world will be able to work together? They didn't manage that at the Paris talks.