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No, thanks. People are destructive to the planet in every way possible, and we don't need more. It's not as if we'll solve the mysteries of existence twice as f

No, thanks. People are destructive to the planet in every way possible, and we don't need more. It's not as if we'll solve the mysteries of existence twice as fast by having twice as many people. If anything, having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery.

johnnyjeans 2y ago
I agree. Megaprojects that make large changes to highly chaotic systems never end well. From Mao's Four Pests to the ongoing wildfire crises that plague the west coast thanks to all the terraforming California has undergone (exacerbated by ongoing climate change) To say nothing of the fact that this is wanton environmental destruction. Just because something is arid, it's alright to completely change it? And for what? Having lived in Dallas, which is not unlike Nevada but more humid and wet, it's not a proper place to live. People jump from pool of air conditioning to pool of air conditioning. You go outside and walk for just 5 minutes, and you're completely soaked in sweat. Shade does not help. Lack of concrete does not help, you can drive 2 hours into the middle of nowhere and it's still like being in a preheated oven. You can't really do anything fun outside for half the year because you'll get heat stroke, or generally just be extremely stinky. If you want to make use of empty land, going to the miserably cold uninhabited swaths of Canada are far wiser. You can always bundle up, but you can only take off so many layers of clothing.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Arguably the wildfires occur due to not enough meddling by humans. That is, due to not cutting enough old and dead trees, which dry up and become easier to catch fire, and not cutting wide enough openings in the forests to stop the spread of a fire when it occurs. The current wildfire situation is what the natural order of things looks like :-\
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    That is highly debatable. There are overhead electric cables that often cause the trees to catch fire. Installing cables underground or with stronger insulation and auto-power-shutoff could help prevent several of the fires.
    - freedomben 2y ago
      That is true, but fixing that would merely reduce the frequency of the fires, while raising the intensity.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        Fires have their own cadence - they happen when the dead leaves and plants accumulate enough there’s sufficient fuel to maintain a forest fire. When we stop all fires the fuel piles up and the next fire is much worse and harder to stop. Up to a point we simply can’t stop it and it consumes all fuel and the forest starts from scratch.
        seadan83 2y ago
        Living stuff contributes too. Anything under 20 feet tall. If it was just dead material, tree farms would not burn. (But they do, they certainly do)
    - margalabargala 2y ago
      Sometimes electrical lines or humans cause fires, true. But usually it's just lightning. Far more fires, by count, are caused by lightning.
      - seadan83 2y ago
        Overall most wildfires (in at least the US west) are human caused: "People — whether purposeful, reckless or simply careless — are responsible for about 95% of California’s wildfires." https://calmatters.org/environment/wildfires/2024/07/california-wildfires-human-causes/ https://calmatters.org/environment/wildfires/2024/07/califor...
        margalabargala 2y ago
        I live in Oregon, another fire-prone state. While all human causes cause more fires than lightning, lightning causes more fires than any individual human cause. https://www.oregon.gov/odf/fire/documents/odf-fires-by-general-cause-chart.pdf https://www.oregon.gov/odf/fire/documents/odf-fires-by-gener... I'll grant that having looked at the numbers, my earlier statement of "Far more fires, by count, are caused by lightning" is untrue. It's only slightly more.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    There is also a second way of stopping fires, which is to create 10x more man-made lakes, ponds, and streams everywhere in the region. It will increase the local humidity, which will in turn diminish the risk of fires. The approach is to maximize the surface of the volume of water exposed to the air. This works because fires require dryness, which will be impossible with sufficient water evaporation and humidity in the area. It is a superior form of terraforming than controlled fires.
    - hedora 2y ago
      That’s probably a losing battle. The coast is already extremely humid due to fog drip. The problem is that we get crazy weather patterns now due to global warming. For instance, it was ~100F for about a week a few weeks ago, which made everything nice and crispy. Then, when it cooled off, we got hit with a long windstorm and 15-20% humidity. If that storm had brought lightning, there would have been widespread uncontrollable fires (too windy for helicopters). It’s not just California. This sort of thing has happened repeatedly in the last few years in most states in the western US.
  - seadan83 2y ago
    There used to be redwoods all over california. Hardy fire resistant trees, now they are relatively scarce. Second,wood is heavy. The economics to remove dead trees is not there, does not get done for reasons. Next, the area of the land is immense. Cutting fird brakes through it us tens of millions of acres. Further, fire breaks do little in high wind situations. What does move the needle are forest fires. Letting them burn. We've been practicing industrial scale fire suppression since the 50s. Next, immense areas of tree farms, second and third growth forests. Best thing, get the hell out of the forests and let them all burn on a regular basis.
    - hedora 2y ago
      Redwoods are fire resistant. Their thick bark acts as shielding and their canopies are way above the height where fires historically burnt.
      - seadan83 2y ago
        Indeed - the fact they were cut down nearly to the point of extinction is something of a tragedy. The trees that replaced them are not fire resistant. Thus is counter evidence for the idea that humans need to be cutting down anything to improve the fire resistant of forests.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Forest fires may be fine, as long as they are not catastrophic. No need to prevent every fire. But it must be possible to prevent the fires from making air dangerous to breathe in cities, and certainly to prevent forest fires from burning down human settlements. No need to terraform the whole land, but culturing it a little bit to make more habitable should be fine.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Previously, people raked the forest, and that worked OK for 1000’s of years. Before that, fires burned uncontrolled, which also cleared out the underbrush. The problem we have now is due to almost a century of fire suppression. We stopped raking the forest and also stopped letting small fires clear out the accumulated fuel. Of course, global warming doesn’t help. Neither does PG&E’s historic lack of line maintenance.
tbrownaw 2y ago
> People are destructive to the planet in every way possible, Are we already on track to cause our planet to no longer be a planet? > It's not as if we'll solve the mysteries of existence twice as fast by having twice as many people Imagine if the people at ASML (or your favorite other one-of-a-kind cutting edge place) had twice as many hours in their days. Or alternatively, if there were twice as many of them. Shouldn't that make them able to do more cool things?
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  You conveniently ignored the part where I noted that having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery. And yes, the pollution will double because more humans means more pollution that accumulates without getting recycled. Plastics, PFAS, CO2, etc. are all examples of pollutants that do not get recycled. It harms brains, aging them prematurely. A cleaner environment without strong financial pressure for survival is a much better way to do more cool things. Once the CO2 exceeds 800 ppm, brains will be tired all of the time, too tired to invent anything cool.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    > You conveniently ignored the part where I noted that having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery. You claimed it, without evidence, without even argument. Given that history (as I read it) does not support your statement, and you didn't support it either, why shouldn't we ignore it?
    - OutOfHere 2y ago
      Have you traveled to third world countries with very high population densities? Have you breathed the air on their streets? Travel to China, India, parts of the Middle East, other parts of Asia, and realize just how foul the air there is to breathe. That's what you want for the US? The evidence is already strong that plastics, PFAS, and CO2 are not recycled; they just keep piling on in the environment and in the human body. You can literally smell plastic burning in the air in those countries and regions, and the immune system reacts very strongly to it in a negative way. Developing anything cool will be the last thing on the mind at that time.

johnnyjeans 2y ago

I agree. Megaprojects that make large changes to highly chaotic systems never end well. From Mao's Four Pests to the ongoing wildfire crises that plague the west coast thanks to all the terraforming California has undergone (exacerbated by ongoing climate change) To say nothing of the fact that this is wanton environmental destruction. Just because something is arid, it's alright to completely change it? And for what? Having lived in Dallas, which is not unlike Nevada but more humid and wet, it's not a proper place to live. People jump from pool of air conditioning to pool of air conditioning. You go outside and walk for just 5 minutes, and you're completely soaked in sweat. Shade does not help. Lack of concrete does not help, you can drive 2 hours into the middle of nowhere and it's still like being in a preheated oven. You can't really do anything fun outside for half the year because you'll get heat stroke, or generally just be extremely stinky. If you want to make use of empty land, going to the miserably cold uninhabited swaths of Canada are far wiser. You can always bundle up, but you can only take off so many layers of clothing.

nine_k 2y ago
Arguably the wildfires occur due to not enough meddling by humans. That is, due to not cutting enough old and dead trees, which dry up and become easier to catch fire, and not cutting wide enough openings in the forests to stop the spread of a fire when it occurs. The current wildfire situation is what the natural order of things looks like :-\
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  That is highly debatable. There are overhead electric cables that often cause the trees to catch fire. Installing cables underground or with stronger insulation and auto-power-shutoff could help prevent several of the fires.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    That is true, but fixing that would merely reduce the frequency of the fires, while raising the intensity.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Fires have their own cadence - they happen when the dead leaves and plants accumulate enough there’s sufficient fuel to maintain a forest fire. When we stop all fires the fuel piles up and the next fire is much worse and harder to stop. Up to a point we simply can’t stop it and it consumes all fuel and the forest starts from scratch.
      - seadan83 2y ago
        Living stuff contributes too. Anything under 20 feet tall. If it was just dead material, tree farms would not burn. (But they do, they certainly do)
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    Sometimes electrical lines or humans cause fires, true. But usually it's just lightning. Far more fires, by count, are caused by lightning.
    - seadan83 2y ago
      Overall most wildfires (in at least the US west) are human caused: "People — whether purposeful, reckless or simply careless — are responsible for about 95% of California’s wildfires." https://calmatters.org/environment/wildfires/2024/07/california-wildfires-human-causes/ https://calmatters.org/environment/wildfires/2024/07/califor...
      - margalabargala 2y ago
        I live in Oregon, another fire-prone state. While all human causes cause more fires than lightning, lightning causes more fires than any individual human cause. https://www.oregon.gov/odf/fire/documents/odf-fires-by-general-cause-chart.pdf https://www.oregon.gov/odf/fire/documents/odf-fires-by-gener... I'll grant that having looked at the numbers, my earlier statement of "Far more fires, by count, are caused by lightning" is untrue. It's only slightly more.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  There is also a second way of stopping fires, which is to create 10x more man-made lakes, ponds, and streams everywhere in the region. It will increase the local humidity, which will in turn diminish the risk of fires. The approach is to maximize the surface of the volume of water exposed to the air. This works because fires require dryness, which will be impossible with sufficient water evaporation and humidity in the area. It is a superior form of terraforming than controlled fires.
  - hedora 2y ago
    That’s probably a losing battle. The coast is already extremely humid due to fog drip. The problem is that we get crazy weather patterns now due to global warming. For instance, it was ~100F for about a week a few weeks ago, which made everything nice and crispy. Then, when it cooled off, we got hit with a long windstorm and 15-20% humidity. If that storm had brought lightning, there would have been widespread uncontrollable fires (too windy for helicopters). It’s not just California. This sort of thing has happened repeatedly in the last few years in most states in the western US.
- seadan83 2y ago
  There used to be redwoods all over california. Hardy fire resistant trees, now they are relatively scarce. Second,wood is heavy. The economics to remove dead trees is not there, does not get done for reasons. Next, the area of the land is immense. Cutting fird brakes through it us tens of millions of acres. Further, fire breaks do little in high wind situations. What does move the needle are forest fires. Letting them burn. We've been practicing industrial scale fire suppression since the 50s. Next, immense areas of tree farms, second and third growth forests. Best thing, get the hell out of the forests and let them all burn on a regular basis.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Redwoods are fire resistant. Their thick bark acts as shielding and their canopies are way above the height where fires historically burnt.
    - seadan83 2y ago
      Indeed - the fact they were cut down nearly to the point of extinction is something of a tragedy. The trees that replaced them are not fire resistant. Thus is counter evidence for the idea that humans need to be cutting down anything to improve the fire resistant of forests.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Forest fires may be fine, as long as they are not catastrophic. No need to prevent every fire. But it must be possible to prevent the fires from making air dangerous to breathe in cities, and certainly to prevent forest fires from burning down human settlements. No need to terraform the whole land, but culturing it a little bit to make more habitable should be fine.
- hedora 2y ago
  Previously, people raked the forest, and that worked OK for 1000’s of years. Before that, fires burned uncontrolled, which also cleared out the underbrush. The problem we have now is due to almost a century of fire suppression. We stopped raking the forest and also stopped letting small fires clear out the accumulated fuel. Of course, global warming doesn’t help. Neither does PG&E’s historic lack of line maintenance.

tbrownaw 2y ago

> People are destructive to the planet in every way possible, Are we already on track to cause our planet to no longer be a planet? > It's not as if we'll solve the mysteries of existence twice as fast by having twice as many people Imagine if the people at ASML (or your favorite other one-of-a-kind cutting edge place) had twice as many hours in their days. Or alternatively, if there were twice as many of them. Shouldn't that make them able to do more cool things?

OutOfHere 2y ago
You conveniently ignored the part where I noted that having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery. And yes, the pollution will double because more humans means more pollution that accumulates without getting recycled. Plastics, PFAS, CO2, etc. are all examples of pollutants that do not get recycled. It harms brains, aging them prematurely. A cleaner environment without strong financial pressure for survival is a much better way to do more cool things. Once the CO2 exceeds 800 ppm, brains will be tired all of the time, too tired to invent anything cool.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  > You conveniently ignored the part where I noted that having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery. You claimed it, without evidence, without even argument. Given that history (as I read it) does not support your statement, and you didn't support it either, why shouldn't we ignore it?
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Have you traveled to third world countries with very high population densities? Have you breathed the air on their streets? Travel to China, India, parts of the Middle East, other parts of Asia, and realize just how foul the air there is to breathe. That's what you want for the US? The evidence is already strong that plastics, PFAS, and CO2 are not recycled; they just keep piling on in the environment and in the human body. You can literally smell plastic burning in the air in those countries and regions, and the immune system reacts very strongly to it in a negative way. Developing anything cool will be the last thing on the mind at that time.