Our final hour : a scientist's warning : how terror, error, and environmental disaster threaten humankind's future in this century on earth and beyond / Martin Rees.
Publisher's description: Bolstered by unassailable science and delivered in eloquent style, Our Final Hour's provocative argument that humanity has a mere 5050 chance of surviving the next century has struck a chord with readers, reviewers, and opinion-makers everywhere. Rees's vision...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Basic Books,
[2003]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information |
| Summary: | Publisher's description: Bolstered by unassailable science and delivered in eloquent style, Our Final Hour's provocative argument that humanity has a mere 5050 chance of surviving the next century has struck a chord with readers, reviewers, and opinion-makers everywhere. Rees's vision of our immediate future is both a work of stunning scientific originality and a humanistic clarion call on behalf of the future of life. "A scientist known for unraveling the complexities of the universe, Sir Martin Rees not warns that humankind is potentially the maker of its own demise - and the demise of the cosmos. With clarity and precision, Rees maps out the ways technology could destroy our species and thereby foreclose the potential of a living universe whose evolution has just begun." "Rees forecasts that the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that humankind will survive to the end of the twenty-first century. Science is advancing at an exhilarating rate, but with a dark side: Our increasingly interconnected world is vulnerable to new risks, "bio" or "cyber," terror or error. The dangers from twenty-first century technology could be graver and more intractable than the threat of nuclear devastation that we faced for decades. And human-induced pressures on the global environment may engender higher risks than the age-old hazards of earthquakes, eruptions, and asteroid impacts." "Rees explores the startling scenarios that science and technology have made possible or even likely. We could be wiped out by lethal "engineered" airborne viruses, or by rogue nano-machines that replicate catastrophically. Experiments that crash together atomic nuclei could start a chain reaction that erodes all atoms of Earth, or could even tear the fabric of space itself. Bioterror or bioerror could kill a million people within twenty years. But as Rees so eloquently reveals, it would be nearly impossible to reduce these risks without encroaching on cherished personal freedoms and the pursuit of scientific knowledge."--BOOK JACKET. |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 228 pages ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-208) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0465068626 9780465068623 |