cuke.com - an archival site on the life and world of Shunryu Suzuki and those who knew him.

home        what's new        bibliography         interviews        stories     and more if you look around

Current Events                 WSC


Welcome to the 

Species Threats page

very incomplete presentation - you do the research - there are other threats of course but these are preventable


Species Threat Number 1: 

Nuclear War, now, accidental or Otherwise Caused Nuclear War Between the US and Russia and nuclear weapons in general.

Species Threat Number 2: 

Strike from an asteroid or comet

Species Threat Number 3:

Climate change - Global Warming - etc

It's December of 2013 and now it seems to me this is getting close to irreversible near term extinction. Sort of puts a damper on some of my long term archiving plans. - dc

Took me a while to be convinced this is a possible species threat. Like Stephen Hawking said it's a threat to the species if for instance it brought on sulfuric acid rain all over the earth and stuff like that.  There are other climate change possibilities like an excessive vulcanization that might take out the whole species. This section is not a thorough look at this topic. - dc


5-09-17 - It's the end of the world and we know it. - Salon


8-24-16 - The Looming Extinction of Humankind, Explained - thanks John Steiner (Good breakdown of threats. I think the authors underestimate the threat of accidental nuclear war and the mention of nuking meteors is only for movies and there are convenient ways to change a meteor's orbit without any new technology. - dc)


12-24-13 - Creating Climate Change Page.

There one can scroll down all the relevant past comments and links on this subject and there exciting new pertinent posts will go. Ten years ago I didn't think climate change was a species threat. Now I think it's moved from threat to likelihood and not in the distant future. At lunch with a couple of friends in Stinson Beach last month, asked what I thought about climate change, my response was geared not to spoil the meal. The most positive comment I can come up with, I said, is that everything I believe always turns out to be wrong. - dc


4-17-10 -  Updating the Species Threats section - nuclear threat department.

Significant movement on nuclear weapons reduction - but not really getting below species threat level, still within psychotic planet definition - featuring Jonathan Schell's April 2010 article Reaching Zero in the Nation with other links and reports.


1-11-12 - The Union of Concerned Scientists has moved their doomsday clock one minute closer to doom. I read it today but can't find it now. Anyway, don't worry about it. Everything's perfect. But on the other hand, if anything comes up to nudge that minute hand back some, of course we'll do that. - dc Posted in Species Threats.


10-09-09 - Obama wins Nobel Peace prize. Wow. Rather than receiving this award for what he's done, it's obviously encouragement for the direction he's turned to - to eliminate nuclear weapons being the most significant, but for more than that. They mentioned global warming attitude shift as well. Maybe this is a proper approach in these times of serious threats to the survival of our species. By this I mean that it's not unreasonable to think there's not much time for action and why not use the award to applaud promising intentions. Now I hope there's more movement toward holding his feet to the fire to reduce the damage of our foreign policy and other threats to world peace and species survival. - dc


5/05/04 - So far I can think of only two species threats. Other suggestions are welcome. Andrew Atkinson suggested climate change but I'm not convinced that there's anything on the horizon there that the human race wouldn't adapt to, at least some of us. But there are two dangers that seem to be serious threats to the survival of the species and, avoiding that, major threats to any imaginable lesser degree. Carl Sagan was hip to this and he will be remembered here later. For now, here are the big two as seen by cuke.com. - DC. [Changed my mind 0n this. See Species Threat #3 above]


                               Go to What's New