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> 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 i

> 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.
        tpmx 5y ago
        I'm sorry, but short of instating a dictatorship you can't really stop people betting on things you don't like.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        I'm not saying you're not allowed to work on it. If its a task you feel like wasting your money on, that's fine. But don't expect me to support the effort by any means, not until you give me an argument for why Mars Terraforming would be a worthwhile use of resources I control or resources I have otherwise influence over.
        jokethrowaway 5y ago
        It's a private enterprise, not the government Nobody wants your support, they just need crazy enough wealthy people
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    There's 7 billion human brains on earth. We can spare a couple to focus on making our species multi-planetary while the rest deal with cleaning up the mess at home. It's unreasonable to expect the entire human race to stop what they're doing and focus on one issue.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Its unreasonable to expect any progress in transforming Mars to happen within our lifetime.
      - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
        ...and Rome wasn't built in a day, what's your point? Just because we won't see tangible results in our lifetime doesn't mean the effort, lessons learned and thought energy in that direction is meaningless.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        Trying to live on Mars is meaningless. All effort put towards it is complete, and utter waste. As I said in other comments, feel free to waste your resources on the project. But if you're trying to convince others that the project is useful or fruitful (and ask for other people's resources or help on the matter), then be prepared for some resistance.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      There is no meaningful difference between surviving extreme conditions on mars and extreme conditions on earth. The only difference is that the number of people that can live in extreme conditions is much smaller than the number that can live in normal conditions. Fighting against climate change is purely about making sure that the earth can maintain 7 billion + humans. Any mars colonization program will not progress fast enough to let 7 billion humans inhabit mars within the next 200 years. >It's unreasonable to expect the entire human race to stop what they're doing and focus on one issue. Nobody said "stop what they're doing" except you. But the usual argument is that Elon Musk is accelerating the progress toward mars colonization and accelerating that progress simply isn't needed because of time constraints that no amount of money can solve. It will take decades no matter what a conman tells you.
mythrwy 5y ago
A collapse of humanity won't happen from the earth warming a couple of degrees though.

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.
        tpmx 5y ago
        I'm sorry, but short of instating a dictatorship you can't really stop people betting on things you don't like.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        I'm not saying you're not allowed to work on it. If its a task you feel like wasting your money on, that's fine. But don't expect me to support the effort by any means, not until you give me an argument for why Mars Terraforming would be a worthwhile use of resources I control or resources I have otherwise influence over.
        jokethrowaway 5y ago
        It's a private enterprise, not the government Nobody wants your support, they just need crazy enough wealthy people
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  There's 7 billion human brains on earth. We can spare a couple to focus on making our species multi-planetary while the rest deal with cleaning up the mess at home. It's unreasonable to expect the entire human race to stop what they're doing and focus on one issue.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Its unreasonable to expect any progress in transforming Mars to happen within our lifetime.
    - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
      ...and Rome wasn't built in a day, what's your point? Just because we won't see tangible results in our lifetime doesn't mean the effort, lessons learned and thought energy in that direction is meaningless.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Trying to live on Mars is meaningless. All effort put towards it is complete, and utter waste. As I said in other comments, feel free to waste your resources on the project. But if you're trying to convince others that the project is useful or fruitful (and ask for other people's resources or help on the matter), then be prepared for some resistance.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    There is no meaningful difference between surviving extreme conditions on mars and extreme conditions on earth. The only difference is that the number of people that can live in extreme conditions is much smaller than the number that can live in normal conditions. Fighting against climate change is purely about making sure that the earth can maintain 7 billion + humans. Any mars colonization program will not progress fast enough to let 7 billion humans inhabit mars within the next 200 years. >It's unreasonable to expect the entire human race to stop what they're doing and focus on one issue. Nobody said "stop what they're doing" except you. But the usual argument is that Elon Musk is accelerating the progress toward mars colonization and accelerating that progress simply isn't needed because of time constraints that no amount of money can solve. It will take decades no matter what a conman tells you.

mythrwy 5y ago

A collapse of humanity won't happen from the earth warming a couple of degrees though.