We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth.
We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth.
We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth.
This is why it's silly hearing billionaires, who do the most damage to our planet, telling us how urgently we need to "get off this rock" which has supported life for millions of years in favor of some dead planet. It's really just an extension of capitalism that demands infinite space to exploit, instead of being content with sustainability.
Elon’s argument for why we need to spread to other planets holds true even if everything on Earth were going perfectly.
It’s not about getting everyone off Earth - it’s about creating a backup for humanity on other planets. This ensures that the only known flame of consciousness in the universe isn’t extinguished by a nuclear war, pandemic, supervolcano, or asteroid impact. It's about not having all your eggs in one basket.
By extension it would give more of an excuse for the top 1% to give even less of a fck about earth and the climate. Next thing you'd see is all the rich bailing to another planet while those who can't afford it are left with what's left of earth and the hellscape they left behind (and probably still have more agency over earth than those still living on there).
This is not risk free. When you give people access to space and still have terrorism and wars, things can end badly quickly.
There's also a valid argument around where to best focus those resources now. We are nowhere near ready for space colonization on any scale, let alone sustainable ones.
A City on Mars by the Wienersmiths dives into some of these challenges if you are interested.
It should also be a strong strong signal to stop listening to the apes that are hoarding all the bananas, and instead, eat that banana-hoarding abhorrence.
Bananas make for a terrible time value storage in the real world
In donkey Kong country tho? He who controls bananas controls the universe
The good news is that it will never get to that point. Venus is a different planet with a different makeup and history.
The bad news, it doesn't have to get nearly that bad to be bad for us and the rest of existing life. Not even close. Just a few degrees more, and we're doing really well in getting there.
I’ve heard of the runaway greenhouse gas effect. Is there a limit to that?
The limit is our distance from the Sun. After a certain point the greenhouse gasses can't make up for the fact that we just get less radiation than Venus does. The maximum potential I've seen is 10°C - almost all life would go extinct and we'd have to live on the tropical Antarctic archipelago, but not Venus.
Everything find equilibrium eventually. I'm sure any limits for a runaway situation depend on a lot of factors, but their ceilings are all far above anything we could tolerate. Runaway doesn't mean there's no point to level out, only that at the time it's not controllable and escalating fast.
The last "runaway" situation the Earth had was called the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56 million years ago and globally had a 5-8 degree Celsius rise over thousands of years. That might be a good example of a natural situation and its limits. Keep in mind the differences in rate, we're increasing the global temperature faster than the PETM (or anything we've found in geological history) so we don't know how that faster rate will act in determining a peak. There's theories of pushing the Earth into a hothouse world that would have its own equilibrium that is far hotter than we can survive.
Bruh, just realized terraforming starts with terra and that's why it's what it's called
The term translates horribly into Finnish: "maankaltaistaminen". "To make like Earth/ground/dirt" and "make like" as in "type", not "form".
So it could be like "earthlikening" instead of "terraforming".
Which makes me think of this Wikipedia that's written in the way they imagine English could've evolved if it wasn't influenced by Latin.
https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/Main_leaf
for instance their article on maths starts with:
Telcraft (scorelore, rimecraft or reckonlore) (English: Mathematics) is the smeying of scorings, or the recking of begrips such as score, room, shift, and forebuilding. Benjamin Peirce called it "the cunning which draws needful outcomes".
Through foredeeming and wordlock mulling, scorelore arose from notching, reckoning, deeming, and the learning of sheathes and shapes.
Knowledge and note of fern scorelore have always been a spanning and a needful lifetool, as can be witnessed from orshafts of Egypt, Bearithland, Indland, China and Frodland. Furthermore, the Ishango bone is more than 20 thousand years old.
Titillating, isn't it?
Same lol
But think of the shareholders!!
The acid rain is going be be so slimming.
Venusforming earth is a lot like terraforming mars, it's just hard to reach. If 200 years ago we were able to easily reach mars, we would have fucked up that too
Not one single government cares so much about it tho.
Higher temperatures will free up soil for agriculture in upper and lower latitudes. With luck, population size will keep increasing then for those countries and also quality of life
Coastal cities can fight it, at least some to some degree.
If we get fusion between our lifetimes, things are going to get even better
Not one single government cares so much about it tho.
Way to generalise, bro. There are some low lying island states that are going to disappear under the rising sea levels. I think they are taking it pretty seriously.
Don't bullshit please.
Venus does have a lot of valuable materials, this could be a good thing.
I can’t wait to see the shareholder value.
I'd rather live somewhere habitable than somewhere with "valuable materials".
The feminism-oil complex