20,000 Experts Warn, Hawking Said 'Disaster or the Stars'

Over 20,000 Scientists are now signatories to the 'Warning to Humanity' document. "Our scientists' warning to humanity has clearly struck a chord with both the global scientific community and the public," lead author, ecology professor William Ripple, said.

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The document's lead statement remarked that "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course."

Late physicist Professor Stephen Hawking's predictions for the planet were no less ominous. The scientist recently said humanity is on a path to either disaster or the stars adding that artificial intelligence will likely replace us and experts will go extinct.

"Although the chance of a disaster on planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, becoming a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years," Hawking said in a 2016 radio interview. "The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether," Hawking told Wire magazine.

The 'Warning to Humanity' research paper, which examines and details the fate of humanity, has received some 4,500 extra signatures since last year when it was updated. The Bioscience journal had published the “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice” paper in November.

The paper explores the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, erratic global temperatures, declining human population levels, pollution, as well as the depletion of the ozone layer and freshwater sources, overfishing, deforestation and the dwindling numbers of various wildlife populations.

Scientists had eagerly endorsed the updated November research piece resulting in about 15,000 signatories from 184 countries. The original document was published more than a quarter of a century ago but only garnered roughly 1,500 signatures.

Now, researchers said time is running out, "especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change" from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. The scientist urged that immediate steps are necessary to address the rapid decline of the planet.