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NASA Proposes Warming Mars
hotsauce writes "The Guardian reports a NASA scientist has proposed releasing a gas on Mars to start a global warming of the planet in order to make it more hospitable for life. No word on how much traction this has amongst geophysicists. I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet."
We can't seem to get our outdated shuttles off the ground safely, or keep a permanent space staion running effectively. Is now a good time to tinker with another planet's atmosphere?
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
I guess NASA's scienticians have determined there is no life on Mars then? I can't see them killing Martian bacteria just for a little elbow room.
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Virgin soil = rock dust. Assuming there to be no life on Mars, I don't get what the problem is with altering it. Now naturally if there is life that's a whole can of worms in itself, but if not, then what damn difference does it make?
When Mankind can prove it can live in equilibrium oni Earth, then it can spread elsewhere.
Huh? That's suicidal. How about: until we prove we can live in equilibrium on a planet, we must spread elsewhere.
By the way, living on a planet for geolocially long periods of time will require geologic action, not misguided, pristine inaction.
Insightful?
Terraforming Mars at the most optimistic will take centuries. During those centuries we'll have plenty of time to study Mars before there is any noticeable change. I submit that creating an ecosystem on a sterile planet, or one that harbours no multi-cellular life, as seems probable, is not polluting. In this case, the greenhouse would be literal: creating a warm hospitable environment to encourage life.
I'm sure he did his "research". I've read Cato Institute studies too that are backed by citations and other studies, and usually the studies are either dumb, contradicted by other studies, or simply do not draw the conclusions the Cato Institute wants you to think. Cato, of course, has the excuse that it's not a scientific body, it's an economic body, and it's trying to find ways to fit the world around economics.
Crichton doesn't have the luxury. He's essentially yelling "You're all wrong" to an audience where the experts continue to disagree with him after he's made his case. If you've spent any time on Usenet, you'll be familiar with lots of people who do this.
There are some consensus's at the moment:
1. The Earth is under a relatively recent spell of disproportionate warming. Whatever else it might be, cyclical seems a tad unlikely.
2. The amount of CO2 in the air is increasing as a result of human activity. (It may be for other reasons too, but right now, human beings are definitely responsible for a massive amount of CO2 generation.) This is self-evident, you can't burn carbon stocks like coal and oil without expecting it to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
3. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The experiments have been done.
Beyond that, we don't know. Most of the economists arguing against the notion there's any threat usually come down to making one of four arguments: That the first is false (no, it's true, ask NASA.) That the second is false (No, that's true too, it's self-evident.) That the third is false (erm, no, do the experiments.) Or all three might be true but we don't know if human activities are enough to make a major change to the climate, and as we don't know, we should pretend we're not and carry on business as usual.
Anyone can make use of the fourth argument because it essentially requires no proof. "They can't predict for sure that GW is caused by humans". Crichton appears to be ignoring what's going on and hoping the fuzziness and FUD inherent in the final GW-kook argument will carry the day. That's probably why there's no avalanch of scientists in existance saying "Wow, Michael, we never thought of that" (mass slapping of foreheads) "We were wrong all along."