Yes, when people blithely say, 'Oh it'll be over by 2010 you bet', I have this exact thought. How do -you- know? How do you know it won't be -worse- than the GD, which after all took a giant war to fix?
As for, "Conditioning on the proposition that the Earth as we know it is still here in 2040, what might have happened during the preceding thirty years?" I think warming and wars and no epochal advances in technology.
Yes, when people blithely say, 'Oh it'll be over by 2010 you bet', I have this exact thought. How do -you- know? How do you know it won't be -worse- than the GD, which after all took a giant war to fix?
As for, "Conditioning on the proposition that the Earth as we know it is still here in 2040, what might have happened during the preceding thirty years?" I think warming and wars and no epochal advances in technology.