Ethics of terraforming

[sal_vager]

Not sure about panspermia, seems too unlikely that any life would survive not only being blasted into space in some cataclysmic event, the aeons long trip through near absolute zero and the occasional searing heat of a star, both in vacuum mind you, and then the heat of re-entry and impact....

Easier to just have life start on the planet in question.

But there's something to be said for the RNA world hypothesis, especially as sugars have been found in space, maybe someone will find RNA or a precursor to it forming in space as well?

It would eliminate some of the steps of panspermia, making it more likely, and there would not be a need for such a violent entry to a planets ecosphere either, just as dust already falls from space onto Earth and elsewhere without burning up.

It'd also mean all life everywhere would have the same starting point...

[drakesdoom]

What if the people attacking have weapons that you can't hope to defend against? You're just a mere conscious being, more advanced races shouldn't have to be trapped in their own solar system just so that some brain-sentients can be preserved.

Divide both sides by humans, and you have the classic primitive ecosystem vs. humans scenario.

If you lay down you die.

If you lose you die.

If you win you don't die.

I don't expect them to stop because I convince them through words to let me live, I expect them to stop because it becomes too expensive to continue, or I die.

[Dangerous_Beans]

and sadly, were that to be at issue today, PETA, the EPA, WWF, ALF, ELF, Greenpeace, and dozens of other groups of "green" nutters would argue that indeed we should not eradicate those diseases because those microbes have as much (and many of them will at heart claim more) right to live as we do.

Of course those same groups are all in favour of human extinction, or at least letting all humans except themselves die a horrible death.

They're the kind of people who think spraying concentrated Ebola from the airconditioning of a baseball stadium is a pretty neat idea.

WTF?

i'm in favour of our species going extinct, i'm not in favour of murdering people, and i have never heard of anyone arguing that we should kill people. we should go extinct by not creating new people and not by killing people who exist, because this way minimises the suffering we, as a species, create.

the ethics of exterminating diseases such as small pox and polio are interesting; i think it's probably kind of dodgy, but it is justifiable on grounds of self-defence.

the same argument doesn't apply to alien life living on a different planet, in fact in the situation we are arguing here we are the aggressors and it would be appropriate for the alien life to exterminate us, in it's own defence.

[Seret]

WTF?

the ethics of exterminating diseases such as small pox and polio are interesting; i think it's probably kind of dodgy, but it is justifiable on grounds of self-defence.

We never exterminate pathogens, we always keep some stored in a lab somewhere. It would be extremely unwise to completely eradicate a pathogen, because you'd no longer have it available for study and if it popped up again in the wild you'd find yourself behind the play.

I think the problem with the terraforming question is that the OP didn't specify what alternative technologies were available. I don't think it's a given that terraforming would be the only option for creating habitats for humans beyond Earth. For example, if an Earth-like world were found (say similar gravity, oxygen atmosphere of similar pressure, but slightly different atmospheric gas mix) it may well be vastly easier to adapt ourselves to the environment of that planet than to attempt to adapt that entire planet to us. If wee were able to adapt ourselves relatively easily it would indeed be highly unethical and destructive to alter the planet. You really can't argue an ethical question like this without a full picture of the actual parameters of the question.

[Winter Man]

I think the problem with the terraforming question is that the OP didn't specify what alternative technologies were available. I don't think it's a given that terraforming would be the only option for creating habitats for humans beyond Earth. For example, if an Earth-like world were found (say similar gravity, oxygen atmosphere of similar pressure, but slightly different atmospheric gas mix) it may well be vastly easier to adapt ourselves to the environment of that planet than to attempt to adapt that entire planet to us. If wee were able to adapt ourselves relatively easily it would indeed be highly unethical and destructive to alter the planet. You really can't argue an ethical question like this without a full picture of the actual parameters of the question.

This is true, and for a planet like Mars it's vastly easier to just dome it here and there, eventually joining the domes up centuries down the line. By that point you've effectively terraformed it anyway, you just have an artificial sky.

[Outlander4]

WTF?

the ethics of exterminating diseases such as small pox and polio are interesting; i think it's probably kind of dodgy, but it is justifiable on grounds of self-defence.

the same argument doesn't apply to alien life living on a different planet, in fact in the situation we are arguing here we are the aggressors and it would be appropriate for the alien life to exterminate us, in it's own defence.

The problem with exterminating (mostly, smallpox is effectively dead now, living in three or four labs mostly in cryopreservation) is that by exterminating the disease we effectively exterminate the factor of evolution. Natural selection is thus reduced. Moreover, eliminating the infectious agent ultimately frees an ecological niche for another organisms to come and live in (HIV, anyone?).

It's a very difficult ethical question, all-in-all, and it requires some long-term thinking humans are mostly incapable of. Curiously, terraforming requires exactly the same thing.

As a broad answer to OP:

I don't think that terraforming a planet with indigenous life is ethical. On the other hand, living organisms adapt to thrive in all environments and eventually change them to be better suited for life; thus the planet should develop a complicated ecosystem which should be perfectly visible from orbit. That is, if the place looks like a lifeless rock, it probably is.

As for alternatives to terraforming, making a shell around asteroids/dwarf planets may be a nice way to colonise other worlds. I'd rather not live in such place myself, with the sky made of metal plates several meters thick, lamps that somehow more or less exactly fail to simulate daylight and horizon that is so small that you can spit over it. Some city dwellers may be perfectly fine with that, though, and with added fun of low gravity, denser atmosphere, perfectly working wing-suits and ease of doing business in space it may be an ok opportunity.

[m4v]

We've been Terraforming on Earth since we sprung out of the muck, and have radically changed lots of environments on the small scale (cities replacing forests or plains-lands, shrinking polar regions or rain forests, and lots of pollution) and even perhaps on the global scale with emissions. While most of it has been negative, we've even managed to make positive changes when we give things a little thought, but in the end changes are changes.

So I'm not really sure that doing it on Mars would be any different. Humans are pretty adaptable, but we also adapt our environments to us far more than any other living being that I can think of.

Of course we're also the only one that would even give it a second thought, so maybe we're ahead of the game in that regard

Our "terraforming" of Earth is just changing the CO2 levels from 280ppm to 400ppm, that's it. That's all we all could do, with the whole humanity working in that for more than 100 years. What you need to do in Mars is nowhere near that scale, and unlike in Earth, it isn't going to give us free money.

[Seret]

Our "terraforming" of Earth is just changing the CO2 levels from 280ppm to 400ppm, that's it. That's all we all could do, with the whole humanity working in that for more than 100 years. What you need to do in Mars is nowhere near that scale, and unlike in Earth, it isn't going to give us free money.

Quite. It's extremely premature to say that our civilisation is capable of controlled geoengineering of the scale and precision required for terraforming. Even developing the technology would be difficult, how and where would you do a controlled experiment?

[jwenting]

WTF?

i'm in favour of our species going extinct, i'm not in favour of murdering people, and i have never heard of anyone arguing that we should kill people. we should go extinct by not creating new people and not by killing people who exist, because this way minimises the suffering we, as a species, create.

[Removed by the Moderation Team]

But of course that's never the idea. The idea is for everyone else to die, except yourself and your friends.

And yes, these guys think we should actively destroy human life to the point where there are hardly any people left.

They're the guys who think that we should never have invented medicine so people'd not grow old and instead die at a very early age, we should not help people in need of food when their harvests fail so they starve to death, they're the guys who think books like Tom Clancy'd Rainbow Six describe a pretty good idea.

That's the kind of people you think are so great, a bunch of eugenicists and wannabe genocidal maniacs who want to kill as many people as possible (of course they'd never personally pull the trigger, except when you consider the pen of a politician signing a law mandating forced sterilisation for tens of millions in exchange for building a few hospitals, which then get stocked with unsterilised tools, medication that's known to have fatal side effects, etc. etc. to be such).

Edited November 7, 2013 by sal_vager

[ZedNova]

If we've gone far enough in space to find life, we've probably found planets that are better candidates for terraforming, or ones that don't need any at all.

[sal_vager]

...

And this is where threads like this have to be brought to a close, even as a joke, admonishing another member to kill themselves is not acceptable conduct on these forums.