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Warming Up Mars With Greenhouse Gases
fembots writes "Scientists are thinking of using the same toxic stuff (Octafluoropropane) already blamed for global warming here to put some life back on Mars. It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any."
Send CmdrTaco to Mars after he eats a burrito.
I remember the game SimEarth had you do something like this in order to make it livable. Of course, I nuked everything that moved, but that was a different story. Why are we trying to terraform mars?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
1 planet down, 9x10^10000 to go!
If you warm up Mars, how long before all the atmosphere cooks off because the gravity is lower? To me it seems like trying to blow up a balloon that already has a small hole in it.
50 degrees? Damn that's chilly!
(Surely you mean celsius, try to be clear. Next time the number might not be so obvious. You could end up crashing a space probe or something.)
One has to assume you're there, quite the feat; and, let me be the first to say, I welcome our grass growing, and smoking, Martian Overlords.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Do we really want to wake up the Martian Organisms?
So
You could just put two or three of those 7gHz Pentum 4's on there without any cooling. That should warm everything up in a few hours.
I believe Mars lacks earth's Van Allen belt as it has no molten core to create it. The massive amount of radiation would mean engineering plants and animals to survive it.
*looks at the ground* OH MY GOD!! I'M KILLING IT!! >.> YOu said the gazes were harmful...
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
"...planet several thousand miles away"
I might agree with spending a little more money on education.
I wouldn't say the right number is obvious at all -- 50F is livable even for us fragile humans. (Not that the Martian atmosphere, such as it is, would be accomodating without a lot more work).
Now, 50K, yes, *that's* chilly.
I hate it when people give me the "Global Warming look". That gaze really is harmful to my feelings.
Well we already know the cosmic rays will kill us eventually. So why don't we first think of a way to block these rays better than current methods THEN figure out about making the planet inhabitable by life? Why would we try to start life on Mars if life is unable to survive? Seems kind of retarded to me
If Europeans had waited until Europe was fixed before exploring and colonizing the rest of the world....things would really suck right now.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Let's wake up whatever is fast asleep under that cover of ice.
Have we not learned from cartoons, and sci-fi and horror movies about Mars?
Wait a minute here... You're telling me some of the water the life guards have been nagging me about not getting in my lungs can actually be used for swimming? Bwaaaahahaha - CPR-wimps, Eat Crow!
The atmosphere consist of 95.3% carbon dioxide. Hmmm. What other planet was it that had problems with this?
do we have to f up another planet? can't we just stick to f'ing up earth?
Have they also figured out how to jumpstart the planet's magnetic field so that Cosmic Rays don't just strip the planet of it's atmosphere again?
While we're on the topic of Greenpeace and the Sierra, they're two examples of a good thing gone wrong. Between Greenpeace protesting Oil tankers and in doing so potentially causing the disasters by positioning their boats in front of tankers, forcing them to take drastic measures to avoid a collision... AND the Sierra club prohibitting old growth clearing, which led to the destruction of thousands of Yellowstone forest.. both of them have lost site of their mission.
Confucius say: Man who colonize Venus is high on acid.
So, what took our planet (loosely theoretically) a couple billion of years to do, could be (again loosely theoretically) done there in a matter of hundereds? (I realize that theoretically the larger portion of the time it took for life to develop here had more to do with variable chances than it did with the atmosphere, although atmosphere is included in those variables)
It just seems to me that the world of science has recently turned more into a smorgishboard of unfulfilled promises and reluctance to realize that we cannot even figure out 90% of the problems with our own people, on our own planet, so why should we be trying to conquer others?
Oh I don't know. The Native Americans would probably have been ok with that.
I despite the general "far fetchedness" of this article. I think the wackiest part is that somehow we might revive organisms on Mars. Mars has been the way it is for a pretty long time now. Any organisms that might live there would be very specially adapted to their (probably very hostile) environment. Mostl ikely we would just kill anything that was living there.
It would pretty much be like going down to the geothermal vents under the ocean and plugging them with concrete to make it more habitable down there, then expecting that to "revive" the organisms living down there.
Those gazes are still harmfull to earth.
No, they are an essential part of our venusiforming project.
Smallpox evolved to use humans as a host, and those humans who were long exposed to it (europeans) had, in turn, evolved a resistance to it. When smallpox was introduced to North America, it was still able to use the humans there as a host, however those humans had not developed the resistance, which is what made it so deadly to them. Martain bacteria, on the other hand, never evolved to use humans, or anything remotely like humans as a host and would thus most likely be completely harmless to us.
The story submitter most definitely meant Fahrenheit, not Centigrade.
Here is a better article on the subject:0 4115304.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/0502
-Ariel
I'm thinking that it would be a good idea that before we start pumping life back into Mars we first verify that it is truly a dead world and if there are any martian bacteria that it won't harm people. Rather than continuing down the path of 'is it possible' we should continue down the path of 'is it safe as well as possible'. We don't want a virus hitting the human race that is unstoppable. The Black Plague in time died out, since we don't know anything about any Martian bugs that may or may not exist, we should err on the side of caution.
they'd be killed before discovery--right?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
ok, mars has one third the gravity of earth, and no magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. exactly how thick of an atmosphere or air pressure at ground level can mars support?
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Yes, after our resounding success in monkeying with the Earth's atmosphere (sometimes passed off as "human activity is too puny to affect the environment that much"), we're moving on to an entire other planet to destroy^Wimprove. In the same breath as we mention the local life we haven't yet found, we lie about enhancing it, when really we'll be destroying it. How stupid are we, really? Only the future knows.
--
make install -not war
Brilliant! Man, I bet my name will go down in history for having given a title to this new concept.
I'd be surprised, you posted as "Anonymous Coward". Bad luck...
....250 years ago Bwizopp Gnis'uen, a famous martian scientist came up with an idea how to colonize that cold blue planet.
"This great plan will allow us to finally colonize that pesky blue planet and in the meantime allows us to get rid of that ape infestation over there.
It would be hugely expensive to invade, so the brilliance of the plan is to let those apes do it for us. They will never suspect a thing.
All we have to do is to tell them about the huge reserves of so called "oil" in the ground. The timing is crucial, because if we would tell them too late, they would discover a much easier way to generate energy. That would be a disaster, but it won't happen. When they realise what's going on it will be too late already."
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Except they're not native. They migrated from Asia.
So they literally are "Indians" eh? And you thot Columbus was a lost dultz.
Table-ized A.I.
eh Wait ! Earth see currently someglobalwarming du to human activitiesandirresponsible behavior... Just send all those oil company on Mars ! That's right, why trying to warm Mars, when the probleme will be to cool down the Earth !
once the reaction starts, it'll spread to all the turbinium in the planet. Mars will go into global meltdown. That's why the aliens never turned it on.
as campy as that movie was, I still like it.
why would things suck right now? Because the USA would have never been invented? Maybe we wouldn't have a global superpower invading foreign countries to keep their oil prices down so we can all drive around SUV's on 2 hour commutes every day.
Shit look at europe, they are all driving around cooper mini's and they aren't complaining about rollovers.
you are so self centered.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
Total Recall? It's been done already!
Tidal stresses.
Start smacking asteroids into Phobos and Deimos, bump them gradually into higher orbits, persuade them to collide. Obviously it'd take a while and lots of asteroids.
Could do the same to Mars itself, gradually slow it down into a lower orbit and add mass.
Deleted
Hey man, i got a cheap flat earth theory to sell, you seem to be interested.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I've always wondered why we can't just nuke the polar caps or bombard it with asteroids to produce enough water vapor to make it at least have liquid water. I assume it'd cool off and re-freeze at some point, but I wonder if there's a critical limit where the atmosphere would be thick enough to absorb heat from the Sun and keep the water/co2 from refreezing.
``It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any."''
Or, by so drastically changing the environment, we might kill the life that's there. For all I know, life on other planets may function according to very different mechanisms than life on Earth. Most of what we know is about lifeforms that do their magic with oxygen, water, and carbohydrates. Is it so hard to imagine there would be other combinations that work?
There are many interactions between molecules in terran lifeforms that we barely understand. We don't know what the bulk of our DNA is good for, and I think the same goes for large parts of the human brain. With such a poor understanding of terrestial life, what makes us think we can make informed decissions about possible life on other planets?
Oh, I get it. _We_ want to populate Mars with _our_ kind of life, so that someday _we_ might live there, after _we_ have ruined our own planet. The blurb about reviving Martian organisms is just to pretend we care for their survival, rather than just our own comfort.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I don't think those bacteria have warp capability yet, we should let them evolve in peace!
Colonization plans are proceeding swiftly, I see.
pardon me, but you never read about the British Empire did you?
How about the Spanish colonization of the Americas? Conquistadors (sp?) anybody?
Don't blame the inherent corrupting ability of power on a specific nationality without looking back at history, and how almost every set of people is guilty of it at one point or another.
while you may not be self centered, you certainly are ignorant...
Error 407 - No creative sig found
I think the people of Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Australia wouldn't feel like they'd missed out.
Octafluoropropane is not really all that toxic.
f 39cc852569af00702e6f/26e5bede95a1fefb85256ef50045e 0e4?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,76-19-7
According to the MSDS (Material Saftey Data Sheet), the only real toxicity to worry about is asphyxiation, no worse than nitrogen or argon gas.
Greenhouse gases != toxic (at least not implicity).
MSDS link
http://www.scottecatalog.com/msds.nsf/d118573c489
As a practicing chemist, I need to take exception to the characterization of octafluoropropane (perfluoropropane) as "toxic stuff." The very reason that such fluorocarbons hang around for a very long time is due to the strength of the fluorine-carbon bond and the extreme inertness of the molecules.
PFP may be many things, but "toxic stuff" it ain't.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
grass would grow here
Um, since grass already grows on earth, then is "here" Mars? Wow, NASA's Mar's plans are a lot further along than I realized...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Travel the galaxy. Visit exotic planets. Fart on them.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
What about planet Earth? Are we just gonna go planet jumping when it not cost effective to fix the one we are on now?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Preliminary tests here at Earth show that it actually works.
Next stop, Mars..
That would be a long pipe, shit-for-brains.
Offer yourself to the lions. After all, they're natural and wouldn't dream of hurting another living creature would they?
Guess what. It's survival of the fittest.
Deleted
It did say "degrees" so that rules out Kelvin atleast. :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
'cause we can?
The rest is difficult.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
and would thus most likely be completely harmless to us.
A virus and bacteria are completely different. The virus has to mutate to penetrate the protien membrane around our cells. The bacteria just needs to sit and multiply, while our immune system goes nuts trying to kill it.
Too bad she didn't think this through. Even though our Earth plants do 'eat' CO2 and release O2, on Mars O2 will fly off into the space, but our Earth plants DO NEED O2 to breath. So... good luck with that idea.
She is fun though (obviously a Russian born.)
You can't handle the truth.
Water turns into steam, steam is a gas. Cool the steam in another, clean drinking vessel.
Deleted
Octafluoropropane is NOT a toxic gas in the sense that it directly damages the health of people, animals, etc when breathed/ingested (its a class 2.2 hazard: non-toxic, non-flammable gas). Like most fluorocarbons (refrigerants, Halons etc.), it is a very inert gas which presents a hazard only in that it can displace oxygen and lead to asphyxiation. But a mixture of 20% O2 and 80% octafluoropropane would probably be quite breathable, although it might feel uncomfortably dense to breath (this mix being about 6 times denser than normal air).
The only real danger of these gases in the atmosphere is that they can breakdown under UV bombardment in the upper atmosphere and generate ozone-destroying chemicals (not a big issue on Mars as it lacks appreciable ozone in the first place). Also, high temperature combustion of fluorocarbons can produce some nasty byproducts, but the inertness of the chemicals makes this very hard to do.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pardon my scepticism, but how the fsck are these nutters planning to compensate for the incoming solar radiation which is - what, 25%? 20% - as bright as it is here on Earth? "Why, genetic engineering!" Yeah, right. An unpopular opinion amongst the SF film nuts around here, I know, but it's never going to happen outside of 'speculative fiction'.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
The link you provide, among other things, says that forest area is not decreasing, which is a blatant lie popularised by master jester Bjørn Lomborg (who by the way has no knowledge of climatology nor statistics) in his "skeptical environmentalist". The lie is originated by the plotting of forest area as published by FAO since the end of WW2, without correcting for the fact that countries were continuously joining the FAO and that first estimates were not precise, and had no conventional definiton of "forest area". The myth is well debunked here.
The author is a CS professor, not a climatologist. His credibility is quite low on this issue. The fact that he disagrees with pretty much any climatologist on the planet is also a pointer.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Yeah, ok. I guess that's why permafrost in Siberia is melting; because the temperature is staying the same and there's no such thing as global warming. I heard that's why they call it permafrost, because it changes a lot. And it's not like the theory of global warming is based on very basic and fundamental theories of thermodynamics and heat exchange, theories like "if energy goes into a system and does not go back out, the total energy of that system increases." Good thing that's not the case. I also heard that if you coat your processor and heatsink with maple syrup it makes it run cooler. Seriously. That's a scientific fact.
I can TOTALly RECALL a plan to make Mars livable. But then again I might just be dreaming of the RED PLANET. (Or killer kung-fu guerrilla para-millitary robots from a planet near Mars)
=P
"Release Greenhouse Gasses on Mars" == "Last thing we have to worry about"
Bringing ancient Martian organisms back to life is all fun and games until one of them jumps on someone's face and sucks their brains out.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Whether or not global warming is ocurring on Earth is completely irrelevant to this proposal.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The idea is to initiate a run-away greenhouse effect on Mars using a super-effective Greenhouse gas that is safe and easy to produce on Mars. 10-20*10^9 Kg of C2F8, a greenhouse gas 12,000 more effective than CO2, would seem to do the trick. Assuming that 10% of all sunlight reaching Mars could be trapped, Mars could be warmed enough to reach the triple point of CO2 within 100 years. This would release the CO2 (and hopefully water) frozen within the Martian Regolith into the atmosphere and possibly add enough atmosphere to allow for human exploration with only an oxygen mask a few yars later. At this point martian life, if it does exist, should flourish. If it does not we can start populating the planet with Earth species without nasty Mars life preservation debates.
This is not an easy process. Our CFCs, in the Martian atmosphere, would last for thousands of years, so VERY careful monitoring would be required in order to prevent us from terraforming a Venus.
Mars does not have a magnetosphere so our terraformed atmosphere would only have a life of about ten million years before evaporating.
I have notes of the ongoing Mars Society Conference here if you want more information on the current state of manned Mars exploration.
Yes, those funny Americans really luuurve their old British Imperial Units of measure. I'm surprised that they don't have 12 dimes to a Dollar... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
... and we're almost done here!
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Yeah. It'd really suck if the Europeans weren't able to exploit the resources and the (mostly slave) labor of the rest of the continents. Who knows, maybe a predominantly non-white society might actually have gotten somewhere! Good thing we never let THAT happen.
Need help - license plate reverse lookup. NY plate CSE-2960. Guy almost hit me, blamed me, pissed me off.
Are you seriously saying that our kind of life, the Slashdot-reading, Internet-communicating kind of life is equal or less than equal to some proto-bacteria that may or may not exist on Mars? I take it then that you don't kill bacteria when you find it in your house or on your body since the bacteria on your toilet or in your armpits has just as much an equal right to life as you do.
What's wrong with having a new planet to explore (or even exploit)? Wouldn't you rather have all the toxic heavy industry on Mars and off this planet if it could be done?
... so perhaps growing grass on Mars has been in the planning for a while now.
Maybe the key to making that story seem plausible lies in using quite a different kind of "grass"? ;-)
Not in the short term. Perhaps over the course of a few hundred thousand years, yeah sure, but there's a lot of living one can do in that amount of time.
You know, the edge of the Sun will eventually envelop the earth when its supply of helium runs out and it expands in a few million years as well, but that doesn't stop me from planting new tomato plants in the back yard each year simply because the earth is doomed to be evaporated at some distant point in the future. Perspective, people!
Our spy from the Council Chambers has apparently been caught and executed. When asked about it, K'Breel denied any knowledge, but did comment that all spies from the Third Planet had finally been found.
Rumor has it that TripMaster Monkey, one of the reporters who regularly attend the Chambers, could not be found anywhere in his regular haunts. Martian authorities are investigating.
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Marijuana does grow in remarkably hostile places.
"Lost in space, and what is is worth?
The president just forgot about earth"
(Your post in another way)
Slashdot: Surving by killing stuff
"Lol! You're telling me you have to destroy life to survive? Greenpeace aha - your the absurd animal killings for vanity - furs and makeup just lost all credibility!" *goes back to eating his varied omnivorous bacon sandwich*
the sun is god
It is postulated that the only reason cosmic rays don't eradicated us from this planet is due to the magnetic field generated by the molten core of the earth which acts as a giant electric dynamo. Mars has no such protection as any volcanic activity has ceased long ago.
we have almost completely stuffed up the Earth, why stuff up another planet?? We can survive here with just a little commonsense and care, why try to change a whole plant just for us?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Right now on Earth you can find organisms that will survive and even reproduce under martian conditions. We also have numerous lifeforms that can survive quite handily in various layers of the venusian atmosphere (tho not on the ground). Admittedly most of these extremophiles are single-celled creatures, but they CAN survive. I for one feel that (wo)mankind should take every possible opportunity to spread life wherever we can. The question of whether there is already some form of life there, especially on Mars (just because we can more easily envision it) is indeed a bump on the road that must not be ignored. Nonetheless, I think one of the most noble projects we can undertake that isn't self-serving would be to give other planets and future lifeforms a head start over just plain chance. Life may not be able to start under venusian conditions, but once it gets a foothold life can be pretty tenacious. I'd like to call this an obligation or a moral/ethical imperative, but that would take a MUCH longer discussion than would fit in a comment on slashdot. We keep calling Venus a woman, we know she's hot, so lets give her some of our seed! (Now THAT was for the /. crowd).
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Inexorably, Mars' atmosphere is being lapped away by the constant barraging of the solar wind. If we thicken it up, by whatever means, it will simply thin down again because the gravity on the planet isn't strong enough to compensate for it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Ever listen to the president speak? And that was the best diploma that money could buy.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just to be nit-picky: without disputing that global warming is happening, there is a flaw in your reasoning. Melting permafrost in Siberia by itself is not proof of global warming -- it is proof of local warming in Siberia. To prove global warming you need multiple data points around the globe. Is the permafrost in Alaska melting? In Canada? In Greenland? In Norway? In European Russia? In Patagonia? In the South Georgia Islands? In the Antarctic Peninsula?
The question is not whether global warming exists (If it didn't earth would average 33C colder). The real question is: What is the magnitude of human emitted Greenhouse gasses retaliative to natural greenhouse gas emitters (volcanos, meteorites, etc.)?
Colonizing Venus is crazy. Mars has almost everything we need already frozen in its atmosphere to create a successful colony today, even without terraforming. It is also easier to create global warming than it is to reverse it.
More attention should be paid toward colonizing Venus instead
We could do both in one shot. Venus' atmosphere is too thick - a runaway CO2 greenhouse. Mars' atmosphere is too thin - and too cold.
In the future, we could "mine" the atmosphere of Venus, and "seed" the atmosphere of Mars. Thin one, thicken the other. Either approach takes centuries.
As someone else has already pointed out, there is a difference between a virus (smallpox) and a bacterium. But it's false to think that every virus on earth causes disease in humans: when was the last time you were sick with feline leukemia? Any new, random virus probably won't be dangerous to humans. Some of our most deadly diseases come from millennia of close contact with domesticate animals, something you probably aren't going to find on Mars.
Bacteria are the same way. There are probably over a million different species and yet only a small percentage of those cause disease in humans. In fact, some of them even help humans with tasks like digestion! The odds of a random bacteria on Mars being harmful is incredibly small. Hell, we might even find one that colonizes our mouthes and stops tooth decay.
I wouldn't worry about viruses and bacteria when deciding to teraform Mars.
What's wrong with that? It would be a fair fight. Didn't you see "War of the Worlds" man? Bacteria can put up a pretty good counter-attack. They might even win.
I don't mean this to be shameless advertising(, because we don't make money off of this, the pennies we make from cafepress is put towards server expenses).
http://www.redcolony.com/ We accept articles from people and have a active forum with 16yros up discussing this very topic on scientific grounds. The site is about sharing ideas and getting the public excited about colonizing and sxploring (and terraforming) the Red Planet. I hope any visitors enjoy their stay.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Does that actually sound good to anyone? Leave it to human beings to go screwing with things they shouldn't. Trust me, I love technology and I'm no luddite, but there are things I believe we shouldn't mess with.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
50F? That is freakin reasonable.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Everybody out there read the NASA's PDF that parent's Venus link refers to before you reply and comment it.
It does not propose altering the current atmosphere of Venus. It proposes establishing cloud cities floating on it.
Parent's opinions regarding global warming are most likely totally baseless, but the said paper about colonizing Venus seems to be very insightful. Or at least interesting.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Besides the obvious difficulties with temperature and low atmospheric pressure, chemical processes on Mars may be problematic. The lower gravity makes distillation towers quite impractical.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just stripmine Mars with robots and use the raw materials for space habitats? It wouldn't take so darn long either.
You really have to watch out for sources that start off with MRS. --ducks.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the whole plot and premise of Robert Heinlein's "Red Planet"??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Who modded this flamebait? Is there some sort of ban on speaking sense in this place?
Now that's an impressive talking out of one's ass. So:
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I can't speak for any of the other places, but it is a fact that the Norwegian glaciers are shrinking, which is proof of a local warming in Norway.
50 Farad? That is a freakin huge capacitor, not a unit of temperature... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
Happy now? Time to stop the denial then.
If Metroid Prime has taught me anything its that exposure to massive amounts of normally deadly radiation can yeild amazing results.
I for one welcome our Elite Pirate overlords.
they're more native than you or I are.
And for those who believe it is a natural warming cycle, well that's not quite right - the cycle of ice ages means that if anything we should be experiencing a period of cooling. We have had an above average length balmy period (12,000 years). We should be seeing signs of cooling, not warming.
I recently started marking days & things heard of stupdendous stupidity on my calendar in a way to track just how much stupidity is around me. I went back and checked my calendar and it is official, I have not heard or read of anything as stooopid as this in 89 days.
Wow.
I wonder how long I will have to go to top this?
On another bend on this same idea, how come people want to work on problems in the universe when we are killing and starving each other to death here on this forgotten mudball hurtling through space right this second. These people, in my (not so ) humble opinion ought to be ashamed of themselves for wasting the money it took to hatch this idiocy was not sent to Niger.
Haha, I think not buddy. Go fuck yourself, our Earth is dying. Wake up.
Although when you think about it, every micro-organism on earth has evolved to fill a unique ecological niche. Might not the harsh conditions on Mars have created organisms that have evolved to fill EVERY ecological niche? With resources so scarce there, who knows but that there might be some sort of very adaptable viruses or bacteria analogues that would swiftly take advantage of the moveable feast that is humanity...
Although to go from experience here on earth, most of the most dangerous stuff is in very dense ecospheres, like jungles etc. Deserts generally have not a whole lot.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I want to say "oh noes!!1 we can't go wrecking another planet!"
However, given the choice between putting humans on Mars to live, versus leaving Mars as-is for whatever precious-snowflake bacterial organisms live there... I'm gonna have to vote for humans.
Sorry, Martian bugs, but disallowing ourselves use of an entire planet out of some wimpy "do no harm" philosophy is just silly. Terraform ho!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
1. Isn't there a risk of killing organisms that might be living (or thriving even) under CURRENT conditions that we haven't found? Life has a funny way of living, you know.
2. Is there a way to speed this cycle up? If it's just about increasing temperatures, surely there's a way to kick things up a notch. 300 years seems like a long time in the human sense... and the way the Republicans are running the country (read: the world), we might need a backup plan(et) sooner than that!
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Imagine once they finish terraforming Mars, and humans go settle there. Then the Earth starts taxing Mars heavily for terraforming/transportation/initial fees, and the Martian humans get pissed off and separate from Earth. Then a huge war starts, and then the Martians discover Gundanium, and then these giant robots... ok, wrong forum :D
This kind of external meddling is how the Earth got started! Thanks guys, what a nice mess you've created.
re: your sig.
email me, I might be able to help you with something. *might* be able to help.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
Mars's atmosphere is primarily CO2. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is approximately 1% of that on Earth. Sorry, but even someone with little knowledge like me knows that trying to fill a planet with a denser sea of air is impossible. Earth has about .03 percent CO2 in the air. We have billions of combustions autos and power planets all over and we haven't even put a dent in that figure.
The human race is artificial intelligence created using object orientated programming.
>>>Unless we plan of funking things up here ...
Plan on? We're already in the process. We're rapidly destroying our environment in the name of short-term profit, and I really don't think that we'll stop until it's too late. Even if we do stop, eventually the earth is going to become way to overpopulated, and another planet will be very useful. We can't populate it yet, but we need to work on the technology so we can when we need to.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Once the colonists have started producing these gases, what's going to stop them?
Cue the "let's not mess up another planet" argument.
Do you see what I did there?
IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist) but I do work for NASA. Although it may dissapoint you, these ideas which keep showing up on papers and slashdot are just that, ideas. Of the thousands of ideas for the Apollo project, only one (the cheapest and most rational) made it. Therefore, you should expect these things to either never happen, or take 50+ years.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Who says one can't learn new useful things on Slashdot?
The filesystem is the package manager
That is all.
Oops, thanks for the apology. That is the way I read it. I replied above before reading this. You are indeed correct that that method of argument is used to appempt to disprove global warming. But that's not what I was trying to imply. Cheers!
might be quicker and easier to "precipitate" out the atmosphere, somehow
i'm not saying i know how, but what i am saying is that mars doesn't make as good a candidate for colonization than venus does for a number of reasons no one is bringing up: gravity for one: venus's gravity is much like earths, mars i think is 1/3
i mean say what you want about how hard it would be to "precipitate" the venutian atmosphere... but then you have to admit to what you are saying about doing to mars is a lot longer in time spent, and just as hard
it seems to me it is always easier to "destroy": make components of the atmosphere precipate out into something dense, than it would be to "create": put density where there initially is none
with such a weak atmosphere and gravity, what atmosphere can one hope to build on mars?
meanwhile, you can suck a lot out of the venutian atmosphere chemically, in the right series of manipulation, that would merely become liquid water, sulfur compounds, carbon compounds... do it the right way and you could terraform an atmosphere a lot more similar to earths in a lot less time
of course what i am proposing is hard... and mars isn't?
also no one brings up that they both don't have a magnetic field: yikes, cancer from irradiation... but the colonies can be protected somehow
but venus has always seemed to be a better terraforming candidate to me than mars, but mars has this hype machine surrounding it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just a brief correction:
s es/gasdata/index.asp?GasID=47
Octafluoropropane is not 'toxic', in the strict sense of the word. The word toxic generally refers to something that causes injury to living organisms "as a result of physicochemical interaction", which Octafluoropropane doesn't. It's possible to suffocate while breathing Octafluoropropane, as it is with any gas mixture that doesn't contain enough Oxygen, but it isn't toxic.
http://www.airliquide.com/en/business/products/ga
Its the lack of a magnetic field on Mars strong enough to deflect solar particles that will 'cook' the atmosphere away. More accurately, it will be blasted away with a planet-wide shotgun blast every second.
But the end result will be the same.
No sustainable atmosphere
"nyah nyah, yak NYAK NYAK!!!" Oh, you don't understand... Well check this out!!
uhm. let's see - it was a Calvin and Hobbes reference. A comic; hence a JOKE.
sheesh.
Spaceman Spiff has much work to do.
First of all the link he provided says that forest area is stable in industrialised countries and that in addition the volume of wood within this stable area is actually increasing in those countries. It then goes on to say that the situation is different in developing countries where about 0.8 percent is converted to agricultural use per year.
All this was in the first paragraph of text which you have obviously either not read or simply not understood.
You say: "The author is a CS professor..." but perhaps if you actually read his, John McCarthy's, statements they might not be in such contrast to your FAO link? If you read http://www.fao.org/forestry/foris/webview/forestry 2/index.jsp?siteId=101&sitetreeId=1191&langId=1&ge oId=0 there doesn't seem to be any outright contradictions as there is a positive net change in forest area in the non-tropics which would include most industrialised nations. Your link to lombog-errors.dk completely misses the point of what John McCarthy wrote as he goes as far back as to 1850 when talking about deforestation.
Anyway the author is not Bjørn Lomborg, nor is any of the links and references to him, even so you want him to be your scapegoat and so you write:
"...Bjørn Lomborg (who by the way has no knowledge of climatology nor statistics)..."
It's hard to take you seriously when you manage to be totally wrong about things that are so easy to check up on. Are you being willfully wrong? Your case would be better if you stopped injecting such nonsense.
First from his own site which should of course be taken with a few grains of salt. It has a biography at http://www.lomborg.com/biograph.htm:
"Bjørn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus." and of course it makes perfect sense that an assistant professor of statistics knows nil about statistics... (sarcasm).
Let's check with a source that strives for factual objectivity, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjorn_Lomborg:
"He taught as an associate professor, lecturing in statistics, in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus." this too confirms that he ought to know a thing or two about statistics.
Read the Wikipedia article in full; it might surprise you and make you understand why some people dislike the decidedly unscientific attitude prevalent among many so-called environmentalists.
Choice quotes from the Wikipedia entry:
"12 March 2004: The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) have finally ended their case, rejecting the original complaints. They have decided that the original decision is invalid and has ended any further inquiry." i.e. they completely exhonerated Bjørn Lomberg.
"Having reached the conclusion that the concrete accusations against Lomborg largely don't hold, it is legitimate to question the approaches of Lomborg's opponents. Using some historical examples it is argued that almost all opponents use discussion tactics, which come very near to those of dogmatically driven pseudo-scientists"
So we have a guy who uses the knowledge he has in statistics to substansiate his scepticism about environmentalist claims, because of this he is more or less immediately hung out to dry and flamed by people who later on is caught with their pants down and their dicks in the pie - /* start sarcasm */ but oh! wait! Those are the good guys who think they're about the save the world, of course there is absolutely no way they could be misguided or *shudder* wrong, not in the least bit... /* end sarcasm */
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Consider a germ which has never seen multicellular life, has never fought any sort of immune system, considers light or rock ores to be food, and expects carbon dioxide to be a crunchy mineral. I doubt it would try to infect a human!
The germs that are likely to be a problem on Mars are the ones we bring along for the ride. E Coli and some radiation bombardment to stir the pot, and that could do you in quite nicely. If anything I'd bet on mined water (versus recycled) as the healthy stuff.
There's only really one technical problem with terraforming Mars: it's mass.
It has a thin atmosphere for a reason. It's low mass results in two things, a shallow gravity well, and a lack of a global magnetic field.
Over time, interaction with the solar wind has stripped off the upper portions of the atmosphere. We see this happening with Venus as it lacks a global magnetic field. The reason that it's atmosphere is so dense to this day, is that it has a relatively deep gravity well. Earth has both. Mars has niether. It is believed that most of the nitrogen that was initially present in it's atmosphere was the largest casualty of this intereaction.
While it's true that the things being proposed would have some short ter, bennefit, in the long run, anything we put into the Martian atmosphere will be lost to space eventually unless Mars either gains enough mass to get a deeper gravity well (possible, but not with current technology, or within reasonable timeframes), or has it's globabl magnetic field reactivate (again possible, but not with any technology we can currently concieve).
Still, it has the resources that could potentially support a population of billions, and certainly millions, and is a good choice for colonization as many other of its charateristics are similar enough to those of the Earth, that Earth life could adapt to at least enclosed environments (24 hour day, allowing for modern plants to live there, likely enough gravity to prevent atrophy of muscle and bone, etc.).
Thanks for the spoiler. Speaking of spoilers. I've got a spoiler for you: You will die alone.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Well put.
And further, if we decide to do something then what has the highest likelihood of achieving that aim? A continued high rate of technological innovation governed largely by capitalistic incentives or a massive reduction of energy consuption based largely on treaties? Which will be the fastest and most effective in the long term outside of simply killing people or condemming them to live in squalid conditions?
The answer is probably a bit of both though technological innovation is the only way not to get stuck in a blind alley imho.
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Well, presumably, once those Martian ski slopes open, many bodies will be attracted (and many will insist on bringing their super-massive SUV's, thus guranteeing a continual healthy supply of greenhouse gases). The tourist trade will snowball, and ...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
"Old Growth Clearing" would not have helped AT ALL.
I thought they start small forrest fires sometimes to get rid of the "old growth" and prevent large uncontrollable fires. I thought it was a common and valid technique. Logging usually implies cutting live trees, not dry rotten wood.
There are frequent postings to Slashdot of the "Hey, let's go take over Mars!" variety, and the crowd always seems pretty enthusiastic about completely wiping out any chance of learning what the surface might have to teach us.
I'll complain, and they'll respond with something about a "backup planet", and I'll say that we've made it this far, we can wait a few hundred more years, and they'll say it has to happen RIGHT NOW because ya don't believe, we're on the eve of destruction. But you just know that they really just want to go there themselves, even though this couldn't possibly happen before they got too old, or dead.
So I'll just let it all go with a sigh and be thankful that this isn't actually going to happen.
Sorry to inform you, the fact that they weren't allowed to clear some of the old growth trees, made the fire burn much hotter than it would have burned otherwise. The cost was it utterly KILLED trees, they typically are able to regrow after a fire, but not this time.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
No -- really.
If you could fill the Martian air with enough O2 so that you could go outside and breathe it, the odor of sulfur would still be unmistakable. The whole place would smell distractingly like rotten eggs. On your trip back, people would say "you've visited Mars recently, haven't you?" Mars will need a lot of work even after it is livable just to get rid of the smell.
Trees would make it look nicer in the meantime, but they would look better inside enclosed greenhouses, where the smell of a pine forest would likely be very much sought after by the cavern dwellers, and the O2 they produce can be kept from escaping the planet's atmophere.
As to Biosphere 2, all of the pictures I've seen of it make me think that it needed a larger proportion of ocean in order to come to a CO2/O2 balance. Maybe that's what the Mars caverns will need? Large greenhouse-enclosed ponds? They could either use concentrator mirrors to raise the temperature, or if the scale is too large, be stocked with Antarctic sea creatures to keep a balanced environment while there are no people there (and while we still have any Antarctic sea creatures left).
Mar's atmosphere is 1/150th of Earth's
mostly CO2
what does that mean to you?
again, what i'm saying is that as a general rule, is that it easier to "destroy" than it is to "create"
so i'm saying it SHOULD be easier to precipitate out aspects of venus atmosphere than it is create atmosphere that simply doesn't exist on mars
that seems to outweigh your length of day observation
both terraforming prospects are VERY hard, but, to me, venus just seems somewhat easier in a very crude approach towards what final conditions you can expect and have no control over and what you are given to work with initially
venus is just more similar to earth than mars is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Realistically, the bacteria would be foreign to us, and might kill most humans who came in contract with it. Think Indians (excuse me, Native Americans) and smallpox. We have no resistance against Martian bacteria.
We have oxygen. In large quantities. Anything living on Mars is anaerobic. Oxygen is a poison to obligate anaerobes.
The worst case that is even remotely plausible is that we'll get a new form of tetanus. It's much more likely that any Martian bacteria would simply find our high pressure, high temperature, oxidizing environment to be completely inhospitable.
TTFN
Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any.
Martian organisms might be revived, or they might be finished off by the octaflouropropane :-).
This article provides a nice overview of how robust bacteriae and their spores can be.
while you may not be self centered, you certainly are ignorant...
I am ignorant because I did not post about the british empire? I guess I can't expect a zealot to infer that someone who posts on slashdot might have read a history book at some point in his life.
Pointing to the history of the british empire doesn't make anything in my above post "right" or "acceptable". And the british empire certaintly doesn't give anybody the right to behave as said.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
A very nice read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming
Since Mars has no magnetosphere, that being the reason why Mars has almost no atmosphere to speak of now, why even bother trying to create one? It'll all just blow away again. Further, it's not like ANY living thing is gonna be takin' a stroll on the Martian surface even if the temp was a balmy 50 degrees... because it would get fried by the solar radiation! Again, it's that pesky lack of a magnetosphere.
Perhaps, instead of farting around with greenhouse gases, they should be figuring out a way to use detonated subterranean nukes or some other wild scheme to re-melt Mars' mantle and core, and with luck restart the magnetosphere.
NO MAGNETOSPHERE = NO LIFE
Here is a page with thorough refutations: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/
This attack from Gentry is amusing in its unconscious self-reference: "What is most revealing about Wise's attempts to cast doubt on the primordial nature of these halos is that he repeatedly ignores the published scientific evidence which contradicts what he is attempting to establish."
Te simple fact is, Gentry starts with what he "knows" must be true and bends all facts to support his cranky thesis. If you read his explanation of the cosmic microwave backround as being due to a supposed shell of hot Hydrogen over 3 billion light-years away with the Earth at the precise center, his discredibility should be obvious.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
It seems to me that we are going to have a tough time determining if we can do anything about the climate change if don't attribute blame and determine where the problem lies.
If natural greenhouse gas emitters are blowing out 99% of the greenhouse gases then human behavior is an insignificant factor. In that case we need a technical solution and not a behavior change.
If human emissions are the primary source then a behavior change is in order.
Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any.
Anything might happen, but don't you think it a very earthocentric attitude to assume that Martian life will do better if we just make things a bit more like they are on Earth? I mean, martian life might just be more adapted to, you know, living on Mars.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Fires are part of the natural life cycle of a forest. Some species of plant and insect are actually dependant on fires, otherwise they won't/can't breed.
And yes, trees usually do die when they burn. For the most part the new forest grows from seeds which originate from surviving trees in nearby areas. Of course, some tree species are able to regenerate after a fire.
Oh Jesus Christ fucking Buddha with a stick... it's comments like these that make me wish comment moderation wasn't capped at +5.
I've seen this idea about three years ago on BBC World. The documentary was from a series named something like Future Fantastic.
However the concept is cool and I really mean it.
You are well aware that base research is not performed by corporate interest right?
The USA's government heavily founded base research in the 60s and early 70s mostly because of the sputnik shock. The current electronical achievments are directly related to that research period, most of what we have in electronics as of today is a refining of those discoveries. The research stopped because of the increased costs, which is at least partially attributed to the oil crisis. Corporate science is refining, not discovering. There is also the very interesting subject of the japanese miracle: that they managed to be one of the leading technological innovators from a post WW2 losing nation with no industry whatsoever. In the 40-50s they bought second hand technology and refined that and sold the product. In the 60-70s they aquired quite recent technology and refined that, but the USA's economy didn't feel the pressure from japanese electrical products that much, because the USA was doing base research. In the 80-90s Japan developed cutting edge technology from their previous research and managed to be the pioneers in electronics, and the USA couldn't compete any more effectively because the USA no longer had the superiority in technology. There is also an interesting aspect of japanese efficiency which is mainly due to lacking resources on their islands. It forces and forced them to be efficient with resources.
There is also the difference in corporate spirit. The so called 7 dwarfs, the 7 largest companies in japan actively cooperate with the government in dividing up research and sharing it with each other. They kind of think long term. With that spirit in the recent years they are able to perform base research aswell, albeit not that huge scale like in the 70s in the USA.
My whole point with this huge historical perspective is that american corporatism did not drive technological innovation, it drived technological refining and that's a very different thing. The technological innovation stopped in the 70s and it is recently picked up by the Japanese and EU.
I only answered half of the topic yet: it is alright that corporatism doesn't drive scientific progress, but then why does a treaty do that?
The treaty's goal is to try to decrease the human factor in global warming. The way it does that is simple: must is a great incentive. Japan was forced to be efficient and that inspired a whole new branch of research into miniaturization and efficiency. Participating countries in the treaty realise that by doing research and sacrificing a short term economic advantage they are gaining a lot in long term, not only by having a livable planet, but by the long term advantages research gives. The treaty is supposed to be an incentive, not a rigid prohibition.
Given these reasons, which i'm sure politicians are aware of it is totally impossible to understand the viewpoint the USA and Australia is taking on this issue. The only possible explanation is very strong corporate influence on the politics, and that is kind of well documented both in the case of the Bush administration and aswell with Howard.
Please take a look at what wikipedia says about the issue aswell.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100802/
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
Oh no... We're ruining *another* planet??!
And then you all complain when martians, or any other extraterrestial species, come to exterminate us...
jeez.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
No need to teraform, just find many deep wide and long valleys, and just make a big-ass roof on em thats seethru, drop down two walls and you have a massive massive area that can be habited and plants grown.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I think the biggest thing preventing getting plants to grow is a lack of atmospheric nitrogen.
Normally, bacteria in the soil take nitrogen from the air and convert it into forms that plants can use. Without nitrogen, no plants will be growing there. This element is an essential part of amino acids and proteins to sustain the plants as well as the animal consumers of the plants (us).
Now, since nitrogen is a very common element, I'm sure there is some there awaiting discovery in various compounds, but I seem to remember the atmosphere is mostly CO2.
Guess we'll be carrying water and amonium nitrate with us.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
"Mining the Oort" by Poul Anderson
Deflect comets and crash them into Mars. He even goes into a fair amount of detail about the orbital herding needed, and how to make the crashes as "non-catastrophic" as possible. In the book there were already settlements on Mars that had to be avoided, as well as keeping the crashes from ejecting much of the freshly delivered comet.
In another similar book, they allowed the comet crashes to create a fairly large, deep valley. Easier to get a usably dense atmosphere much sooner in a limited space than on an entire planet.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. I'm an electrical engineerand during my studies in sub-atomic physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be effected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun and I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth and the Sun is spewing out more heat, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this? I've been bouncing this idea in my head for a while now and I can't see why this MAY not be true.
A quick way of terraforming mars that has been suggested and that would supposedly work with current technology is to use nuclear explosions to spread dust over the polar ice caps. The result would be that they absorb more solar radiation and supposedly melt within a few years (you have to keep exploding devices). You can read more here. The nuclear approach strikes me as more practical than the synthesis of large amounts of octafluoropropane.
(Incidentally, it's hard to see why this particular person got cited; the idea of using greenhouse gases to terraform mars certainly didn't come from her.)
A cost effective alternative to terraformation! Okay I haven't worked out the details yet, but here's the starting point: http://www.marcm.net/chiamars.htm
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read." -Groucho Marx
grass would grow here
Is the author reporting from Mars?
Is it natural for a cigarette to be thrown from a passing cars window? I don't think mother earth had expected that. Here's an interesting article about how Sierra club has lost sight of reality http://www.pushback.com/Wattenburg/articles/NowThe yHaveBurnedLosAlamos.html
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Earth First! We'll Ruin the Other Planets Later.
I have a truly marvelous proof of the Riemann hypothesis which this sig is too short to contain...
So it must be true that human activity is increasing CO2 levels on Mars, right?
e _031208.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-ag
What sort of tropical paradise do you live in where 50 degrees Fahrenheit is something to worry about? Is it really that much of a burden to throw on a jacket and stop wearing shorts? I mean, are you even aware of what temperatures snow forms at?
50 degress Celcius doesn't make any sense either. That's 122 degrees Fahrenheit, which is usually lethal to humans without extreme preparation.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So what you're saying is that we should have destroyed the forest in order to save it? Prohibiting logging of old growth forests doesn't lead to giant fires. The practice of extinguishing all small fires does that. Old growth forests don't need to be "thinned" - all that would accomplish is creating openings in the canopy, which lets in lots of sunlight, which in turn causes lots of underbrush to spring up - thereby INCREASING the danger of fire.
Sean
I respecfully disagree with you, not completely but still substantially. I'd like to start with your main statement:
"You are well aware that base research is not performed by corporate interest right?"
I find this to be a way too absolute statement, there are companies/commercial interests, private and semi-private interests (like universities) who do a significant amount of basic and fundamental scientific research either on their own or in conjunction with others be they other private enterprices, organisations, or the government.
But yes, U.S. governmental grants are an important source of funding for basic scientific research just like in other countries. I'm norwegian myself and a lot of norwegian scientists and academics wish they had as good a working relationship with the private sector as many U.S. universities have because it somewhat alleviates the bitter fight for governmental grants in relation to both fundamental science and, as you call it, technological refining (no, Norway is not a poor nation; it's the richest nation in Europe - but any government has to prioritize).
One can of course argue about the benefits and detriments of private funding of any kind of science but that is a long and seperate discussion.
In addition you seem to argue that basic science is more relevant than technological refinement into products/working solutions when it comes to addressing climate change. I say one without the other does us absolutely no good, I'll use the recent Slashdot topic "World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine" as an example http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/ 12/0047242&tid=232&tid=137. What good would it do if one only had the fundamental scientific research but not the technological refinement into a working prototype and product? Or if you had a working unit but no clue as to why it worked worse/better than other things? I'm sure you agree that both are needed and that both cost money, and in addition that the process of making those solar arrays using sterling engines was in all likelihood an iterative process including both fundamental and practical science and engineering. In addition as a at least partially private company they have a strong inherent incentive to be efficient and make a profit.
Btw how can you possibly say that technological innovation stopped in the U.S. during the seventies? The U.S. has been and continue to be a large source of both technological innovation and basic scientific research: american multinational companies aren't among the biggest by chance, neither are american universities among the most revered internationally by chance. This is not to say that things were dead in their tracks in other parts of the world, absolutely not. However if you are in doubt about these things then think of companies and industries like Xerox, IBM, Apple, pharmacautics etc. and have a look at the amount of peer-reviewed research published from the U.S. - all before, during, and after the seventies.
Your next argument is that a treaty drives scientific progress. Yes and no, it depends upon the treaty. It might provide incentives for the use of cleaner technology (this is after all what the Kyoto treaty attempts to do), which in turn might help drive scientific progress. However in my opinon Kyoto is not crafted in a way to actually achieve any of these things to a significant degree as it stands - but this is an extremely long discussion and I just realized that if I'm going to have to explain all the faults of the Kyoto treaty this is going to be an insanely long post. I do not believe the Kyoto treaty as it now stands will have any significant impact wheter or not the U.S. ratifies it, if one goes "the Kyoto way" the treaty will have to be much stricter and include China in a sensible way as well as developing nations (I think the link you gave from Wikipedia was very well writ
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Instead of releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Create some high pressure storage method and just ship them to Mars every 26 months. Just make the ships launch and crash in to the planet and release the gases. Maybe it'll take a few years off the few hundred necessary to melt the ice caps. Maybe it'd make all of us more likely to hug trees and justify the ignorance of our manifest destiny.
-PMP-
Everybody knows Cohaagen won't start the reactor because it makes air. Why would you want to go to Mars anyway? I think you'd be much happier with one of our Saturn cruises.
Ever see the movie Red Planet ? That did not work out so well... I wonder if the same is in store for us now :)