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I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. Large-scale geoengineering will be nec

I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. Large-scale geoengineering will be necessary sooner or later on Earth. However, it almost certainly has failure modes that we don't know about, and won't know about until we can experiment with it. Testing the effects on Earth, with nearly 8 billion people, is wildly reckless. Testing the effects on Mars or Venus, though costlier to implement, has the advantage of not risking those 8 billion lives.

intuitionist 6y ago
You’ve got it exactly backwards IMO. Terraforming Mars or Venus will take millennia at least, millennia that we don’t currently have the luxury of waiting around for. We need to terraform Earth first — restore some of the damage we’ve done over just the last century or two — before we can think about the much more difficult project of terraforming other planets.
- peteradio 6y ago
  I understand we are at risk of large populations being displaced. But you seem to be under the impression we are facing a human extinction event, is that something backed up by science?
  - intuitionist 6y ago
    I think that’s a risk on the right tail, although not a very likely one. But even the modal outcomes — 2 or 3 K of warming relative to the preindustrial baseline — will likely kill hundreds of millions of humans and lead to the extinction of countless nonhuman plant and animal species. I’m comfortable saying that we should do whatever possible to mitigate that outcome instead of focusing on creating Martian bunkers for the 1% of the 1%.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      > even the modal outcomes ... will likely kill hundreds of millions of humans Once we are dealing with scenarios where hundreds of millions of humans are dying, it becomes harder to rule out the possibility of some desperate political or military leader resorting to using nuclear weapons. From there it is a small step to full nuclear war and the deaths of billions of humans. Perhaps the "optimistic" scenarios are ones in which the hundreds of millions of humans that die are located far away from any nuclear armed countries, or at least those countries aren't destabilised by the economic and migration consequences of those deaths. I can, unfortunately, imagine militaries being routinely used this century for wiping out the remaining civilian populations of failed states.
grawprog 6y ago
>I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. This thinking seems backwards. How can we learn to take a totally dead planet and make it living when we can't even figure out how to keep this one healthy?
- peteradio 6y ago
  I doubt the person you are replying to is suggesting that full scale terraforming is possible in a fraction of a million years. But perhaps smaller scale insightful experiments might be done without fear of wiping out life in our solar system.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    Exactly. What happens if we have a swarm of satellites to divert/concentrate a large amount of solar radiation? What happens if we geo-engineer bacteria to precipitate out greenhouse gases? How long does it take for particulate matter to settle after diverting an asteroid to impact the planet? If we can make oceans, how does the size of oceans affect the absorption of new asteroid deliveries? Mars and Venus are, as far as every experiment has shown, dead as doornails. Using them as a testbed for experiments that are too dangerous to do on Earth without first practicing is a good use for them.
wrs 6y ago
I agree in a very theoretical and academic way, but practically speaking, how long will this testing take? We already risked the 8 billion lives with the accidental geoengineering we’re doing now.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jellicle 6y ago
Alternately: we can't even stop the anti-terraforming transformation of our own planet into an unlivable hellhole, despite the tremendous benefits of doing so, so why would anyone think we could possibly spend enough money to terraform a planet a zillion miles away that is inherently hostile to human life and where there is no financial benefit to doing so?

intuitionist 6y ago

You’ve got it exactly backwards IMO. Terraforming Mars or Venus will take millennia at least, millennia that we don’t currently have the luxury of waiting around for. We need to terraform Earth first — restore some of the damage we’ve done over just the last century or two — before we can think about the much more difficult project of terraforming other planets.

peteradio 6y ago
I understand we are at risk of large populations being displaced. But you seem to be under the impression we are facing a human extinction event, is that something backed up by science?
- intuitionist 6y ago
  I think that’s a risk on the right tail, although not a very likely one. But even the modal outcomes — 2 or 3 K of warming relative to the preindustrial baseline — will likely kill hundreds of millions of humans and lead to the extinction of countless nonhuman plant and animal species. I’m comfortable saying that we should do whatever possible to mitigate that outcome instead of focusing on creating Martian bunkers for the 1% of the 1%.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > even the modal outcomes ... will likely kill hundreds of millions of humans Once we are dealing with scenarios where hundreds of millions of humans are dying, it becomes harder to rule out the possibility of some desperate political or military leader resorting to using nuclear weapons. From there it is a small step to full nuclear war and the deaths of billions of humans. Perhaps the "optimistic" scenarios are ones in which the hundreds of millions of humans that die are located far away from any nuclear armed countries, or at least those countries aren't destabilised by the economic and migration consequences of those deaths. I can, unfortunately, imagine militaries being routinely used this century for wiping out the remaining civilian populations of failed states.

grawprog 6y ago

>I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. This thinking seems backwards. How can we learn to take a totally dead planet and make it living when we can't even figure out how to keep this one healthy?

peteradio 6y ago
I doubt the person you are replying to is suggesting that full scale terraforming is possible in a fraction of a million years. But perhaps smaller scale insightful experiments might be done without fear of wiping out life in our solar system.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  Exactly. What happens if we have a swarm of satellites to divert/concentrate a large amount of solar radiation? What happens if we geo-engineer bacteria to precipitate out greenhouse gases? How long does it take for particulate matter to settle after diverting an asteroid to impact the planet? If we can make oceans, how does the size of oceans affect the absorption of new asteroid deliveries? Mars and Venus are, as far as every experiment has shown, dead as doornails. Using them as a testbed for experiments that are too dangerous to do on Earth without first practicing is a good use for them.

wrs 6y ago

I agree in a very theoretical and academic way, but practically speaking, how long will this testing take? We already risked the 8 billion lives with the accidental geoengineering we’re doing now.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jellicle 6y ago

Alternately: we can't even stop the anti-terraforming transformation of our own planet into an unlivable hellhole, despite the tremendous benefits of doing so, so why would anyone think we could possibly spend enough money to terraform a planet a zillion miles away that is inherently hostile to human life and where there is no financial benefit to doing so?