5 ms·

I believe we are already at point of no return and our grandchildren will live in mostly sterile world compared with what we have now. Probably only external ex

by xvilka 8y ago

I believe we are already at point of no return and our grandchildren will live in mostly sterile world compared with what we have now. Probably only external expansion to the Solar system can save tiny bits of wild life they will have at that time.

thenanyu 8y ago
Can you help me understand this? I keep hearing about expansion to other planets but it seems to me that no matter how inhospitable Earth becomes, we’ll be starting off from a much worse position elsewhere.
- glial 8y ago
  There's no understanding it because it doesn't actually make sense. Lasting solutions to earth-scale issues like climate change must ultimately be social solutions (regulations, taxes, treaties, and ultimately alignment of incentives). Terraforming Mars seems easier than developing social solutions to some people, so that's what they fixate on. But trying to spread into the solar system because we're afraid of having the hard conversations about social solutions is a gross misapplication of imagination and resources.
  - randallsquared 8y ago
    The fact that we're using "hard conversations" as a euphemism for large scale violence is a wry comment on just how hard those conversations will actually be. I don't expect that colonization of Mars or other distant places will save "us", but it might well save many of those who go. There are lots of ways in which places on Mars are less hospitable to human life than places on Earth, but if things get really bad on Earth, the surrounding weather will not be nearly as bad as how other people are reacting.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      It will take a really long time before any off-planet colony could be self-sustaining. Just think about how long the supply chains for even the simplest things needed for repairs are. Until then Earth is either fucked due to climate change or we have a local solution to the problem.
    - fornaxese 8y ago
      There's also the more strategic aspects of interplanetary exploration. Namely: rendering those places conceptually impractical as a doctrine of area denial. Area denial isn't just about land mines. It can mean fomenting political unrest among the constituents of a standing, stable, and sustainable Martian colony, so that it's suddenly an unappealing alternative to solving Earth's problems. Don't go there, it's the Salem witch trials and the holocaust all at once. Stay here and fix the biosphere instead.
  - sathackr 8y ago
    I think the point, or at least a parallel point, is that if we have the technology to terraform Mars, then we likely have the technology to terraform earth back to a more habitable environment. Eventually the situation will be come obvious enough that it can no longer be ignored by half of the West, and most of the developing world. When that happens, and a solution to the problem becomes a global priority, it will be solved in one manner or another.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > it will be solved in one manner or another The closer we get to that point, the worse it will be for those further from resources (political and financial).
      - glial 8y ago
        Exactly. That's why I think people fantasizing about Mars instead of investing in fixing our current social/media/political situation is a severe misapplication of resources. I'm looking at you, Jeff Bezos.
        Faark 8y ago
        We humans usually don't focus our resources on a single issues. Have you ever heard we have to stop spending money for cosmetics because right now we have to fix amazon deforestation? And even then, we usually don't go all in on a single plan but want backups. Mars might be one of those. A tiny one we barely invest any resources into. NASA is ~0.5 percent of the US budget. Cosmetics would be easily 3x that. I'm with your GP on that. Not terra-forming, but a small mars colony will prove Humans are able to live independent from earths ecology. That we have the necessary technology and just have to scale it up. That will be hard enough on potentially short available time frame we have to react, so doing the R&D now in form of a government financed space program will probably buy us necessary time. That doesn't mean the colony has to be independent of earths economy. Decoupling mines and factories from earths ecology will be a lot easier than doing so for e.g. food production. But yeah, that will be painful and I'd prefer mankind to find ways to keep our current environment intact.
justinator 8y ago
It's laughable to even think I'm ever going to HAVE kids.
walrus01 8y ago
Blade Runner 2049 was not supposed to be a documentary
- goatlover 8y ago
  It's not. The first Blade Runner was set in 2019, where LA had a population of 106 million (from the original voice over by Harrison Ford). That was the 80s apocalyptic view of our time as an overcrowded and polluted hell where people have to crowd into massive cities for survival. If you lived during the 80s, you'll recall predictions of the Amazon being cut down and the ozone layer being depleted by now. Also peak oil was supposed to have happened, along with several other resources becoming rare. 2049 was a continuation of that alternative future, which had flying cars, off-world colonies and strong AI in the form of synthetic, fleshy humans. IOW, nothing like the actual future, to date.
  - smarttack 8y ago
    "If you lived during the 80s, you'll recall predictions of the Amazon being cut down and the ozone layer being depleted by now. Also peak oil was supposed to have happened, along with several other resources becoming rare." Isn't it amazing how all the past predictions of environmental doom have been wrong?
    - xref 8y ago
      because of massive political/economic/agricultural/etc shifts to avoid those outcomes. if nobody ever made an issue about banning CFCs do you think the ozone would be better off today?
    - goatlover 8y ago
      It is. Elrich's population bomb was an earlier example that has been wrong so far. I recently re-read Whitley Strieber's Nature's End, published in 87. Although a fictional account of the future similar to the Blade Runner movies (in terms of environmental impact), it embodied the idea at the time that the Earth couldn't support several billion humans. Set in the mid 2020s, the northern forests were dead from acid rain, the Midwest was a desert and the Amazon had mostly burned down. 7 billion humans had completely decimated the biosphere. So I'm a little skeptical whenever the latest doomsday predictions roll around.
paulcole 8y ago
Best individual action if you’re serious about fighting climate change is to not have kids. Has the bonus of not subjecting kids to the future if we’re as fucked as it looks.
- millstone 8y ago
  Disagree at least depending on your circumstances. A robust powerful US economy and workforce can do way more to fight climate change than an enfeebled, aging one.
  - paulcole 8y ago
    > A robust powerful US economy and workforce The US had a robust economy and workforce and look where it got us. More people building and buying shit is not the answer. Significantly fewer people is the best shot we have.
    - oh_sigh 8y ago
      Did it get us to the most powerful nation-state in history, with the ability to exert global control, if not militarily, or economically, but from the bully pulpit?
      - will_brown 8y ago
        No the economy and workforce didn’t do those things. Taking over global finance from the U.K. did and that definitely didn’t happen through our economy or workforce, but because we stayed out of WWII allowing Germany to bomb London daily until the U.K. was willing to turn over control of the global finance to us if we assisted them. What our economy and workforce did once we got that power was single handedly create the single most indebted nation-state in history, $21T national debt $19T personal.
        mirimir 8y ago
        Indeed. Sure, the US helped Britain, France, etc defeat Germany, Japan, etc in WWII. But also, Germany, Japan, etc allowed the US to defeat Britain, France, etc. Speaking broadly, it was mainly Russia and China that maintained their independence.
ralusek 8y ago
Neat belief.
macspoofing 8y ago
No matter how badly we screw up the Earth it will still be much more hospitable than any other place in the Solar System.
- FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
  I hope you are right. I'd still rather live some place else in the solar system. This place is getting kind of crowded for my taste.
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    Did you give Alaska a chance?
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Sure. It will just be like living in a parking lot with some potted plants, instead of living in a forest. We won’t die, just most of the biodiversity. Well maybe a billion or two of us will die. Probably not us.

by xvilka 8y ago

thenanyu 8y ago

Can you help me understand this? I keep hearing about expansion to other planets but it seems to me that no matter how inhospitable Earth becomes, we’ll be starting off from a much worse position elsewhere.

glial 8y ago
There's no understanding it because it doesn't actually make sense. Lasting solutions to earth-scale issues like climate change must ultimately be social solutions (regulations, taxes, treaties, and ultimately alignment of incentives). Terraforming Mars seems easier than developing social solutions to some people, so that's what they fixate on. But trying to spread into the solar system because we're afraid of having the hard conversations about social solutions is a gross misapplication of imagination and resources.
- randallsquared 8y ago
  The fact that we're using "hard conversations" as a euphemism for large scale violence is a wry comment on just how hard those conversations will actually be. I don't expect that colonization of Mars or other distant places will save "us", but it might well save many of those who go. There are lots of ways in which places on Mars are less hospitable to human life than places on Earth, but if things get really bad on Earth, the surrounding weather will not be nearly as bad as how other people are reacting.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    It will take a really long time before any off-planet colony could be self-sustaining. Just think about how long the supply chains for even the simplest things needed for repairs are. Until then Earth is either fucked due to climate change or we have a local solution to the problem.
  - fornaxese 8y ago
    There's also the more strategic aspects of interplanetary exploration. Namely: rendering those places conceptually impractical as a doctrine of area denial. Area denial isn't just about land mines. It can mean fomenting political unrest among the constituents of a standing, stable, and sustainable Martian colony, so that it's suddenly an unappealing alternative to solving Earth's problems. Don't go there, it's the Salem witch trials and the holocaust all at once. Stay here and fix the biosphere instead.
- sathackr 8y ago
  I think the point, or at least a parallel point, is that if we have the technology to terraform Mars, then we likely have the technology to terraform earth back to a more habitable environment. Eventually the situation will be come obvious enough that it can no longer be ignored by half of the West, and most of the developing world. When that happens, and a solution to the problem becomes a global priority, it will be solved in one manner or another.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > it will be solved in one manner or another The closer we get to that point, the worse it will be for those further from resources (political and financial).
    - glial 8y ago
      Exactly. That's why I think people fantasizing about Mars instead of investing in fixing our current social/media/political situation is a severe misapplication of resources. I'm looking at you, Jeff Bezos.
      - Faark 8y ago
        We humans usually don't focus our resources on a single issues. Have you ever heard we have to stop spending money for cosmetics because right now we have to fix amazon deforestation? And even then, we usually don't go all in on a single plan but want backups. Mars might be one of those. A tiny one we barely invest any resources into. NASA is ~0.5 percent of the US budget. Cosmetics would be easily 3x that. I'm with your GP on that. Not terra-forming, but a small mars colony will prove Humans are able to live independent from earths ecology. That we have the necessary technology and just have to scale it up. That will be hard enough on potentially short available time frame we have to react, so doing the R&D now in form of a government financed space program will probably buy us necessary time. That doesn't mean the colony has to be independent of earths economy. Decoupling mines and factories from earths ecology will be a lot easier than doing so for e.g. food production. But yeah, that will be painful and I'd prefer mankind to find ways to keep our current environment intact.

justinator 8y ago

It's laughable to even think I'm ever going to HAVE kids.

walrus01 8y ago

Blade Runner 2049 was not supposed to be a documentary

goatlover 8y ago
It's not. The first Blade Runner was set in 2019, where LA had a population of 106 million (from the original voice over by Harrison Ford). That was the 80s apocalyptic view of our time as an overcrowded and polluted hell where people have to crowd into massive cities for survival. If you lived during the 80s, you'll recall predictions of the Amazon being cut down and the ozone layer being depleted by now. Also peak oil was supposed to have happened, along with several other resources becoming rare. 2049 was a continuation of that alternative future, which had flying cars, off-world colonies and strong AI in the form of synthetic, fleshy humans. IOW, nothing like the actual future, to date.
- smarttack 8y ago
  "If you lived during the 80s, you'll recall predictions of the Amazon being cut down and the ozone layer being depleted by now. Also peak oil was supposed to have happened, along with several other resources becoming rare." Isn't it amazing how all the past predictions of environmental doom have been wrong?
  - xref 8y ago
    because of massive political/economic/agricultural/etc shifts to avoid those outcomes. if nobody ever made an issue about banning CFCs do you think the ozone would be better off today?
  - goatlover 8y ago
    It is. Elrich's population bomb was an earlier example that has been wrong so far. I recently re-read Whitley Strieber's Nature's End, published in 87. Although a fictional account of the future similar to the Blade Runner movies (in terms of environmental impact), it embodied the idea at the time that the Earth couldn't support several billion humans. Set in the mid 2020s, the northern forests were dead from acid rain, the Midwest was a desert and the Amazon had mostly burned down. 7 billion humans had completely decimated the biosphere. So I'm a little skeptical whenever the latest doomsday predictions roll around.

paulcole 8y ago

Best individual action if you’re serious about fighting climate change is to not have kids. Has the bonus of not subjecting kids to the future if we’re as fucked as it looks.

millstone 8y ago
Disagree at least depending on your circumstances. A robust powerful US economy and workforce can do way more to fight climate change than an enfeebled, aging one.
- paulcole 8y ago
  > A robust powerful US economy and workforce The US had a robust economy and workforce and look where it got us. More people building and buying shit is not the answer. Significantly fewer people is the best shot we have.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Did it get us to the most powerful nation-state in history, with the ability to exert global control, if not militarily, or economically, but from the bully pulpit?
    - will_brown 8y ago
      No the economy and workforce didn’t do those things. Taking over global finance from the U.K. did and that definitely didn’t happen through our economy or workforce, but because we stayed out of WWII allowing Germany to bomb London daily until the U.K. was willing to turn over control of the global finance to us if we assisted them. What our economy and workforce did once we got that power was single handedly create the single most indebted nation-state in history, $21T national debt $19T personal.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        Indeed. Sure, the US helped Britain, France, etc defeat Germany, Japan, etc in WWII. But also, Germany, Japan, etc allowed the US to defeat Britain, France, etc. Speaking broadly, it was mainly Russia and China that maintained their independence.

ralusek 8y ago

Neat belief.

macspoofing 8y ago

No matter how badly we screw up the Earth it will still be much more hospitable than any other place in the Solar System.

FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
I hope you are right. I'd still rather live some place else in the solar system. This place is getting kind of crowded for my taste.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  Did you give Alaska a chance?
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Sure. It will just be like living in a parking lot with some potted plants, instead of living in a forest. We won’t die, just most of the biodiversity. Well maybe a billion or two of us will die. Probably not us.