Could We Terraform Mars???

[Green Baron]

You make it intentionally political and i do not like this. You put your rightful opinion as scientific finding which is wrong and fling at us journalist articles as if they had a verifiable scientific background, which i do not have the time to check against recent publications.

Show me a single SCIENTIFIC article, a publication by the geophysical unions or the scientific journals and we can discuss further, otherwise this is just hot air with political intent and fruitless to follow. Alternative facts, eh :-) ?

[snip]

[KerbalNetwork]

Maybe, I think.

Since Elon Musk is planning to bring people to Mars, he also wants to terraform Mars as he said the easiest way to do it is to drop  thermonuclear weapons over the poles. Now, I don't know what those are, am not a scientist, nor someone who likes all this stuff. I am just here to give my opinion.

Edited June 13, 2017 by KerbalNetwork

[ModZero]

20 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Ok, and then there's this from the U.N. itself -

http://www.unric.org/en/latest-un-buzz/29623-figueres-first-time-the-world-economy-is-transformed-intentionally

and this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/#42dcabcd3f9f

and this:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/02/rick-santorum/santorum-un-climate-head-debunked-widely-cited-97-/

 

It's all one thing, a very specific question about CO2, not AGW, and yes, there are other gases that are very significant factor, like methane, from cows. I guess you could count that as bovine climate change, but that will still come back to humans. And it doesn't really take a long to find this out, and you're moving the goalposts, and oh god this thread got terrible. Also stop reading Forbes and Politifact, I mean, seriously, they put "winner of the pulitzer prize" in their subtitle.

[adsii1970]

Still, there are other causes than humans. But here's the rub, what humankind is doing is no different than ants or beavers, just on a larger scale. Multiple species of organisms alter their environment for their particular needs.

I'm not moving the goal posts. I do believe we need to be good stewards. However, it is clear that politics is driving the "science" of man-made climate change. Think about it, we have people saying there's no room for disagreement... Jail those who deny it... Blah, blah... The list goes on and on.

How is that different than the Middle Ages when the Roman Catholic Church controlled science?

Edited June 13, 2017 by adsii1970

[ModZero]

4 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Still, there are other causes than humans. But here's the rub, what humankind is doing is no different than ants or beavers, just on a larger scale.

That's... not an argument. Like, at all.

5 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I'm not moving the goal posts. I do believe we need to be good stewards. However, it is clear that politics is driving the "science" of man-made climate change.

That's because doing things involving sentient beings always involves politics. "We need to be good stewards" is a political statement.

6 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Think about it, we have people saying there's no room for disagreement...

There was, like, in the early 20th century, that's how far we are since the last time it was still a sensible dispute. Since then it was entirely about "how much" and "how long before we've doomed ourselves" and, ultimately, "we're doomed."

7 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Jail those who deny it...

Not really, just tell them to stop spreading nonsense and confusion. Even petrochem is giving up on propping your ideas up, and they've spend real money since the eighties suppressing the idea of AGW.

4 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

How is that different than the Middle Ages when the Roman Catholic Church controlled science?

Not at all, in that RCC didn't control science in the middle ages.

[adsii1970]

15 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

You make it intentionally political and i do not like this. You put your rightful opinion as scientific finding which is wrong and fling at us journalist articles as if they had a verifiable scientific background, which i do not have the time to check against recent publications.

Show me a single SCIENTIFIC article, a publication by the geophysical unions or the scientific journals and we can discuss further, otherwise this is just hot air with political intent and fruitless to follow. Alternative facts, eh :-) ?

And, btw., mods, a clear violation of 2.2 whatever, that one without scientific evidence.

 

No, I did not make it political. I merely disagree that it is human caused. It is not political to disagree and never has been. But if you insist on demanding proof...

https://weather.com/science/environment/news/startling-number-scientists-dispute-human-caused-global-warming-201401224

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0170840612463317

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/McLean/Disputed_Science_of_Global_Warming.pdf

The truth is there is nothing wrong with healthy debate. But to say that anyone who agrees with the consensus is making things political, and in this case, simply is not true.

[TheKosmonaut]

Hello, 

This thread is veering toward a darker side, a darker side that people like me dont like. I offer you all torches and candles so that it may be brought back into the light. 

1. Above all things, continue to be civil. 

2. If you feel that something *is* violating a forum rule, do **not** attempt to moderate it yourself, the report button is your friend. 

3. Try not to push things into a political argument, though some links here go to political areas, try not to say "OH THIS GUY SAID IT SO IT BAD." or something to that effect. 

4. Praise me as your oppressive benevolent overlord friend. 

[Just Jim]

33 minutes ago, TheKosmonaut said:

4. Praise me as your oppressive benevolent overlord friend. 

Totally off-topic... but can I steal use this line in Emiko sometime???  

Edited June 13, 2017 by Just Jim

[Green Baron]

... but you must cite it correctly :-)

I have a geoscience background and followed the development of climate change research as well as political elements trying to steer it, both sides, during the last 20 years.

@adsii1970, you are a historian and so have a scientific background as well, but here you mix up opinions and findings. Also, there is a certain body of thoughts connected with denying of science, especially this kind of science, that is not mine. Must say this, it's part of the light :-)

Lighting a torch: While many details and even principles are still in discussion and deserve further research, the human influence is by now very well proved and even in large parts understood. Just open science & nature and elsevier journals and perform a search and stop focusing on doubtful second hand sources. The abstracts of articles are free for everyone to read. I am not going to the level of disutes, i did this until a few years ago, but meanwhile things have changed and humans are changing climate in a most concerning way.

 

Oh: Hail The Kosmonaut! :-)

Edited June 13, 2017 by Green Baron

[TheKosmonaut]

19 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Totally off-topic... but can I steal use this line in Emiko sometime???  

Funnily enough, I am pretty sure something similar is said in Invader Zim. Also, sure. 

[kerbiloid]

From my pov, if humans cause global warming, that means they are the natural tool to cause global warming. If not - then not.

A proverb: "Wolves are forest cleaners." _{(literally - sanitary assistants of forest)}
This means that wolves clean the fauna from ill species, as they mostly catch weak or ill ones.

The same with people.
I love elephants, lions, etc, but in fact they are relics of past. I wish them stay aliove and be happy, but I'm sure that they have not much time left - and not because the global warming.
They are just surviving while it's possible, while their families disappeared many thousands and millions years ago.

If the global warming will destroy the Earth biosphere which we are familiar with, this is just a forced jump to the next level - artificial biosphere.
And this will happen well before any terraforming will become possible.
So, even if something will be ever terraformed, it probably will look like kind of Zenozoic, rather than current terrestrial biosphere.

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, ModZero said:

Not at all, in that RCC didn't control science in the middle ages.

[Edited by adsii1970]

The Catholic Church did try to control science - at the expense of science and those who were in the pursuit of science. This is a partial list:

• In 1210-1277, known as the "Condemnations of 1210-1277", the Catholic See denounced Aristotle, mainly his understanding of physics. Anyone taught teaching them gained the label of heretic.
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) 
• The same conventions also denounced Philolaus (c. 480–385 BCE) who believed the universe orbited around a great fire at its center. Anyone taught teaching this theory of the universe gained the label of heretic.
• Michael Servetus (1511-1553) was excommunicated and condemned as being a heretic for his discovery of how the heart and circulatory system actually works. As he was fleeing from the Roman Catholics in Spain, he ran into John Calvin, and Calvin (a protestant) ultimately ordered his execution by burning at the stake. 
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1634) - Tried and convicted by a science board convened by the Roman Catholic Church for heresy. Why? His support for the Copernican theory that the Earth rotates around the sun (a rejection of the Geocentric universe model being taught by the Holy See). Placed under house arrest until he was willing to recant.
• Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) Burned at the stake for teaching heresy in his belief there were other suns with other planets orbiting them. Also proposed there was the possibility of other life on these planets. He also supported the theories of Copernicus and the heliocentric model of the solar system.  
• Copernicus (1473-1543) At first, his work was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church; his teachings were not banned until the 17th Century. Banned because it taught a "false doctrine" within creation.

There are others, but the point is that these topics were "deemed" as settled science where the oppression of any view contrary to the "approved" view were not tolerated. This is dangerous territory, if you ask me.

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

... but you must cite it correctly :-)

I have a geoscience background and followed the development of climate change research as well as political elements trying to steer it, both sides, during the last 20 years.

@adsii1970, you are a historian and so have a scientific background as well, but here you mix up opinions and findings. Also, there is a certain body of thoughts connected with denying of science, especially this kind of science, that is not mine. Must say this, it's part of the light :-)

Lighting a torch: While many details and even principles are still in discussion and deserve further research, the human influence is by now very well proved and even in large parts understood. Just open science & nature and elsevier journals and perform a search and stop focusing on doubtful second hand sources. The abstracts of articles are free for everyone to read. I am not going to the level of disutes, i did this until a few years ago, but meanwhile things have changed and humans are changing climate in a most concerning way.

 

Oh: Hail The Kosmonaut! :-)

Yeah, yeah, I know about the whole citing thing. I didn't realize that on the forum I needed to do that...

I follow it too, but for a different reason. I also have a science background and am currently working on another degree... yeah I wonder why I decided to undergo this whole process again... Anyhow, I do not deny the climate is changing. In fact, Earth's natural history shows it has been. If it hadn't been for global warming, where I live now would be about three miles under ice! What I am saying is that I doubt (again, the skeptic in me coming out) that man is the ONLY reason why this is happening. There are way too many variables out there that also must be considered. And I have always had an inquiring mind that demands I look at data being presented from both sides and be given the courtesy of being able to make up my own mind.

I'm old enough to remember in the 1970s and 1980s the craze was global cooling. Lots of scientific data pointed towards that. In fact, I remember one study done by NASA/ESA that claimed in 20 years, it was supposed to be "polar cold" as far south as New York City. Then in the late 1990s, the craze became global warming. So, yeah, I am skeptical.^{1, 2} Even then, there were repercussions for those who did not believe that mankind was causing global cooling. I remember the panic, the demands of the media that the U.S. had to spend vast amounts of money studying climate change. Then we are told, beginning in the late 1990s, oh, we were wrong, it's man-made global warming... I like to connect the dots, I want to see the entire picture. I dislike it when I am told "just believe it because we say it's so...and if you don't..."

Within my field of history, I am confronted with times when "modern science" got it wrong. From 1840 to 1930, it was considered as "medical science fact" that there were biological differences in race and with that, certain groups were not deemed fit to participate in that society of the era. It's downright laughable and sad that anyone would ever believe it, but it was considered as indisputable fact. And with that knowledge, some of the worst crimes against humanity were done by the hands of man. Modern science also concluded that the detonation of the atomic bomb would burn off the Earth's atmosphere ( Robert Oppenheimer's was actually one of the ones afraid of this)... we now think it is absurd, but well, no dispute that nuclear weapons are bad... The Conservatory Movement in the U.S. (1870-1920) was founded on the "modern medical science" belief that if a woman was too physically active, she would become infertile as she lost fat deposits in certain parts of the anatomy... again, science was wrong. There are literally hundreds of other examples, which is why I have said in previous conversations that we call scientific thought as "theories" because we know there is more yet to discover that will shape our understanding of the world around us.

Again, I do not doubt climate change is occurring. I am just disagreeing on the means of it.

And what does not help is the SyFy channel's movies of gloom and doom about climate change. It is a natural process that will continue long after our species is extinct and the geckos take over as the dominant sentient being on the planet (I remember a NOVA episode where they thought it would be bats in the mid-1980s would become the dominant intelligent species once man died out).

^{1 Reference link: http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
2 Reference link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be/}

 

[ModZero]

30 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

The Catholic Church did try to control science - at the expense of science and those who were in the pursuit of science.

You... you do realise that Catholic Europe was quite a bit of a side-show, especially science-wise, in the middle ages? Catholic Church didn't control science because it literally couldn't.

Looks at the site...

...oh... well, this is a waste of time.

[adsii1970]

2 minutes ago, ModZero said:

You... you do realise that Catholic Europe was quite a bit of a side-show, especially science-wise, in the middle ages? Catholic Church didn't control science because it literally couldn't.

Looks at the site...

...oh... well, this is a waste of time.

The Roman Catholic church controlled the flow of information and the universities of the Middle Ages. It controlled what was taught as a part of "higher education" and the threat of being labeled a heretic or apostate carried more weight than it does during our modern times.

The biggest reason the Catholic Church lost control was technology - the printing press made it difficult to control the dissemination of information.

Edited June 13, 2017 by adsii1970

[HebaruSan]

3 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Jail those who deny it... Blah, blah... The list goes on and on.

Who suggested that, when?

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

Who suggested that, when?

This conversation continued privately, but the answer appears to be Lawrence Torcello, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, in this article from March 2014:

• https://theconversation.com/is-misinformation-about-the-climate-criminally-negligent-23111

And now I leave you to the debate over whether the Pope will colonize Mars.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

Who suggested that, when?

Multiple activists want to outlaw critic of global warming. 
They all share the same characteristic: Don't follow the consensus as in have extreme standpoints who fails in physic, Greenland ice will be gone by 2030 and stuff like that.
Similar extreme political views, they get an lot of meda attention as they generate clicks. 

They are also in very deep water without global warming 
Main purpose is to give global warming skeptic some nice easy targets. A lot like how islamistst damage the view of islam. 
In short generally damaging. 
--
And yes in before lock. 

Edited June 13, 2017 by magnemoe

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, ModZero said:

You... you do realise that Catholic Europe was quite a bit of a side-show, especially science-wise, in the middle ages? Catholic Church didn't control science because it literally couldn't.

Looks at the site...

...oh... well, this is a waste of time.

Actually, yes, correct, short explanation why: many who searched education in early / high medieval times (let's say until 1400+/-) entered a monastery, or had to travel far and long (medicine or astronomy/astrology from Muslim countries at these times !). Whether one can call that control or suppression ... i doubt it. That came up later, towards the end of the medieval (using definition 1525 as the beginning of the renaissance here) and especially in renaissance times. Yeah, well inquisition started earlier as a means to homogenize catholic belief, not that much as a control mechanism. The high times with mass murder and regular torture ("Hochnotpeinliches Verhör", i could not find a quick translation, if you're interested ...) etc. (Tomas de Torquemada, Spanish Inquisition) took place 1400 and later, with the highest toll indeed in renaissance times.

But that is not my field of expertise, i am underway 10.000 before now and earlier. Much earlier :-)

 

What was the topic ... a terraforming Mars.No, we still won't :-)

 

Edited June 13, 2017 by Green Baron

[sevenperforce]

Good grief.

[ModZero]

23 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Actually, yes, correct, short explanation why: many who searched education in early / high medieval times (let's say until 1400+/-) entered a monastery, or had to travel far and long (medicine or astronomy/astrology from Muslim countries at these times !).

If they even were from Europe at all, my entire point was that Europe wasn't all that important.

Quote

What was the topic ... a terraforming Mars.No, we still won't :-)

Insert obvious Monty Python reference here.

Edited June 13, 2017 by ModZero

[Daveroski]

Humans are doing a really shoddy job of keeping the earth alive. What ever makes you think that humans could bring life to another world?

That would be a "No."

 

[Green Baron]

 

Question, because i am curious, is there anything more, any serious up-to-date thoughts on "terraforming", maybe taking into account for recent works on planetary / geoscience ? I mean, more than the usual second hand news magazines ? The few words that Musk shed until know don't really make me believe that he has a plan.

I know of none but that really means nothing ...

 

Edited June 13, 2017 by Green Baron

[ARS]

By the time we had the technology to build infrastructure necessary for terraforming mars, we are already have a technology sufficient enough to make planetary bases, enabling humans to live on mars, rendering the premise of terraformed mars a moot. Why terraform it if you can just expand the colony? It's much cheaper and faster to do that. A terraforming process might take millions if not billions of years to complete, while a colony can be expanded rapidly, take a couple of hundred years, and the expansion is significant, not to mention a planet-wide colony achieved basically the same thing: Martian colony. Want to terraform mars so you can walk on it like on earth? Just build a colony on a place you want to walk. Want to make mars exploration easier? Building colony is much faster than terraforming

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, ARS said:

By the time we had the technology to build infrastructure necessary for terraforming mars, we are already have a technology sufficient enough to make planetary bases, enabling humans to live on mars, rendering the premise of terraformed mars a moot. Why terraform it if you can just expand the colony? It's much cheaper and faster to do that. A terraforming process might take millions if not billions of years to complete, while a colony can be expanded rapidly, take a couple of hundred years, and the expansion is significant, not to mention a planet-wide colony achieved basically the same thing: Martian colony. Want to terraform mars so you can walk on it like on earth? Just build a colony on a place you want to walk. Want to make mars exploration easier? Building colony is much faster than terraforming

I think there are some intermediate steps that could be useful. If we could get the atmospheric pressure above the Armstrong limit and find a Martian source of nitrogen, then it might become possible to grow plants on the exposed surface or walk around outside without a spacesuit (though an oxygen mask would still be required). Not full terraforming, but enough to make the expansion of existing colonies much easier.

[Findthepin1]

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I think there are some intermediate steps that could be useful. If we could get the atmospheric pressure above the Armstrong limit and find a Martian source of nitrogen, then it might become possible to grow plants on the exposed surface or walk around outside without a spacesuit (though an oxygen mask would still be required). Not full terraforming, but enough to make the expansion of existing colonies much easier.

Is there any possible way we could make it work without a lot of nitrogen? Even if there would only be small plants and lichen or something.