[thekid345]

Today I saw a TV program about what would happen if humans suddenly dissappeared. The first 1000 years, all of the traces of humans started to go away. Global Warming stopped, but in the 25,000th year the world was covered in ice.

I think, just like on the show, places where grass was not seeable, would cover the cities. All buildings would collapse, animal population would rapidly increase. When the dams broke, in particular The Hover Dam(my own cities pride:) the US regained its swamps, and suddenly global warming stopped.

What are your guys thoughts on this?

[ninja_lord666]

Are you asking what would happen if humans were never here in the first place, or if humans would just disappear right now? If it's the former, it's really hard to say. Another form of intelligent life would have undoubtedly risen to power, probably a different primate, a corvidae, an octopus, a dolphin, or a canine. If you're asking the later, that's pretty obvious. Other life forms will take over human lands, and the domestic creatures would all die, like cows, especially cows, pigs, horses, some dogs, etc. At least the French would all be dead, so there's a bonus!

[WoogieMonster]

I watched that show a few weeks ago, it doesn't leave much open to debate. When we're gone, mother nature reclaims the planet. Pretty cut and dry.

[crazydave]

If you want to know what will happen, all you have to do is look at history. there have been several ancient cities all over the world, witch were about as advanced as a modern city. Now all thats left of them is acouple broken walls and scattered rubish.

[Marcus Wolfe]

The wolves would definitely be better off, though the dogs might be a little screwed.

Although.....I wonder..........

We would still leave our trash and nuclear waste lying around, and that would probably cause a lot of problems.

[decal_mirror]

Everything's already said. The nature will claim back what once was its.

However, the climate just won't suddenly change to another ice age. Humans actions are actually a quite small factor in global warming(that would be another topic to debate of), so it would just follow the same pattern it has done in earth's entire history. Right now it's the time for temperature to rise.

[ninja_lord666]

decal_mirror, on Mar 22 2008, 06:19 PM, said:

However, the climate just won't suddenly change to another ice age. Humans actions are actually a quite small factor in global warming(that would be another topic to debate of), so it would just follow the same pattern it has done in earth's entire history. Right now it's the time for temperature to rise.

Exactly, we don't do much, at least not compared to something else, something like, say a giant ball of fire that's roughly 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, THE SUN! here's a link to an image of the sun giving off a solar flare. Now while Earth isn't in that spot, it's about that size. Don't you think something like that could affect our temperature.

Oh...but I'm getting off topic.

[Marcus Wolfe]

Oh, definitely.... the greenhouse effect (caused by excess carbon dioxide) would not be getting any worse, but I must ponder: could nature find a way to consume the excess carbon dioxide?

And what about the nuclear waste? It'll stay around, except it won't be hidden away safely by us humans.

[ninja_lord666]

Marcus Wolfe, on Mar 23 2008, 12:06 PM, said:

Oh, definitely.... the greenhouse effect (caused by excess carbon dioxide) would not be getting any worse, but I must ponder: could nature find a way to consume the excess carbon dioxide?

And what about the nuclear waste? It'll stay around, except it won't be hidden away safely by us humans.

Trees, anyone? CO₂ --> C + O₂ The oxygen leaves while the carbon is used for energy.

[KzinistZerg]

Just to be nitpicky, trees do also use O2, a bit. They have much the same cellular processes as we do! A lot of plants beyond trees will take that up, too, though.

As far as nuclear waste? I think nuclear waste won't be too much of a problem; currently the way its handled is a process that won't let it out for a while. Think more of the ecological problems that we have rated that need humans to fix; Australia's ecosystem is completely out of whack due to varying types of farming and irrigation, the Aral Sea may or may not come back if humanity when phhhhhhht! and disappeared; certain types of mining and farming areas release dangerous chemicals and will take a while to stop.

Some nature-conservation efforts would actually require active human participation to make them work and it would be difficult for them to succeed without us, but, then again, many problems are just because of people mucking with nature and if they just stopped, nature'd eventually evolve somehting to fix it.