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Twentieth century
The 20th century is often portrayed as a time of barbarism, when increasingly powerful weapons killed on an enormous scale, oppressive dictatorships flourished and national, ethnic and religious conflicts raged.
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• Yet 20th century was also a time when
people lived longer, were healthier and
more literate, enjoyed greater participation
in politics and had far easier access to
information, transport and communication
networks than ever before. Good & Evil
marches on.
• In 21st century, will there be trouble?
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Bhrighu Nadi prophetic readings: From 2011, crisis deepens as money will lose its value fast in the U.S. and in Europe. This will result in wrong economic and financial policies - on the assumption of hopes for a continuous economic growth. In 2012 the U.S. financial system collapses. The state will no longer be able to pay its employees. This will lead to a chain response and chaos in the society as a whole. Many shops, factories and banks will become bankrupt, more and more people will be without work, and thus without livelihoods.
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The palm leaf text volume "prophesied"
contains forecasts concerning the further
development of Europe and western hemisphere.
The economic situation leads to conditions that will
resemble a civil war in the east and west United
States. The decline of the U.S. economy and the
depreciation of the U. S. currency seriously hits
Europe, in particular Germany, which is largely
dependent on exports.
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Inflation in Europe reaches proportions as in the
United States, and its implications, especially for
poorer sectors of the population, is catastrophic.
Many people will live in real poverty. Since 2017
the situation will be somewhat calmer, but only
seemingly. A changing climate becomes rapidly an
acute threat . The average annual temperature
will continue to increase; climate change will
affect the U.S.
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Will human society be overwhelmed by
• Overpopulation,
• Global warming / Climate change,
• Diseases and
• Warfare
Shall we overcome these?
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The probability of the extinction of the human
species in the near future is not deniable.
While technological advances encourage huge
population explosions, they also bring new risks of
sudden population collapse through industrial
pollution, nuclear war, etc.
Often overlooked risks of natural disaster ranging
from asteroid strikes to nanotechnology run amok
and universe annihilation is a natural possibility.
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Think of the grim assessment of the odds
against human survival, and the effort and
restraint that will be needed to beat the
odds. Hello! It‟s O.K.
Argument does not imply fatalism, since
our efforts can change the probabilities?
Mankind has produced a Mother Theresa
and also, a Osama Bin Laden.
Can mankind survive by mitigating effect of global warming /
CLIMATE CHANGE due to greenhouse effect?
„Greenhouse effect‟
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„Greenhouse effect‟
A rise in Earth‟s surface temperature
because incoming radiation is less easily
re-radiated into space.
Global surface temperature increased 0.74
± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the
start and the end of the 20th century.
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Scientists are making predictions about the
ill effects of Global warming and connecting
some of the events of the past few decades as an
alarm of global warming. A rise in earth‟s
temperatures can lead to other alterations in the
ecology, including
• an increasing sea level and
• modifying the quantity and pattern of
rainfall.
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These modifications may boost the
occurrence of
• severe climate events, such as
• floods,
• famines,
• heat waves,
• tornados, and
• twisters.
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Other consequences may comprise of
• higher or lower agricultural outputs,
• glacier melting,
• lesser summer stream flows,
• genus extinctions and
• rise in the ranges of disease vectors.
Due to global warming various new diseases have emerged
lately: since the bacteria can survive better in elevated
temperatures and even multiplies faster when the conditions
are favorable.
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The global warming is extending
• the distribution of mosquitoes due to the increase
in humidity levels and
• their frequent growth in warmer atmosphere.
Various diseases due to
• ebola,
• hanta and
• machupo virus are expected due to warmer
climates.
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The marine life is sensitive to the increase in
temperatures. The effect of global warming will
definitely be seen on some species in the water.
A survey was made in which the marine life reacted
significantly to the changes in water temperatures.
Many species may die off or become extinct due to
the increase in the temperatures of the water,
whereas various other species, which prefer warmer
waters, will increase tremendously.
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An approach to mitigation is Carbon capture and
storage (CCS). Emissions may be sequestered from
fossil fuel power plants, or removed during
processing in hydrogen production. When used on
plants, it is known as bioenergy with carbon
capture and storage. Mitigation of global warming
is accomplished through reductions in the rate of
anthropogenic greenhouse gas release.
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There are key practices and technologies in
various sectors, such as energy supply,
transportation, industry, and agriculture that
should be implemented to reduce global
emissions.
Mitigation of global warming is accomplished
through reductions in the rate of
anthropogenic greenhouse gas release.
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Electricity can be produced without significant
carbon emissions using nuclear power and
renewable energy technologies, such as solar,
wind, hydropower, and biomass (fuels made from
plant matter). Biofuels can also be used to power
vehicles. Interest in these technologies
is growing, and research and development could
make all of them more viable, but each renewable
energy technology carries its own set of issues
and challenges.
Poisoning by pollution
And, at least in the short term, severe
pollution seems almost inevitable when
uncontrolled population growth is
combined with demands for
an acceptable standard of living.
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You don‟t need dire predictions about
Apocalypse 2012 to freak out a little about all
the weird stuff we‟ve invented that could destroy
the world. More than enough biochemical
weapons are stockpiled around the globe,
starting with mustard gas, a deadly paralytic
agent left over from World War I, on through
anthrax, sarin, and a variety of other classified
compounds.
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OVERPOPULATION?: The world's population
doubled between 1940 and 2000 (to reach six
billion), with 90 per cent of the total growth in the
1990s taking place in the non-industrialized
regions of the world. Population increases were
accompanied by rapid urbanization, unplanned
and unsupported by improvements in the urban
infrastructure. Such rapid demographic change
caused increasing social pressures, which could
lead to social instability and conflict.
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OVERPOPULATION
Myth A: The world is overcrowded and population growth is adding overwhelming numbers of humans to a small planet. In fact, people do live in crowded conditions, and always have. We cluster together in cities and villages in order to exchange goods and services with one another. But while we crowd together for economic reasons in our great metropolitan areas, most of the world is empty, as we can see when we fly over it. It has been estimated by Paul Ehrlich and others that human beings actually occupy no more than 1 to 3 percent of the earth's land surface.
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OVERPOPULATION Myth B: Overpopulation is threatening the world food supply. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, world food supplies exceed requirements in all world areas, amounting to a surplus approaching 50 percent in 1990 in the developed countries, and 17 percent in the developing regions. "Globally, food supplies have more than doubled in the last 40 years… between 1962 and 1991, average daily per caput food supplies increased more than 15 percent… at a global level, there is probably no obstacle to food production rising to meet demand," according to FAO documents prepared for the 1996 World Food Summit.
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Sustainable human communities can be
achieved only through a “people - centered
development.”
It emphasizes the need for priority in
development to be given to securing
„sustainable livelihoods‟ for the poorest groups
within communities.
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Differential Rates of Population Growth in India
• India‟s current fertility rate is 2.8 children per woman.
• South India and the commercial hubs of Mumbai, Delhi
and Kolkata have lower-fertility rate.
• In the Hindi speaking belt across the North, where the
women‟s state is low, and services lag, higher rates of
population growth persists.
• India‟s population is projected to overtake that of China
around 2025.
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By 2025, efforts have to be made to educate, empower and
train in life skills, the people of crowded districts of rural
North India. The demographic duality should not be allowed
to widen the gap between north and south. Entrepreneurial
families from north India have lived for decades in southern
cities, but absorption of unskilled labourers looking for work
may rekindle dormant animosities unless socio-cultural
integration efforts are made. Ethno-nationalist parties in
India attempt a democratic way to seek their place in
development .India is known for its capacity for unity in
diversity.
Disease. • As was shown by the Black Death of the Middle
Ages, diseases can wipe out very large
proportions of those exposed to them.
• They can now spread world wide very quickly,
thanks to air travel.
• Many remain incurable.
• Tuberculosis, already killing about three million
people annually, has recently developed strains
resistant to all known drugs, and
• antibiotics are useless against viral diseases.
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Natural disasters
1 Volcanic eruptions.
2 Hits by asteroids and comets.
3 An extreme ice age due to passage through an interstellar cloud?
4 A nearby supernova
5 Other massive astronomical explosions
6 Essentially unpredictable breakdown of a complex system.
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And the biggest reason to worry about the end of life is
the prediction in Nature, perhaps the world‟s most
respected science journal, that at least three-quarters
of the Earth’s species are wiped out every 62 to 65
million years. It has been 65 million years since the
Cretaceous-Tertiary disaster extinguished the dinosaurs,
meaning that we are now overdue for a cataclysm that will
without doubt reduce our population by at least half,
smash our infrastructure to smithereens, and drive most of
whatever is left of our civilization underground. Ha Ha!
Man-made disasters
1 Unwillingness to rear children?
2 A disaster from genetic engineering.
3 A disaster from nanotechnology.
4 Some other disaster in a branch of technology, perhaps just agricultural, which had become crucial to human survival.
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Risks already well recognized Nuclear war
Knowledge of how to build
nuclear bombs cannot be eradicated.
Small nations, terrorists and rich criminals
wanting to become still richer by holding the
world to ransom can already afford very
destructive bombs.
Production costs are falling and the world
has many multibillionaires. 40
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• The effects of large-scale nuclear
destruction are largely unknown.
• Radiation poisoning of the entire globe?
• „Nuclear winter‟ in which dust and soot
block sunlight, so that temperatures
everywhere fall very sharply
• Death of trees and grasses? Of oceanic
plankton? (Scare)
Biological warfare or terrorism or criminality
Biological weapons could actually be more
dangerous than nuclear ones:
less costly, and with a field of destruction
harder to limit because the weapons were
self-reproducing organisms.
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And the good news / bad news is that there will
be even more incredibly toxic stuff to burn up in
the future, at least according to those who share
the fears voiced by Stephen Hawking, who
believes that humankind will extinguish
itself from the face of the planet through
the misuse of biological weapons: “In the
long term, I am more worried about biology.
Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic
engineering can be done in a small lab.”
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United States and Soviet Union emerged as bitterly
opposed superpowers with the resources to develop
huge arsenals of nuclear weapons. From 1947 a
“Cold War" developed between them and their
allies, in the course of which they gave support to
opposing sides in conflicts in, for example, Korea,
Vietnam, Angola and the Middle East, while the two
superpowers remained formally at peace. The
collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union in 1989-91 brought the Cold War to an end.
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Visitors view the carnage of war through the sheer number and scale of military cemeteries dotting the countryside. For example, in the Somme River valley of northern France, many crossroads are marked with small signs directing the traveler to World War I cemeteries. In Europe, cemeteries provide the principal link to 20th-century wars; subsidiary ties include cultural resources such as memorials, trench lines, pill boxes, and statues.
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The defining feature of the closing decades of
the 20th century and the start of the 21st
century was considered by some to be
"globalization", with multinational corporations
moving their operations around the world in
accordance with their needs, and individuals
travelling and communicating with one another
across frontiers with unprecedented ease.
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The continued career of the human race is endangered by
• greenhouse-effect overheating (conceivably of a
runaway kind in which warming releases more and more
methane, a powerful greenhouse gas), by
• destruction of the ozone layer, and by desertification
and pollution of land and sea, by
• loss of biodiversity, by
• diseases and chemical, biological and nuclear war.
• Overpopulation, a main cause of the deterioration of
the environment, may also lead to global warfare.
Will the human race become extinct fairly shortly? Have the dangers been underestimated, and
ought we to care?
Humans may well spread right through their galaxy.
Come what may, some will survive, they will rejuvenate civilized life on earth.
It would be hard to kill off absolutely all humans (none will attempt it, we hope), and that from a few thousand survivors new billions would grow.
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“The world has reached that point in history where
mankind‟s role can be decisive. This intelligent
creature, a product of evolution, has become
capable of obstructing, perhaps destroying,
the very process which produced him. For
evolution to have a future on Earth it is imperative
that each man and woman extend his or her
responsibility beyond their immediate
concerns to the destiny of mankind and their
planet” - PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
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Why do people engage in the deadly and destructive activity of fighting? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? Have people always engaged in fighting or did they start to do so only with the advent of agriculture, the state, and civilization? How were these, and later, major developments in human history affected by war and, in turn, how did they affect war? Under what conditions, if at all, can war be eliminated, and is it declining at present? [See next slide for reference book.]
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The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, were a dramatic indication of the threat posed to the global community by international terrorist groups. Groups within nation-states who feel oppressed on economic, religious or ethnic grounds may turn rebellious and organize terrorist episodes.
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