They're back-dating the "Anthropocene Epoch" to 1950. This is kind of interesting. Holocene, now apparently defined* as ending in 1950, lasted 12,000 and was environmentally stable. And now it's anything but environmentally stable. This reminds me of the "seacivilization" in the South Park episode "Simpsons Already Did It" where Cartman puts the "seamen" in the seacity and it grows slowly into this advance civilization...and then it immediately blows itself to smithereens. I'm not being judgmental here. You could have a billion parallel universes, and in all of them society will advance and said advancement will disrupt the environment in ways never imagined. Bummer, though, if it turns out that the advancement of civilization and the continued viability of earth as a human-friendly venue are inconsistent. ________________________ *This is currently just a recommendation from a certain group of scientists, but let's assume that the general consensus amongst those in the know is that the declaration of anthropocene is legit and that it becomes "official".
One of the issues (and this ties in with the SETI thread) with searching for another civilization or even the problem with our civilization might be a new take on the Peter Principle. We advance so far until we just blow ourselves up. And this is why we don't see a heaven full of radio traffic among the stars.
Norris, there could be something to that. Though I think civilizations end with whimpers, and retellings turns them into bangs. We don't end by nukes. We end when we out consume our environment before learning to make new ones
Of course. You and I both know there are Alien Consulates in the old abandoned NY subway tunnels and stations.
And of course, by "blow ourselves up" I mean any number of ways to commit species wide destruction (and even then, some humans no matter how bad things get will probably survive, but may never recover from the genetic bottleneck that forms).
Another problem is that there's a decent chance that alien life is much much much more technologically advanced than us, and that the mere recogntion of the signal will communicate our existence to them in ways we can't even fathom, and upon learning of our existence, they just blow us the funk up like they were a Texan sitting on their front porch, shotgun in hand, ready to capitalize on expansive stand-your-ground laws. ETA: but, yeah, this is the subject of the other thread.