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Future Evolution




  Author Peter Ward
  Publisher Henry Holt & Co
  Release Date 2001
  Isbn ISBN 0-7167-3496-6


''Future Evolution'' is a book written by '' and H. G. Wells 's '' The Time Machine ''. According to Ward, humanity may exist for a long time. Nevertheless we are impacting our world. He splits his book in different chronologies, starting with the near future (the next 1,000 years). Humanity would be struggling to support a massive Population of 11 billion. Global Warming raises sea levels. The Ozone layer weakens. Most of the available Land is devoted to Agriculture due to the demand for Food . Despite all this, the Oceanic Wildlife remains untethered by most of these impacts, specifically the Commercial Farmed Fish . This is, according to Ward, an era of Extinction that would last about 10 million years (note that many Human-caused extinctions have already occurred). After that, the world gets stranger.

Ward labels the species that have the potential to survive in a human-infested world. These include Dandelion s, Raccoon s, Owl s, Pig s, Cattle , Rat s, Snake s, and Crow s to name but a few. In the human-infested ecosystem, those preadapted to live amongst man survived and prospered. Ward describes garbage dumps in the future infested with multiple species of rats, a snake with a sticky frog-like tongue to snap up rodents, and pigs with snouts specialized for rooting through garbage. The story's time traveler who views this new refuse-covered habitat is gruesomely attacked by ravenous flesh-eating crows.

Ward then questions the potential for humanity to evolve into a new species. According to him, this is incredibly unlikely. For this to happen a human population must isolate itself and Interbreed until it becomes a new species. Then he questions if humanity would survive or extinguish itself by Climate Change , Nuclear War , Disease , or the posing threat of Nanotechnology as terrorist weapons.


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