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> The entire surface area of Mars is less than 5x that of Siberia plus the Sahara desert plus the Australian outback This is such a weird statement. It's less
by klmadfejno 5y ago
> The entire surface area of Mars is less than 5x that of Siberia plus the Sahara desert plus the Australian outback
This is such a weird statement. It's less than five times three very large areas combined... It leaves me with no idea how large it is. For those curious, it's about the same land surface area as earth has (removing oceans).
- 8note 5y agoIts three large areas we aren't putting effort into putting people and terraforming. They've got the same challenges but are easier
- chadcmulligan 5y agoThats the first thought I always have when terraforming is discussed, we can't even fix earth, how would we fix another planet.
- XorNot 5y agoEarth has a lot of people living on it, and any effort at repair is just as likely to wreck it. You can't "colonize and terraform Siberia" without turning the US into a scorching desert. Mars has 0 people living on it, and is already uninhabitable. We literally cannot make it worse for anybody, and are in no danger of wrecking anything we need to survive by trying. I would much larger we try planet-scale geo-engineering on Mars, then try planet scale geoengineering on Earth (and we're already flirting with that because of climate change). There is a wealth of information to be gained from attempting dramatic changes to a planet's condition, and establishing a biosphere, which would be extremely important for any attempt at large scale Earth biosphere repair.
- lmm 5y agoWe could if we had the political will. There are terraforming-like approaches that would e.g. reduce global temperature, but good luck getting the political consensus to actually put them into practice.