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Global heating is the only thing that will save our planet from ending up like Mars. Do you know why there are no dinosaurs? Because the atmosphere is literally
by henriquez 4y ago
Global heating is the only thing that will save our planet from ending up like Mars. Do you know why there are no dinosaurs? Because the atmosphere is literally too thin for them to breathe now. Every decade the atmosphere thins even more. The world has been dying slowly for hundreds of millions of years.
Humans with our vast knowledge of how the planet should be, gleaned from measurements taken over the last few hundred years interpreted through a lens of scientific hubris, have determined that artificial cooling, blackening the atmosphere and the continued decline of breathable oxygen is necessary to maintain an environmental “status quo” which definitely will put a stop to our current mass extinction event, and all future mass extinction events.
Humans know what is best for ecology. Like that one time the scientific community decided to put a stop to forest fires in Yosemite and accidentally fucked the park ecology in the process. Turns out those fires, which had been happening longer than even the residency of the native Americans who we stole Yosemite from, those fires served a useful ecological purpose for the reproduction of rainforest trees. But everyone makes mistakes. I’m sure blackening Earth’s atmosphere will be fine.
Or maybe, just maybe, the only way to prevent our planet from becoming the next Mars is to start terraforming the shit out of it right now. We should make it like it was when the dinosaurs thrived. More oxygen, more nitrogen, a lot more CO2 and giant plants.
We should start burning all the fossil fuels possible. Just burning them. Release quadrillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Green house to the max. Heat the earth. Plants will love it. The atmosphere will be thick with a beautiful cocktail of oxygen, nitrogen and diesel exhaust. Finally we can clone and rebirth all extinct species from the Jurassic age. We will bring back the dinosaurs! We will all drive around in supercharged V12 armored SUVs that get 20 gallons per mile! The Earth will be saved, at least until the sun fans into a red giant and engulfs us in flames in 800 million years.
- jiggawatts 4y agoThe blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived on planet Earth. During the last ice age there was an abundance of mammalian megafauna as large as all but the largest dinosaurs. What higher oxygen concentrations allowed was mosquitos the size of a DJI drone. No thanks.
- Valgrim 4y agoUtter nonsense, and dangerous train of tought. It's incredible to see how internet echo chambers can be damaging to one's critical thinking.
- xwowsersx 4y agoThe comment was made in jest. You are meant to enjoy it for its humor and colorful prose.
- throwawayoaky 4y agoDoesn't matter if he's kidding; address the people who will take it seriously. folks who think they're smart but lack systems thinking ability are capable of believing anything; they're like early socialist dictators without the power.. which makes sense given the commonality which is the failure of rationalism in the face of large unknowns
- throwawayoaky 4y agoAgree he's kidding though; there's a zero percent chance we'll survive our AI oppressors. Also never listen to infrastructure talk from someone who can't keep their own website up
- henriquez 4y ago[flagged]
- selimthegrim 4y agoActually the sky would be green but thanks for playing. Also have you been watching The Arrival on repeat or something?
- henriquez 4y agoHaven’t you seen the Matrix?
- clarkdale 4y agoThis is output from ChatGPT, right?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MonkeyClub 4y agoThis is gonna be the new catchphrase, right?
- throwawayoaky 4y agoVenus is also a thing. But agreed, (intentional) terraforming will be a good idea at some point. Disagreed on CO2 being the right way to do it; the sun was dimmer 60 million years ago. You can't feel your way into a solution here, you have to do the research and the simulations. You also can't optimize for a genetic milieu that no longer exists. Think of the biosphere as a large and highly redundant CHON pump, where the redundancy is at the population (not individual) level. This pump can function under various climactic conditions but its capacity and robustness depend on the population genetics available on the ground (sea). So the important part of the system is made of information not matter. We literally do not have the information we need to replicate cretaceous conditions, nor do we have a way to get that info at present. Therefore we should continue to cultivate the interglacial genetic repertoire, which is still available to us. Large changes to the system should not be allowed when we do not understand systemic risks and do not have rollback ability-- this implies extreme measures should be pointed at maintaining stability rather than inducing phase change. I don't know what primary production looks like under different climactic regimes so I can't speak potential to end states, but they all occur long after our deaths so our worst case will be bounded by short term inflection where risk beats adaptation and primary production "temporarily" crashes.
- throwawayoaky 4y agoAlso (and this should be obvious) our own ability to harness primary production is confined to a small number of species; backing these into an adaptive corner could play havoc with our large heterotrophic society, where calorie production from the CHON cycle has very little slack relative to our ability to keep adapting at pace (i.e. R&D doesn't like starvation)
- fallingfrog 4y agoThis is one of the most gleefully insane takes I’ve ever seen. Merry Christmas!