Greed + Stupidity = Doomsday

I thought he correctly describes the Boh Liow and the Two Cry Babies .

MANKIND could just as well do themselves in within the next two hundred years, according to famed physicist Stephen Hawking, the author of "A Brief History of Time".

Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed by motor neurone disease, is optimistic of space expansion - if humans manage not to destroy themselves either through nuclear weapons or by wreaking havoc on the environment.

"The universe is expanding and will continue to expand forever, but only very slowly, at a rate of about one part in ten billion each year. Of more immediate concern is that the sun will exhaust its nuclear fuel in five billion years. It will swell up, and engulf the earth.

"It will be time to move to another system, if we are still around," said Hawking in an interview with The Star's editor-in-chief Wong Chun Wai at the former's office in Cambridge. The interview was published Sunday.

Fate of the Earth

"But will the human race even survive the coming century, let alone the coming millennium? There are many dangers, but the one that worries me most is global warming, as it may trigger the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide from the oceans, which would add to the warming. We might end up like Venus, with a temperature of 250°C, and raining sulphuric acid," he added.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, said he was not concerned about the fate of the earth, but its inhabitants.

"I’m not worried about the future of the universe. The universe will continue whatever happens. But the future of the human race, and of life on Earth, is much less certain. We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.

"Climate change is happening at an ever increasing rate. While we are hoping to stabilise it, and maybe even reverse it, by reducing our CO2 emissions, the danger is that the climate change may pass a tipping point at which the temperature rise becomes self-sustaining," said Hawking.

"I see great dangers for the human race. There has been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 was one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgement to negotiate them all successfully.

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