In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
In message ,
writes
algomeysa2 writes:

Interesting page, but, you know, when I go to a webpage and the first thing
I see is this:

"The risk you face of dying as a result of an asteroid impact is about 1 in
20,000, the same risk you face of dying in a plane crash. - Source:
Spaceguard Survey"

The fact that that's obviously a completely bogus statistic.....considering,
oh...... I can search the web and find many people who have died in plane
crashes, but, there's not one instance in recorded history of anyone dying
in an asteroid impact...... makes that rather suspect....

On what basis do you call it a fact that it is "a completely bogus
statistic"? In reality, the statistic is not at all bogus. It's
your reasoning that's bogus. You're trying to compare a relatively
high frequency, low fatality event (plane crashes) with a relatively
low frequency, high fatality event (asteroid impacts).

Suppose an asteroid impact that causes a mass extinction (let's say
50 percent of the human population eventually dies as a result)
happens once every 10 million years. Well, the current global
population is about 6 billion. That makes for an average death
rate of 600 people per year. How many people die in plane crashes
each year? The number is comparable to within the limits of this
execise.

I would say that shows how completely bogus the statistic is. The actual
number of people exposed to the danger of dying in a plane crash is a
tiny fraction of the number now living in various degrees of poverty on
Earth.

Not true! People risking to die in an airplane crash aren't merely
those who ride the airplane -- people on the ground may be hit by
the falling airplane as well. Thus, everyone living where airplanes
pass overhead run a small risk to die in an airplane crash, including
those who never ride an airplane. To completely avoid that risk
you'd have to always remain underground, or in some bunker.

But it is an absolute certainty that some of them will die in a
plane crash.

Not true either! It's merely extremely probable that some will die
in future plane crashes, but it is *NOT* absolutely certain!

And the number of people who have lived in the past ten million
years is vastly more than the current population - Clarke's "behind
every man now alive stand thirty ghosts" comes to mind.

Not true either! Remember that for quite some time, the Earth's
population has doubled every generation or so. Therefore the number
of people who've ever have lived on Earth are only perhaps four to
six times the number of people living today. Thus there aren't as
many as "30 ghosts" behind every man now alive -- there are only some
"4-6 ghosts".....

In fact 10 million years ago man didn't exist.

This seems to be your first, and only, true statement of this post.. :-)

But then no-one's interested in spending money on solving problems
that actually kill people.

If so, why do we have hospitals, physicians, ambulances, etc?

After all, we've spent trillions to ensure the destruction of all
life on Earth.

:-) ...no we haven't. I suppose you're referring to all the nuclear
weapons on Earth. First, it is NOT, repeat, NOT absolutely certain
that they will be detonated, as you imply here. And second, even if
we detonated them all, we would NOT destroy all life on Earth! Sure,
human civilization would probably be destroyed, and perhaps all
humans and a large number of mammal species as well. But some life
would survive. In particular the insects, who are able to tolerate
much higher doses of radioactivity than humans and mammals, would
definitely survive: they'd just hibernate through the "nuclear
winter" which would follow.

That big asteroid which we believe hit the Earth at the end of
the Createcous period, killing off the dinosaurs, was probably
a larger catastrophy to the biosphere than anything we humans are
able to produce -- including detonating all our nuclear weapons.
And life didn't end on Earth then.

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