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The Argument Against Terraforming Mars (2016)
- rl3 9y ago>Mars has many features of extraordinary natural beauty. It is home to the tallest known volcano on any planet, Olympus Mons, whose cap reaches 13.6 miles high—two and a half times the height of Mount Everest. >The decision to terraform Mars would also exhibit hubris. Speaking of hubris: if we terraform Mars, people are going to want to climb Olympus Mons. Perhaps the volcano would acquire a reputation and body count similar to Everest. Obviously the future holds great potential for lifesaving technology, but at the same time there's always purists. After all, the people who have climbed Everest probably wouldn't have if there wasn't any danger involved. I imagine much of the danger would depend upon the finer details of how the Mars was terraformed. Namely sea level, atmospheric composition, and anything else that affects weather at altitude. Would reaching the summit even be possible without oxygen? It wouldn't be on Earth at that height, but I've no idea if that holds for a terraformed atmosphere on another planet.
- Kenji 9y agoConsidering the earth has roughly 2.5 times more gravity, the climb would probably be quite a bit less exhausting (after terraforming Mars).
- throwaway7645 9y ago22 km is quite a trek going up, but even in a suit perhaps the lower gravity makes it easier than Everest.
- rini17 9y agoThere is no extra danger climbing Olympus Mons involved, it's actually very flat: "...an observer near the summit would be unaware of standing on a very high mountain, as the slope of the volcano would extend far beyond the horizon, a mere 3 kilometers away." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons#Description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons#Description
- taneq 9y agotl;dr Mars is pretty and if we terraform it then that will change its appearance. Good people don't break pretty things, and we want to be good people, so we shouldn't terraform Mars.
- bernardlunn 9y agoWe could start by not breaking earth, which has lots of life and beauty
- taneq 9y agoIf you actually look closely at life on Earth, you'll notice that historically it's been pretty damn ugly for everyone involved. Now, with modern technology, medicine, and more stable, peaceful social structures, it's alright for a fair minority of humans. We still have some refinements to make but a "natural life" is horrible and I want no part of it. Nature's only beautiful when viewed from a safe vantage point, a long way away.
- MereInterest 9y agoYeah, this seems to be yet another of the misanthropic arguments about how nature is inherently good, and how humanity is inherently corrupting, without making any attempt to justify these beliefs.
- jdietrich 9y agoI think it's more narcissistic than misanthropic; it presupposes that we are something distinct and apart from the "natural" world. A bird building a nest is "natural", a human building a house is "un-natural". In this worldview, we are a fundamentally and categorically unique kind of living thing. Our behaviour is not that of a highly evolved mammal, but of a lesser god.
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- II2II 9y agoThere are more practical reasons not to terraform Mars. Notably, the most valuable resources for human survival (oxygen and water) would eventually be lost to space. It is a slow process to be sure. In practical terms, it would probably outlast humanity as a species (either evolution or extinction, depending upon your outlook). Yet it does seem to go against the basic idea that many of proponents of manned space exploration tout: a second home to ensure our survival. Terraforming Mars would be, at best, temporary. My take is that we should go out there, exploiting resources as needed, yet adapting to the environment through technological means. Even if we could terraform Mars, we would still have to adapt in order to go beyond that planet since there is nowhere else within reach that is remotely similar to either planet. Even if you could imagine a sci-fi future where the stars are within reach, chances are that a good portion of the habitable planets will have life of some form. That would raise more serious ethical issues than the subjectivity of beauty.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoIf humanity ends up with the ability to travel to other stars, Mars is but a stepping stone. It would be the testing ground for almost everything else. There's no reason to view that as temporary. It's necessary and the whole terraforming process would include figuring out a way to not lose those resources to space. We don't really know how long terraforming Mars would take, but it's conceivable that it could take as few as a few centuries, especially given the advance of tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Protecting_the_atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Protectin... (some scientists say it could be done with current tech)
- monkeycantype 9y agowould it be easier and a better investment to change ourselves? replace mitochondria with something that doesn't need oxygen to produce ATP. If you're planning on you and you descendants spending forever exploring space, would you want to be vacuum native?
- gonvaled 9y agoInteresting, but is it doable? It is not only breathing that needs refactoring: how do we resist very low pressures? What about radiation? What else needs a complete overhaul?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> The decision to terraform Mars would also exhibit hubris. Often understood as an “excessive pride before the gods,” hubris has ancient roots and is perhaps best epitomized by the fabled Icarus, whose wings of wax and feathers melted when he got too close to the sun in his attempt to reach heaven. One man's hubris is another's whole raison d'être of humanity. I suppose the reference to Icarus is a good one here, because I wholeheartedly agree with Randall Munroe: "But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.". I can understand appeals to aesthetics. I can understand pointing out generic irresponsibility of humans in aggregate. But hubris? The strong drive to adapt the world to what we see fit is literally what separates us from animals.
- posterboy 9y ago> what separates us from animals. talk about hubris.
- Retric 9y agoEven that is giving the author a free pass. Because, using a story that did not happen like Icarus to justify your world view is hubris. Building stuff on the other hand is just engineering.
- calcifer 9y ago> Because, using a story that did not happen like Icarus to justify your world view is hubris. The story of Icarus, written by a human within his own world view, is part of our collective history. The events in the story not being real has no relevance at all on its philosophical implications.
- leonvv 9y agoWhat a beautiful piece of writing. I always saw terraforming Mars as a technological challenge, it's great to see someone consider the ethics of the project. The following paragraph stood out most for me. 'Another reason for believing that terraforming would involve hubris is to consider how we treat Earth, a place we might call our “proper place” or “home.” If we think of our home as a place which nurtures us and in which we grow to maturity, then a case could be made that until we learn to treat our own planet better, any attempt to reshape another planet and call it our “home” would be hubristic.' Whenever we apply technology people talk progress. Intuitively I would say that progress implies a destination and that progress is about getting closer to it. But can we really say we're making progress if we do not know the destination: how should people live together? When we agree to terraform Mars we do so in the belief that it's a good idea. But 'good' implies an answer to the question. It's very interesting to try to find these implicit answers and see if we can turn them into an explicit answer. Maybe then we'll find that often technology looks like progress, while it's not getting us closer at all.
- andai 9y agoWell, in order to live well together, people do need to remain alive. There's an argument for creating off-world colonies to reduce the chance of human extinction by any one catastrophe (asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes etc). I definitely think it's important to learn to coexist with our fellow humans, as well as other life forms, here on earth, but / and it will be hard to do that if we all catch fire and die.
- SirLJ 9y agoIf we could terraform, we should do it right away, humanity is one meteorite strike away from extinction... the universe is a harsh place and we have to hedge our bets to survive and thrive...
- andai 9y agoThat's a good point and something the article doesn't mention: creating a stable colony off planet effectively cuts in half our risk of extinction due to impacts, supervolcanoes / god knows what horrors.
- atroll 9y agotrump for example
- monochromatic 9y agoCan you not
- monochromatic 9y agoIt does a lot better than cutting it in half.
- andai 9y agoOh right. The chance of two simultaneous catastrophic events is ... the chance of one multiplied by itself, not by two!
- gehwartzen 9y agoWhat if the other colony evolves into something other than humans, the two groups becoming distinct species? Will it have been a waste?
- Santosh83 9y agoThere's no rational need to survive as a species. An individual protecting its life is a different matter, but what's the point in struggling so hard to survive as a species? What is it that we hope to achieve in the end?
- 0xFFFE 9y agoWe as humans haven't yet learnt to co-exist with other animals and maintain the equilibrium on Earth. What makes us think we are going to treat Mars any better? Please don't get me wrong, I am all for exploring the planets, in fact I am annoyed that we don't yet have the technology to visit a system like TRAPPIST-1. But unless we learn to be considerate towards nature and other species which inhabit this planet we are not going to be good residents on other planets. Just my two cents.
- Bakary 9y agoThe notion of an equilibrium doesn't hold up to scrutiny if we consider all the mass extinction events that came before, or even the continuing random chaos that regularly sweeps species away in favor of others. Of course, it's also a bad idea to create conditions on Earth where human life is made more difficult or unpleasant. However, we are also part of nature, and other elements of the natural world are only useful in so far as they meet some human need, even if it's just the satisfaction you get from treating another species in a kind way. Heck, it's not even clear whether leaving nature untouched is actually ethical, considering the form it currently has. As we speak, thousands of beings are violently being killed and eaten by their predators, even with humans out of the equation. The cycle has continued this way for aeons, and only because random events made life evolve in this specific way, with a nervous system that produces suffering.
- Schwolop 9y agoWell for one thing, as best we understand there _are_ no other animals on Mars. If we operated with business-as-usual human obliviousness there we'd be doing a lot less harm to other species.
- monochromatic 9y agoOn one side of the scales we have that Mars is pretty. On the other side, we have the continued existence of humans in the face of one random asteroid. I care more about hedging against an asteroid strike than I do about the natural beauty of a planet that no one's even seen up close.
- devuo 9y agoThere are countless millions of lifeless beautiful giant rock worlds carved and shaped throughout the eons by the interaction of elements. And yet, there's only one of such rocks, that we know so far, has been graced by the beauty of life. Life spreads, grows, adapts, multiplies. It, just like all other elements in the universe that came before it, shapes its environment as it interacts with it. Life isn't any different from the wind and water that shapes the mountains, or the meteor that carves a valley deep into the earth.
- gleglegle 9y agoKeeping something dead for the sake of beauty is a very sad argument when the alternative is the potential for another living planet.
- rfeather 9y agoI'd highly recommend reading the referenced Mars Trilogy. The debate has some more detail in the words of the characters (though the summary here gets the major points of the "Reds"). What's missing here but present in the series is the counterpoint. For purposes of profit and self preservation, terraforming is all but inevitable. A more useful debate is about how it should happen if you want to preserve some of the Martian natural beauty.
- mileszim 9y agoWill second this, Red Mars (and the good parts of the second two in the trilogy) do a fantastic job of working through scenarios of both the sociopolitical and technical challenges we may face as the era of Mars exploration begins. The general premise of the series is: If you were sent over to Mars with a group of others, who is there to stop you all from creating your own vision for the place instead, if armed with the tools to make it happen? If you have the capability to make your own world as you want it, would you obey the orders of those all the way on earth, or would you make the world in your own image? And what do you do if you choose to craft your mars in one way but others in the group disagree and have the same motivation and are armed with the same tools for their vision instead? Each character in the series represents and carries out the different possibilities to these questions, and you see the consequences play out over hundreds of years.
- sr2 9y agoWe have to terraform Earth first incase of climate chaos surely?
- Houshalter 9y agoI don't think most terraforming plans are remotely practical. One sort of compromise solution involves building an enormous ceiling and walls of glass over areas we want to inhabit. It could hold in heat and an atmosphere and would require much less effort to fill than the entire planet. Eventually the entire planet could be covered, but we could leave regions untouched as "nature" preserves.
- phyzome 9y agoI mean, if we can't even control the climate or live self-sufficiently in the deep desert on Earth, why the crap are we even talking about this stuff?
- SubiculumCode 9y agoMakes terrorists too powerful, everyone living under one dome.
- Houshalter 9y agoPerhaps every square mile could be walled off separately so if one area fails the others would be ok.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoYeah. Even without maliciousness, it would be good to have airlocked subsections.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ranprieur 9y agoThe aesthetic argument is weak, because it doesn't make sense to talk about anyone but us having an aesthetic perspective. Mars is beautiful? Fill those canyons with life and make it even more beautiful. The stronger argument is: look at what we've done to Earth, and it's obvious that we don't know yet how to make a planet better.
- 43224gg252 9y agoI don't understand why the same people who want to terraform mars claim climate change is soon to be irreversible (which they seem to have been saying since the 60's).
- tokai 9y agoWe are really good at warming planets up. That's what you need to transform Mars. We not that good at cooling planets. That's what you need to save the Earth.
- nonsince 9y agoThe destruction-of-beauty argument is not without merit, but no-one makes that argument about Mt Rushmore. You can make something more beautiful, and that doesn't make the destruction of beauty argument moot but it does make it less convincing. The hubris, or "playing god", argument is utterly unconvincing for me. Our environment would be safer if we spent more time playing god with genetic manipulation and less time worrying that the wheat will grow beaks and murder the farmers in their sleep. One era's playing god is another era's everyday life.
- firethief 9y agoThis formula could be used to argue literally anything.
- mythrwy 9y agoHere's a better argument against Terraforming Mars. Right now we can't. If we start approaching a state where we can, other arguments become important. Until then it's similar to an argument against bringing people back from the dead.
- Bakary 9y agoThe pageview-linked revenue is quite real and immediate, though.
- zipwitch 9y agoShould we terraform Mars is well on its way to being an irrelevant question. Launch costs keep getting cheaper, and there are low-energy (if long) paths between Earth and Mars. The only question is how long before some person or small group decides Mars terraforming is getting started, _now_.
- UhUhUhUh 9y agoThese are indeed "arguments". There is an actual reason though. Mars cannot be terraformed because it has no magnetosphere. Which is also probably why it is like it is now in the first place. Creating a magnetosphere is not impossible theoretically but vastly unrealistic at this time.
- nickparker 9y agoThe lack of a magnetosphere is less of an issue than popular science claims it is. The current atmosphere weighs about 25 terratonnes[1] and MAVEN estimated solar wind is removing 100 grams/sec[2]. That's an annual loss rate of 0.12 parts per billion (10e-10). A thicker atmosphere might strip more quickly, but we only want to thicken it by 2 orders of magnitude. Even if the loss fraction increases quadratically with pressure at 0m altitude, that gets you 10e-6, a millionth o your atmosphere per year, or about 1% every 10,000 years. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars [2]: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-speed-of-solar-wind-stripping-martian-atmosphere/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-spee...
- rdlecler1 9y agoIf there are no humans around to appreciate the aesthetic value of mars as is, then what's the point? I think human survival trumps the ascetic of a dead planet.
- rasz 9y agoTerraforming Mars is our Manifest destiny.
- strin 9y agoThis sounds like humans are born to be enemies of nature as they inevitably reshapes what nature looks like. But humans are part of nature, and the symbiosis of human and environments led to the co-existence of beauty and ugliness today. However, I do think Terraforming Mars could be a bad idea. Technology-wise it is unclear it's easier than transforming human ourselves (say cybernetics).
- mileszim 9y agoThe counter from Sax Russell in Red Mars to this exact debate, straight from the book: > "The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind. Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It’s we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. […] The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. […] If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars’s beauty? I don’t think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all." - Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
- louithethrid 9y agoMediocre People inventing fairy tales to not look as cowardly as they are besides ambitious people. The problem is, that the writer of such a piece, after completing it- turns around to a humanity hungry for a next, risky, feet. So hungry in fact, it would vote for a mad man to axe the risk avoider caste. So our writer turns around and exclaims "Sorry, no big feets available today, maybe you all should relax and come back for a nth-chance tomorrow." Now, where else to turn too? Those claiming to be pro-risky steps? Mostly company cronys, who marketing crowned with "bold moves High-Performers" but who got where they are, by constant small incremental steps, and putting up arbitrary expensive obsticles behind them, to keep a little privacy. Imagine sheparding a asteroid with a tug-drone from the belt into moon-orbit, how much this price winning inbred hunting-dog-show would wail to avoid the chase, while those with nothing too lose and everything to gain, would be busy drilling in a high-rad, zero-g environment. This is why we got Trump, and will get Trump again, Incarnation after Incarnation, because this species always voted pro-risk once the mamoth was eaten.
- sunstone 9y agoHmmm if we had the power to bring water to the Sahara Desert and make it bloom would we not do it for aesthetic reasons? The Sahara has been bountiful in the past. There are plenty of other bodies in the solar system to leave in their "natural state" whereas Mars' current condition is more a matter of coincidental timing than of it's being a timeless Platonic object.