5 ms·

Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets

24 points by ciconia 7y ago

74ls00 7y ago
This is a false equivalence. Climate chance is a political and economic issue, not a technical or scientific one. If we stopped all work on space-science tomorrow, the scientists and engineers wouldn’t suddenly channel their time and energy into implementing a carbon tax, move fossil fuel subsidies to solar and wind subsidies, or retrofit every building to be more energy efficient. Climate change has known solutions, we just need to implement them.
- hvasilev 7y ago
  What are some known solutions to climate change? As far as I know it is a purely technological issue and we have zero viable solutions or any real ideas how to tackle the problem.
  - TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
    Zero viable ideas? Renewable energy, electrification of transport, carbon capture via machine and/or natural (trees). These are all possible and doable if it were not for the political atmosphere around the problem.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  And even for the stuff that does need new inventions or discoveries to make it work or work more cheaply/efficiently, you'll still probably not get enough scientists and engineers working on it until there is a market created for the output via the political and economic things you mentioned.
nickserv 7y ago
I'll take both, please! This is an old and tired viewpoint, that space is just a huge waste of resources that could be applied to more down to Earth (haha) needs. It's usually used when discussing poverty, though. For the current climate emergency, it's factually wrong, without even getting into philosophy. Two words: artificial satellites. Without them we would be unable to track deforestation, thinning ice sheets, atmospheric composition, surface temperature, all of which are absolutely critical in understanding climate change and monitoring our impact. And while the rockets that have placed these satellites in orbit are not capable of sending humanity to other worlds, I'm sure that the people that design them would love for that to be the case.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > Two words: artificial satellites. Without them we would be unable to track deforestation, thinning ice sheets, atmospheric composition, surface temperature, all of which are absolutely critical in understanding climate change and monitoring our impact. This is not what article is about " Didier Queloz ... denounced those who argue against fighting climate change because of the distant possibility that humanity “might leave the Earth at some point”. "
  - larnmar 7y ago
    Do the people he’s denouncing actually exist?
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      And if they do, are they significant enough in number to actually matter?
    - Zanni 7y ago
      The only one "cited" in the article is Stephen Hawking, but 1) he doesn't argue against fighting climate change and 2) he presents a list of threats to a single-planet humanity, including wars, epidemics, asteroid strikes and overpopulation.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        How is overpopulation a threat? As long as you increase the number of women in the workplace we will all have less children.
growlist 7y ago
This seems to me like a false dichotomy of interplanetary scale - there's no reason we can't both fix the Earth and also venture forth. I'm starting to have some sympathy for the conspiracy theory that there are forces working to stymie man's progress in space because they cannot bear the prospect of there being a portion of humanity outside of their control.
deogeo 7y ago
> Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of investing billions in high-frequency trading and other adversarial financial instruments. Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of spending hundreds of billions on new movies, despite an overwhelming abundance of existing movies. Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of wasting enormous amounts of very talented people's time on showing and selling more ads. Why is it always space exploration we have to sacrifice?
mr_toad 7y ago
Or we could just as easily use a similar amount of money that gets spent every year on defence, the entertainment industry, or sports, to name but a few.
larnmar 7y ago
This got me thinking about the economics of sunshades. According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade the simplest plan involves a huge cluster of lightweight shades at the Earth-Sun L1 point. Supposedly it would require around twenty years of daily launches of a 100-ton-to-LEO vehicle, which used to sound like science fiction. But soon we will (fingers crossed) have Starship, a reusable space vehicle capable of 150 tons(?) to LEO and multiple launches per day. With a claimed cost to orbit of $2 million, suddenly we’re talking only around $10 billion in launch costs and five years for a 2% solar shield, which means we can solve global warming quicker and cheaper than we can build an aircraft carrier or a new subway tunnel (let alone a high speed train from Fresno to Bakersfield). Those are optimistic estimates, yes, but it seems odd that this solution is barely on anyone’s radar.
- ailideex 7y ago
  This will get everyone riled up but I think the problem with solving climate change is that the people crying the loudest does not want to solve climate change but want to fundamentally restructure economies and societies - as support for my point of view here I would cite the green new deal. If people were interested in solving it instead of using it to drive another agenda it would have already been solved.
  - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    This is just a talking point promoted by the very same people that said: It's not happening, the scientist are lying. Okay, it is happening, but it's not man made. Okay it is man made, but there's nothing we can do. In fact, it's probably a good thing, CO2 is plant food! Okay, it's bad, and there are things we can do, but I don't like the suggestions that other people are making. We would have solved it already if people weren't so left wing <-- we are here I will also strongly imply that the reason they don't just accept other solutions is that it's not a real thing (taking us back to step one). And no, I won't implement even the right-wing, market friendly stuff I previously claimed I wanted, like a carbon tax or reducing subsidies on carbon generating stuff. Honestly, listen to yourself. The current American president literally said it was a hoax and pulled out of the Paris agreement. He got the head of Exxon to be his embassador to Russia. And you're claiming that the real problem is the democratic socialists who want to ensure coalminers get retrained and that poor people houses are insulated?
IXxXI 7y ago
The climate crisis is only the latest in a long series of "crisis" deliberately created and manufactured to force an agenda of encouraging people to forfeit rights and freedoms for the "greater good".

24 points by ciconia 7y ago

This is a false equivalence. Climate chance is a political and economic issue, not a technical or scientific one. If we stopped all work on space-science tomorrow, the scientists and engineers wouldn’t suddenly channel their time and energy into implementing a carbon tax, move fossil fuel subsidies to solar and wind subsidies, or retrofit every building to be more energy efficient. Climate change has known solutions, we just need to implement them.

hvasilev 7y ago
What are some known solutions to climate change? As far as I know it is a purely technological issue and we have zero viable solutions or any real ideas how to tackle the problem.
- TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
  Zero viable ideas? Renewable energy, electrification of transport, carbon capture via machine and/or natural (trees). These are all possible and doable if it were not for the political atmosphere around the problem.
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
And even for the stuff that does need new inventions or discoveries to make it work or work more cheaply/efficiently, you'll still probably not get enough scientists and engineers working on it until there is a market created for the output via the political and economic things you mentioned.

nickserv 7y ago

I'll take both, please! This is an old and tired viewpoint, that space is just a huge waste of resources that could be applied to more down to Earth (haha) needs. It's usually used when discussing poverty, though. For the current climate emergency, it's factually wrong, without even getting into philosophy. Two words: artificial satellites. Without them we would be unable to track deforestation, thinning ice sheets, atmospheric composition, surface temperature, all of which are absolutely critical in understanding climate change and monitoring our impact. And while the rockets that have placed these satellites in orbit are not capable of sending humanity to other worlds, I'm sure that the people that design them would love for that to be the case.

perfunctory 7y ago
> Two words: artificial satellites. Without them we would be unable to track deforestation, thinning ice sheets, atmospheric composition, surface temperature, all of which are absolutely critical in understanding climate change and monitoring our impact. This is not what article is about " Didier Queloz ... denounced those who argue against fighting climate change because of the distant possibility that humanity “might leave the Earth at some point”. "
- larnmar 7y ago
  Do the people he’s denouncing actually exist?
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    And if they do, are they significant enough in number to actually matter?
  - Zanni 7y ago
    The only one "cited" in the article is Stephen Hawking, but 1) he doesn't argue against fighting climate change and 2) he presents a list of threats to a single-planet humanity, including wars, epidemics, asteroid strikes and overpopulation.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      How is overpopulation a threat? As long as you increase the number of women in the workplace we will all have less children.

growlist 7y ago

This seems to me like a false dichotomy of interplanetary scale - there's no reason we can't both fix the Earth and also venture forth. I'm starting to have some sympathy for the conspiracy theory that there are forces working to stymie man's progress in space because they cannot bear the prospect of there being a portion of humanity outside of their control.

deogeo 7y ago

> Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of investing billions in high-frequency trading and other adversarial financial instruments. Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of spending hundreds of billions on new movies, despite an overwhelming abundance of existing movies. Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of wasting enormous amounts of very talented people's time on showing and selling more ads. Why is it always space exploration we have to sacrifice?

mr_toad 7y ago

Or we could just as easily use a similar amount of money that gets spent every year on defence, the entertainment industry, or sports, to name but a few.

larnmar 7y ago

This got me thinking about the economics of sunshades. According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade the simplest plan involves a huge cluster of lightweight shades at the Earth-Sun L1 point. Supposedly it would require around twenty years of daily launches of a 100-ton-to-LEO vehicle, which used to sound like science fiction. But soon we will (fingers crossed) have Starship, a reusable space vehicle capable of 150 tons(?) to LEO and multiple launches per day. With a claimed cost to orbit of $2 million, suddenly we’re talking only around $10 billion in launch costs and five years for a 2% solar shield, which means we can solve global warming quicker and cheaper than we can build an aircraft carrier or a new subway tunnel (let alone a high speed train from Fresno to Bakersfield). Those are optimistic estimates, yes, but it seems odd that this solution is barely on anyone’s radar.

ailideex 7y ago
This will get everyone riled up but I think the problem with solving climate change is that the people crying the loudest does not want to solve climate change but want to fundamentally restructure economies and societies - as support for my point of view here I would cite the green new deal. If people were interested in solving it instead of using it to drive another agenda it would have already been solved.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  This is just a talking point promoted by the very same people that said: It's not happening, the scientist are lying. Okay, it is happening, but it's not man made. Okay it is man made, but there's nothing we can do. In fact, it's probably a good thing, CO2 is plant food! Okay, it's bad, and there are things we can do, but I don't like the suggestions that other people are making. We would have solved it already if people weren't so left wing <-- we are here I will also strongly imply that the reason they don't just accept other solutions is that it's not a real thing (taking us back to step one). And no, I won't implement even the right-wing, market friendly stuff I previously claimed I wanted, like a carbon tax or reducing subsidies on carbon generating stuff. Honestly, listen to yourself. The current American president literally said it was a hoax and pulled out of the Paris agreement. He got the head of Exxon to be his embassador to Russia. And you're claiming that the real problem is the democratic socialists who want to ensure coalminers get retrained and that poor people houses are insulated?

IXxXI 7y ago

The climate crisis is only the latest in a long series of "crisis" deliberately created and manufactured to force an agenda of encouraging people to forfeit rights and freedoms for the "greater good".