What will the Earth be like in 2040?
403984
Perhaps a cinder, perhaps a garden.  Humanity has many choices to make in the next 34 years.
720934
The Earth is in danger of becoming almost totally inhospitable for most higher life forms.  Unless we start being more intelligent and get population and resource management under control, the Earth will do if for us.
26143
the earth will probably not exist in the same fashion as it does today.  a meteor will probably hit us and start the life cycle again in the next 200 mill or so.  Probably more water and less land so i figure more water based life will exist
285073
Jacarta Monkey has the right answer. He gets the points for saying it first.\n\nFor as long as the Earth exists it will contain fresh water and hydrocarbon fuel (notice I re-defined these a bit to be more specific), since both are continuously being replenished by biomass and the hydrologic cycle. People will stop drilling and mining hydrocarbons as soon as it becomes uneconomical, which is way before the Earth runs out. The deadline on all of the Earth's resources is about 3-5 billion years from now when the sun expands and destroys the entire Earth. Until then, only poor people will run out of fuel and water, because only humans are greedy enough to purposefully deny basic resources to other living creatures because they can "own" them.
372861
In around 4 to 5 Billion years when the Sun is swollen in its death throes before it collapses into star known as a white dwarf . In fact the whole Earth will be vapourised.\n\nIf you mean by your question when will it be destroyed environmentally, then that's upto the caretakers of this planet wether that is humans or some other species.\n\nOtherwise the Earth will always have an atmosphere of one kind or another until the Sun begins to die.\n\nJules
7692
Yes, earth is moving closer to sun every year, and eventually it will get destroyed one day. But still thousands of years are left for this to happen.
84326
I would say about 50% think of the future. It seems to me that everything on this planet seems to be divided 50% yes'er and 50% no'ers... Dr Checko... (Nickname)
177229
The human race will survie with great difficulty. The average temprature of earth will plumit to near Zero degrees. World Strom Systems will become depleted of Water vapours thus creating huge famine all over the world.
446202
Well we've been through and ice age and a flood. I am guessing our planet will go up in a bid ball of fire...explains the ozone layer hey?
600664
By then most people will agree that mankind will not be around. That is not the pessimists but now the optimists too. The question is how will this eventual demise arise? That will determine what the state of of the Earth will be in 1000 years. If the 'War on Terror' ends in nuclear holocaust then the Earth will be a barren land much similar to Mars is today. If global warming catches up with us then we will be in the middle of another Ice Age.\nThe alternative is that we humans, against all odds, do survive. In that case we will be living in a civilisation that is either as close to total anarchy as we can get without destroying ourselves or we will be in totalitarian state of control. Either way the future was stolen from our hands a long long time ago.
791314
It's going to be a very clean and sterile world. Imagine a world without telephone poles. No electrical cords of any kind. No gas stations. No super markets. No stores. Why would you need these things when they'll have replicators. Very much like Star Trek. You just tell it what you want and poof there it is. Someday everything will be run off of satellites. I mean everything. From flashlights to your car. If they even have cars. Why would you need a car when you can just think about where you want to be and it happens. Energy will simply be beamed down from satellites. It's a creepy world. They'll look back on us and wonder how we could live a barbaric life as we do. The way things are going though. There's a distinct possibility mankind will kill itself off before then. No doubt there will be a one world order. Maybe even time travel. The future is a scary place.\n.
329170
If things still like now, in the near future, we will not have oil, so the primary source of energy will be the sun, or water or helium, now if all burned hydrocarbons are not enough to kill all living things on the planet, there will be some culture learned, and humans have learn that the old way (think as owners and masters of our world) is not taking us anywhere, we may find a way to keep us balanced in our own world, so if we still using the earth as out own living home, we should be traveling in sail boats, walking and horse carriages, also the need to travel will be reduced by the virtual reality booths at your local 7-eleven that are going to be free stuff by that time.\n\nWeird ??? may be, but at this point can happen.
678740
We are currently nearing the warmest point in our meteorlogical history during the Holocine Epoch, the temperature will decrease quickly (geologically speaking) and we will enter an "ice age" in the next 40 million years.  The eventual glacial erosion, if substantial, will begin the next epoch.
1031470
The Earth is a finite resource and will become uninhabitable one day.   Global warming, nuclear accident, hit from a big rock from space - there are plenty of disaster scenarios.\n\nWe need to be prepared.  To that end NASA needs to do so much more research, travel to other planets, set up a base on the moon and mars and, above all work towards spaceflight being like flying today.   Sound far fetched?   When my dad was a boy man couldn't fly and before he died men were standing on the moon.\n\nProfessor Stephen Hawking, he who wrote 'A brief History of Time', recently stated that if mankind did not seek out planetary travel pretty quickly there was a good chance a natural disaster would wipe out all human life!
1166435
Yes.  The sun will blow up in about 4.5 billion years, taking the earth with it.  Odds are humans will have been gone long before that though.
1067509
That sounds like a nice book, although it is total crap.\n\nWhen the Sun starts to run low on hydrogen, it'll swell up to beyond the orbit of Earth, and possibly Mars. Long before that, the Earth will heat up and simply melt away, the minerals and everything else will be blown away by the solar wind...\n\nAbout 4.5 billion years from now.
727887
that sounds type apocalyptic, but i think that later on in the future around the year 2120 or so that humans would be far enough in technology to move to another planet thats habitable for life. i think that they would move because the world would be to hostile for them becasue of global warming, soon animals would dominate but scientists predict that the sun would inplode in about 3 billion years, so that would be the end of that....what a mouth full.