3 ms·

Not everything is a competition. You can believe both are wrong.

krono 4y ago
Fair point, thank you
numpad0 4y ago
And to needlessly complicate the discussion: I would argue that the reason why climate and environmentalism are issues in the first place is because of us refusing to expand into, thus offloading potentially contaminating activities to, orbital settlements fabricated and operated in space. Make silicons, do nuke tests, operate heavy machineries, indulge in vehicle races, in satellite scale cylinders up there in heliocentric orbits, and if anything goes wrong in one of them, just throw it out of the system or into the Sun, to whichever preferred. That was the future that the humanity envisioned in the 60s-70s, that we stopped following almost altogether(due to radiation hazard and lift capacity problems with assumed manufacturing on Earth surface). We should get back to that.
- wholinator2 4y ago
  Removing such a huge mass from the solar system is a larger endeavor than most believe. Believe it or not, even Pluto at a mass of 10^22 kilograms and a distance between 4 and 7 billion kilometers is still bound by the sun's gravitational well. To just "throw something out of the solar system" without the potential for it to disintegrate and come back at us in the future is an incredibly difficult feat. To have the mass of some kind of life sustaining cylinder capable of supporting the activities you've listed coming at us at solar orbital speeds would be a catastrophe our local nuclear wars could only hope to emulate. There seems to be a pervasive belief that we can just eject huge quantities of mass from the very strong, very isolated gravitational well we are bound to. To say nothing of the possibility of building such a cylinder, the realities and consequences of the situation are far more dangerous than people yet consider.
Diesel555 4y ago
I feel like most counter arguments generally fall into the category of X is okay because Y is worse. I find myself more and more stating that the two points are not mutually exclusive and that they can overlap. Both can be bad. I make this point while recognizing that I agree national security has acceptable carbon footprint costs, while at the same time not liking arguments in support of that cost based not the premise that other policies are worse.

Fair point, thank you

And to needlessly complicate the discussion: I would argue that the reason why climate and environmentalism are issues in the first place is because of us refusing to expand into, thus offloading potentially contaminating activities to, orbital settlements fabricated and operated in space. Make silicons, do nuke tests, operate heavy machineries, indulge in vehicle races, in satellite scale cylinders up there in heliocentric orbits, and if anything goes wrong in one of them, just throw it out of the system or into the Sun, to whichever preferred. That was the future that the humanity envisioned in the 60s-70s, that we stopped following almost altogether(due to radiation hazard and lift capacity problems with assumed manufacturing on Earth surface). We should get back to that.

wholinator2 4y ago
Removing such a huge mass from the solar system is a larger endeavor than most believe. Believe it or not, even Pluto at a mass of 10^22 kilograms and a distance between 4 and 7 billion kilometers is still bound by the sun's gravitational well. To just "throw something out of the solar system" without the potential for it to disintegrate and come back at us in the future is an incredibly difficult feat. To have the mass of some kind of life sustaining cylinder capable of supporting the activities you've listed coming at us at solar orbital speeds would be a catastrophe our local nuclear wars could only hope to emulate. There seems to be a pervasive belief that we can just eject huge quantities of mass from the very strong, very isolated gravitational well we are bound to. To say nothing of the possibility of building such a cylinder, the realities and consequences of the situation are far more dangerous than people yet consider.

Diesel555 4y ago

I feel like most counter arguments generally fall into the category of X is okay because Y is worse. I find myself more and more stating that the two points are not mutually exclusive and that they can overlap. Both can be bad. I make this point while recognizing that I agree national security has acceptable carbon footprint costs, while at the same time not liking arguments in support of that cost based not the premise that other policies are worse.