Research Catalog

Title

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.

Author

Rees, Martin J., 1942-

Publication

New York : Basic Books, [2003], ©2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 228 pages; 22 cm

Summary

• "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.

Subjects

• End of the world
• Twenty-first century > Forecasts
• Disasters > Forecasts

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-208) and index.

Contents

1. Prologue -- 2. Technology Shock -- 3. The Doomsday Clock: Have We Been Lucky to Survive This Long? -- 4. Post-2000 Threats: Terror and Error -- 5. Perpetrators and Palliatives -- 6. Slowing Science Down? -- 7. Baseline Natural Hazards: Asteroid Impacts -- 8. Human Threats to Earth -- 9. Extreme Risks: A Pascalian Wager -- 10. The Doomsday Philosophers -- 11. The End of Science? -- 12. Does Our Fate Have Cosmic Significance? -- 13. Beyond Earth -- 14. Epilogue.

ISBN

0465068626 (alk. paper)

LCCN

2003000301

OCLC

• ocm51505779
• SCSB-4347547

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries