Hothouse Earth, Other Predictions By Stephen Hawking Who Blasts Trump's Climate Policy

Stephen Hawking predicted the Earth would turn into a hothouse planet like Venus as a result of President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement. In an interview with BBC on Sunday, the Cambridge University professor and physicist said Trump's action could lead to irreversible climate change, pushing "Earth over the brink."

"We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible,” Hawking told BBC News. “Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.”

The world's most famous scientist said the best hope of survival for mankind was to live on other planets. Since 2009, NASA has been working to discover Earth-like planets that can support life.

Read: Stephen Hawking Puts An Expiry Date On Humanity

“The best hope for the survival of the human race might be independent colonies in space,” he said.

Hawking also said climate change is among the greatest dangers facing Earth, and “we can prevent if we act now,” but Trump withdrawing from the agreement would cause “avoidable damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children."

Trump announced June 1 he would be withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement, calling it “unfair.” “The bottom line is the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States,” Trump said at the time. The president also said he was willing to renegotiate the terms of the Paris agreement, as a condition for the U.S. to continue its participation in it. Trump’s decision was met with widespread criticism.

This is not the first time Hawking has predicted adverse effects on Earth as a result of climate change. Here are five other predictions by the 75-year-old.

1. Build Mars Colony Or Face Extinction: While Speaking via Skype at the Starmus Festival 2017 in Norway in June, Hawking suggested humans must get on spaceship lifeboat and go to another planet if they want to survive as the Earth was nothing but a sinking ship. Hawking reiterated his stance that humans need to colonize Mars or explore other locations in space for habitation within the next 100 years.

2. Technology And Human Nature Will Destroy Earth: Human nature along with the constant technological advancements could be the perfect equation to end mankind. “Since civilization began, aggression has been useful in as much as it has definite survival advantages,” Hawking said during an interview with British news outlet The Times in March. “It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war.”

3. Humanity Will Not Survive Another 1,000 Years On Earth: Hawking believes humanity has less than a thousand years on Earth before a mass extinction occurs. “We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” the scientist said during a speech at Oxford University Union, U.K. in November. “I don’t think we will survive another 1000 without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”

4. Artificial Intelligence Effects On Humanity: The creation of powerful artificial intelligence will be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity,” Hawking said at the opening of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) in Cambridge University in October.

“The potential benefits of creating intelligence are huge,” he said. “We cannot predict what we might achieve when our own minds are amplified by AI. Perhaps with the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one – industrialization. And surely we will aim to finally eradicate disease and poverty."

Read: Light Beams Will Help Humans Colonize Other Planets, Stephen Hawking Says

“Every aspect of our lives will be transformed. In short, success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization,” Hawking added.

5. Aliens Might Lead To Our Deaths: In a 25-minute movie called “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places” Hawking predicted the meeting between humans and alien life forms could lead to human deaths.

"If intelligent life has evolved (on Gliese 832c), we should be able to hear it," Hawking said of the planet, which is at least five times the mass of Earth. "One day we might receive a signal from a planet like this, but we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn't turn out so well."