17 ms·

No comment on how smart or stupid Elon is (he is somehow effective), but I'm with you on all of those things except "He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitabl

by tpmx 5y ago

No comment on how smart or stupid Elon is (he is somehow effective), but I'm with you on all of those things except "He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable": The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as a backup-plan for humanity. The Drake equation be damned - in case we're actually alone, we have a pretty strong moral requirement to make sure that (human) life survives.

pkulak 5y ago
Yeah, you're right. I reached a bit on that one.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  He's also never said anything of the sort. He regularly admits that Mars is going to be an insanely tough place to live.
TomSwirly 5y ago
> The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity. Sorry, but it's like planning your workout routine in a burning building. The climate emergency is building right now, this instant. Cosmic threats like asteroids happen on the order of millions of years apart. We need to stabilize the planet, now, in this generation, immediately, or we will doom a million species and most of humanity. Once that is done, we can look at problems on the ten thousand to ten million year scales that cost quadrillions of dollars to solve, like "moving to a second planet". Let me be blunt - unless we go all out, the collapse will happen a hundred years before any Mars colony is self-sufficient, and none of them will survive.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  We can do both at the same time and we should.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    "Global Warming" is about the Earth going ~2C to 4C out-of-whack with our traditional norms over the next century or so. Mars is about being at -60C all the time, or roughly 80C away from what humans want. And temperature isn't even the worst part: Mars doesn't have enough oxygen for Humans to survive. Mars doesn't have enough nitrogen for plants to grow (and make oxygen). Mars doesn't have enough gravity to keep a dense enough atmosphere for us. --------- Look, I recognize the difficulty that Global Warming has on the human race. But Global Warming is a far, far, far easier problem than trying to have a sustainable, livable experience on Mars.
    - tpmx 5y ago
      In your nightmare scenario we're going to need terraforming tech for Earth. If all of humanity lives on Earth though, we're just one unlucky meteorite away from going extinct. Given this: let's develop the terraforming tech for Mars, and establish colonies there.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        > In your nightmare scenario we're going to need terraforming tech both on Earth and Mars. The hypothetical technology to reduce Earth's temperature by 4-degrees Celsius is simply going to be fundamentally different from the hypothetical technology to increase Mars's temperature by 80-degrees Celsius.
        tpmx 5y ago
        (Sorry, you caught my post while I was editing it in the first two minutes.) I don't see why shouldn't try to do both: a) Lower the earth's surface temperature b) Begin the process of building a backup of humanity on Mars
        dragontamer 5y ago
        Because B) is a waste of time, money, and effort. Whether or not A) is true has nothing to do with whether or not B) is worth doing. There's no reason to imply that I'm making a false dichotomy fallacy.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  A collapse of humanity won't happen from the earth warming a couple of degrees though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rtpg 5y ago
The point is that whatever you would need to make Mars habitable could _directly apply_ to keeping Earth habitable at orders of magnitude less difficulty. Imagine trying to build up population centers at the bottom of the ocean in order to have a backup plan for some nuclear winter on the surface. You could just build your hermetically-sealed, closed-system things on the ground! They'd work just as well (absent, I guess, the getting nuked part). Mars is that, plus you gotta actually get over there to send resources for the first couple hundred years.
bart_spoon 5y ago
The point is that Mars is far less inhabitable than even the bleakest predictions for Earth.

by tpmx 5y ago

pkulak 5y ago

Yeah, you're right. I reached a bit on that one.

anonporridge 5y ago
He's also never said anything of the sort. He regularly admits that Mars is going to be an insanely tough place to live.

TomSwirly 5y ago

> The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity. Sorry, but it's like planning your workout routine in a burning building. The climate emergency is building right now, this instant. Cosmic threats like asteroids happen on the order of millions of years apart. We need to stabilize the planet, now, in this generation, immediately, or we will doom a million species and most of humanity. Once that is done, we can look at problems on the ten thousand to ten million year scales that cost quadrillions of dollars to solve, like "moving to a second planet". Let me be blunt - unless we go all out, the collapse will happen a hundred years before any Mars colony is self-sufficient, and none of them will survive.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
We can do both at the same time and we should.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  "Global Warming" is about the Earth going ~2C to 4C out-of-whack with our traditional norms over the next century or so. Mars is about being at -60C all the time, or roughly 80C away from what humans want. And temperature isn't even the worst part: Mars doesn't have enough oxygen for Humans to survive. Mars doesn't have enough nitrogen for plants to grow (and make oxygen). Mars doesn't have enough gravity to keep a dense enough atmosphere for us. --------- Look, I recognize the difficulty that Global Warming has on the human race. But Global Warming is a far, far, far easier problem than trying to have a sustainable, livable experience on Mars.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    In your nightmare scenario we're going to need terraforming tech for Earth. If all of humanity lives on Earth though, we're just one unlucky meteorite away from going extinct. Given this: let's develop the terraforming tech for Mars, and establish colonies there.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      > In your nightmare scenario we're going to need terraforming tech both on Earth and Mars. The hypothetical technology to reduce Earth's temperature by 4-degrees Celsius is simply going to be fundamentally different from the hypothetical technology to increase Mars's temperature by 80-degrees Celsius.
      - tpmx 5y ago
        (Sorry, you caught my post while I was editing it in the first two minutes.) I don't see why shouldn't try to do both: a) Lower the earth's surface temperature b) Begin the process of building a backup of humanity on Mars
        dragontamer 5y ago
        Because B) is a waste of time, money, and effort. Whether or not A) is true has nothing to do with whether or not B) is worth doing. There's no reason to imply that I'm making a false dichotomy fallacy.
mythrwy 5y ago
A collapse of humanity won't happen from the earth warming a couple of degrees though.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rtpg 5y ago

The point is that whatever you would need to make Mars habitable could _directly apply_ to keeping Earth habitable at orders of magnitude less difficulty. Imagine trying to build up population centers at the bottom of the ocean in order to have a backup plan for some nuclear winter on the surface. You could just build your hermetically-sealed, closed-system things on the ground! They'd work just as well (absent, I guess, the getting nuked part). Mars is that, plus you gotta actually get over there to send resources for the first couple hundred years.

bart_spoon 5y ago

The point is that Mars is far less inhabitable than even the bleakest predictions for Earth.