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Huh. That's a very interesting thought. The first thought that pops into my head is the risk. The appeal of trying to terraform Venus (or Mars) is that there is

by isaacdl 12y ago

Huh. That's a very interesting thought. The first thought that pops into my head is the risk. The appeal of trying to terraform Venus (or Mars) is that there isn't a huge existing population of humans. If we mess it up, well...that's unfortunate and expensive, but we didn't just make the only place we currently have uninhabitable. The second though, pretty related to the first, is the ethical one. Do we have the "right" to do what we want to our planet, including probably causing mass extinction of existing animal life in order to terraform our planet? I'm not sure if I'm even willing to argue that one either way. Like I said, it's interesting to consider your idea. If we can be sure that anything we do to "terraform" our planet isn't at all risky in terms of human survival, you're probably right!

kaybe 12y ago
Longterm, we will have to find some kind of climate control. The last ice age was not too long ago, but mankind has almost entirely lived without. A return of the glaciers would be even worse than global warming (in my estimates), and extrapolating the curves shows that the next ice age is due (were it not for the fact that we changed the atmospheric composition sufficiently to avert that for sure). Right now we already are playing around with the climate, but very uncontrolled and destructive. I'm also not in favour of using methods designed for climate control in our situation due to the risk (which is different for the different methods, and the failure results are very different also, but still) - the better solution is clearly to stop emitting CO2 - but longterm, we will need the knowledge. Best to test it on another planet first..
Retra 12y ago
>Do we have the "right" to do what we want to our planet You have a right to make good decisions. Don't sweat about whether we have rights to modify the planet, and instead worry about whether it is a good decision. At this point there is not enough data or control to ensure success. We are already changing our planet, and we can't even tell if it's good or bad, so this is not the year to make that kind of determination.

by isaacdl 12y ago

kaybe 12y ago

Longterm, we will have to find some kind of climate control. The last ice age was not too long ago, but mankind has almost entirely lived without. A return of the glaciers would be even worse than global warming (in my estimates), and extrapolating the curves shows that the next ice age is due (were it not for the fact that we changed the atmospheric composition sufficiently to avert that for sure). Right now we already are playing around with the climate, but very uncontrolled and destructive. I'm also not in favour of using methods designed for climate control in our situation due to the risk (which is different for the different methods, and the failure results are very different also, but still) - the better solution is clearly to stop emitting CO2 - but longterm, we will need the knowledge. Best to test it on another planet first..

Retra 12y ago

>Do we have the "right" to do what we want to our planet You have a right to make good decisions. Don't sweat about whether we have rights to modify the planet, and instead worry about whether it is a good decision. At this point there is not enough data or control to ensure success. We are already changing our planet, and we can't even tell if it's good or bad, so this is not the year to make that kind of determination.