I'm with George Carlin on this one..the planet will be fine but we as a species are doing ourselves in..go to the link it's got lotsa video worth watching and the whole audio of the interview with him..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 594561.stm

Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet.

The man who achieved global fame for his theory that the whole earth is a single organism now believes that we can only hope that the earth will take care of itself in the face of completely unpredictable climate change.

Interviewed by Today presenter John Humphrys, videos of which you can see below, he said that while the earth's future was utterly uncertain, mankind was not aware it had "pulled the trigger" on global warming as it built its civilizations.

'We're not really guilty. We didn't deliberately set out to heat the world'

What is more, he predicts, the earth's climate will not conveniently comply with the models of modern climate scientists.

As the record winter cold testifies, he says, global temperatures move in "jerks and jumps", and we cannot confidently predict what the future holds.

'The world doesn't change its climate conveniently'

Prof Lovelock does not pull his punches on the politicians and scientists who are set to gain from the idea that we can predict climate change and save the planet ourselves.

Scientists, he says, have moved from investigating nature as a vocation, to being caught in a career path where it makes sense to "fudge the data".

'Science has changed in our lifetime'

And while renewable energy technology may make good business sense, he says, it is not based on "good practical engineering".

Renewable technology 'doesn't really work'

At the age of 90, Prof Lovelock is resigned to his own fate and the fate of the planet. Whether the planet saves itself or not, he argues, all we can do is to "enjoy life while you can".

Trying to save the planet 'is a lot of nonsense'

Easy coming from a 90 year old.

good point.

but i agree. we're not fucking up the planet, life will go on no matter what (well, except maybe nuclear holocaust). we're just fucking up the environment to which we're used to and to which we adapted ourselves to live under.

but we can save your identity. That is my real social security number.

I think it's pretty arrogant to think we're going to destroy Earth. Sure, we may destroy the conditions that allow us to live here, and most likely take many other species down with us, but Earth will survive just fine.

emm..that's a bulletpoint rip of George carlins philosophy, but you're right.

Stephen Hawkings a few years ago reckoned we have about 800/900 years left as a species. I'd say that numbers way way down now.

This is an interesting thought. I don't think it even matters if we ourselves destroy the conditions that sustain us on this planet. At some point the earth will cease to exist, imo. Could be 100 years from now, or billions of years from now. So yeah, we are a bit arrogant in believing we can change it back, rather than merely limit our propensity to continue the damage.

Astronomers are studying the possible collision of the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. This speaks to the idea that at some point in the earth's life it's going to go through a severe enough change that it won't be the earth as we know it today anyways. In the long scheme of things the human race isn't really all that important to the universe.

The earthquake in Chile they say shifted the earth's axis. How curiously fragile this planet is. What scares me more and fascinates me more than anything else is what goes on under the earth's crust. Without that molten core will we turn into a big floating chunk of ice? The balance between the sun's warmth and our core is AMAZING. In modern history (5000+ years) from what I've pondered, we have experienced quite a nice window of decent weather. What happens if the earth releases too much of that heat from it's core? All hell, in the truest sense of the word, will break loose.

It's completely out of our control.