Could human beings accidently exterminate our whole species with something like global warming?
968698
Yeah, but I'm not sure you can call it an accident when researchers are telling us this everyday.
1110569
No. Our genes are way to close to chimpazees etc to be by accident.
1019651
According to nuclear physics, we understand that the sun's nuclear furnace has been fusing hydrogen into helium for about 5 billion years and will continue to do so for about another 5 billion years.  When the sun finally expands into a Red Giant and gobbles up the earth, will that be an act of God?  Hey, maybe Hell will come to Earth.  Never thought of that until just now.  To answer your question, global warming is like that goldfish bowl you never clean out.  The poor little fishy finally succumbs in its own waste.   And you can speed up the process by adding more goldfish, which is exactly what we are doing.  Stop breeding altogether for just 20 years and save the world.  It will be interesting to see if a generation will ever evolve, before it's too late, that can be generous enough to agree to do that.
66144
That would not be biological warfare. \n\nWe might be unintentionally creating hurricanes now with our perturbation to the world's climate system over the last couple of centuries since the industrial revolution.\n\nWe would have to understand a lot more about hurricanes than we currently do, and we would have to have much better technology than we currently have available, but I suppose I could imagine it, many centuries from now. The amount of energy required would be enormous, however. Estimates (see below) are that the amount of energy/second associated with even an average hurricane is equivalent to several times  amount of the electrical energy consumed per second of the entire planet.
299010
Global warming and even nuclear bombs will not destroy the earth they will merely wipe us out along with all the other life on earth.\nIf you are talking about the planet then you will have to wait for either a random meteor to blast the planet to peices or prehaps a super nove in our region of space.\n\nIf neither of them occurs then we will have to wait 5 billion years for our star the sun to enter its next phase of life and become a red dwarf star at which point it is predicted it will probably grow to a size that will encompass and destroy the earth.
60411
We are pretty enduring.  \nMankind can do things to the planet no animal as far as we know, has ever done.  If you look at the ice cores from Greenland, you will see the variance in temperature before man is significant on the earth, is greater than man has seen while being on the earth.  Is it possible to overheat something that will heat itself far beyond any heating we could do?  While we can influence the earth's climate, we can not stop it or start it at will.  We party because as inhabitants we pale in comparison to the natural cycle the earth can and has gone through.  I only hope we are smart enough to manage the climate the earth can throw at us.
297557
I tend not to think so because the benefits of many advances are not likely to reach all of humanity, and although I dont consider myself a dooms-dayer the lack of foresight by scientist could create bigger problems than they fix. One example that alarms me is the genetic modification of corn, a wind pollinated crop. Genetic polution from these crops has accidentally spread to ancient and wild varieties of the species, and could threaten the genetic diversity that we will likely need for the future. various projects involving modifications to bacteria and viruses also have me concerned because of potential unforseen consequences.
1167433
yes...in theory...it would require useing our nuclear arsensal and kill everyone on the planet not within our borders and then it would require a secret police and racial profiling concentration camps...\n\nit can be done.....only in thee extreme. i of course  believe in defeating them in various methods besides just tactical force....
403510
If there is a selective pressure to do so, then perhaps, given enough generations, this will occur. I consider this pretty unlikely. Even if it did happen, evolution is a slow process, and it would take, at the least, tens of thousands or even millions of years.\n\nMore likely, in the next few centuries, someone will genetically engineer pets to do such.\n\nOh, and it's organisms, not organizisms.
527546
Greenhouse gas emissions -> Leads to global warming.  Which destroys many parts of the the world's eco-systems already, it will eventually impact humans soon too.
377213
Yes. If we don't destroy it ourselves, eventually the Sun will burn out and Earth will freeze (all stars eventually burn out), making in uninhabitable for humans. I suppose there is a chance we will have technology to help us live in those conditions (or maybe we will evolve to live in thos conditions) by then, but I doubt it.
247789
Maybe. Ok folks, this is always a touchy matter and I don't want to step on anyone's sensitivities. If I do, I appologize.\n \nFasten your seatbelt and prepare for trippin'. This is a theory I've developed and been toying arond with based on my little knowlege of social biology and Discovery Channel watching (specially the altruistic acts of some rodents that commit mass suicide).\n \nImagine a fish tank that can support a population of 100 adult fishes and you put a couple in it.\n \nTo predict its population, you could borrow from physics, the Simple Harmonic Motion model (damped, critically damped or overdamped). But sometimes, the system might assume a chaotic behavior. This is described in a book by James Gleick about the history of the chaos theory and its development.\n \nWell, according to this, the tanks population can reach well over 100 fast and then, almost all fishes would die and the population would reach zero or nearly zero. Only to grow again and restart the whole process. So instead of reaching 100 in a well behaved manner, it would become a chaotic system and risk extinction of that population, since everytime it drops drastically, it could easily be wiped out by mere chance that the few fishes get killed by other causes than over population.\n  \nOkay, that was the math part. Now imagine that nature equips species with a dampning mechanism that could be switched on and off as populational pressure increases. As the population increases and approaches 100, more and more fishes would become gay as a mean of birth control. In the event that that population be drasticaly reduced (by a plague for example) some of the gay fish could reverse back to straight and assure the survival of the species. You could say that gayness is the fertility stocked.\n \nIt would be interesting to observe if gay people have reverted back to staight after huge populational drops (and after the cause has gone away). For example, after the tsunami's wake has diminished and routine is somewhat restored, some local populations will still be very smaller than before the tradegy. Some might be endangered of extinction. It will be interesting to observe if there will be a reversal as my little theory predicts. \n \nThere's more social biology than math in this, but it only works with the chaotic process in mind.\n \n \n____________________\nAnswer to Emilyrose's edit:\nEmily, I picked-up the population-conditional behavior idea from some documentary I've seen some 20 or 25 yrs ago (yeah, I'm old) which, unfortunatly I really can't remember or vouch for. What I remember was a segment with lab rats, in which they observed the exact same thing I'm using: they start out with a cage with a small population that can easily survive in its space and food and rations available. The rats displayed heterosexual behavior. After the population is drastically increased, they all become homosexual (your observation of a would be binary transition is not addressed here). It did not discuss the possibility of reversion, either. \n \nThe trasition can be considered reasonable if you make an analogy to your fruit fly example: not all fruit flies change sex at once. Something simillar happens with guppies, if there are no males, one or two females change sex. But I don't think the go back afterwards.\n \nFinnaly, as to you're last observation, that if an individual with homosexual tendencies would not pass it on, that doesn't matter if you consider a social biology framework. (I know it's frowned upon and even it's proponent backed out, but that's only b/c they cut off his grants.) Suppose (for the sake of it) that the gay behavior is controlled by one or more genes that can switch on and off. My theory, is that a gene pool that had these set of genes would be in advantage in comparison to one that didn't.\n \nOne more thing, so that ppl won't think I'm advocating anything: my swi
154228
Humans doesn't have the ability to destroy the atmosphere. We can only polute it. The only way to destroy the atmosphere is to blow up planet earth.
1095625
There very well could be.  The earth has had many temperature cycles.  The crowd that is currently talking about global warming was touting the theory that we were headed into the next ice age  thirty years ago.
1176884
No, in fact, I think that Earth needs to get rid of us because all we do is screw everything up. We've compromised the ozone layer, created massive amounts of waste that will probably never go away, poisoned water sources, killed off other animal species and nearly depleted fossil fuels.\n\nIf Earth were a creature, humans would be its cancer.
707999
No, there is no evidence to suggest that. Even if humans destroy themselves, the planet itself will still be here. Earth has another few billion years left.
906362
I really don't think its likely we will evolve to handle pollutants to way you describe. It would take many deaths specifically from pollution, and a specific mutation in a few peoples lungs that make them better equipped to handle the bad air.