To Terraform or not to Terraform?

[Clinton Huxley]

One argument is that terraforming Mars would increase the environmental niches over all, including for any putative native life forms, so we'd be doing 'em a favour, really..

[Gawdzilla Sama]

One argument is that terraforming Mars would increase the environmental niches over all, including for any putative native life forms, so we'd be doing 'em a favour, really..

Unless they'd evolved for the current situation and couldn't handle the change. The Age of Big Bugs depended on high oxygen levels. When it declined so did the monster scorpions.

[Clinton Huxley]

One argument is that terraforming Mars would increase the environmental niches over all, including for any putative native life forms, so we'd be doing 'em a favour, really..

Unless they'd evolved for the current situation and couldn't handle the change. The Age of Big Bugs depended on high oxygen levels. When it declined so did the monster scorpions.

The weak ecocentric view is that we should terraform it solely for the benefit of the natives, if there are any. So we would engineer conditions that made it easier for the locals to spread, even if those conditions were no use to us...

[klr]

One argument is that terraforming Mars would increase the environmental niches over all, including for any putative native life forms, so we'd be doing 'em a favour, really..

Unless they'd evolved for the current situation and couldn't handle the change. The Age of Big Bugs depended on high oxygen levels. When it declined so did the monster scorpions.

The weak ecocentric view is that we should terraform it solely for the benefit of the natives, if there are any. So we would engineer conditions that made it easier for the locals to spread, even if those conditions were no use to us...

Let's hope whoever is "out there" doesn't take the same view about us pesky native Terran lifeforms ...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

One argument is that terraforming Mars would increase the environmental niches over all, including for any putative native life forms, so we'd be doing 'em a favour, really..

Unless they'd evolved for the current situation and couldn't handle the change. The Age of Big Bugs depended on high oxygen levels. When it declined so did the monster scorpions.

The weak ecocentric view is that we should terraform it solely for the benefit of the natives, if there are any. So we would engineer conditions that made it easier for the locals to spread, even if those conditions were no use to us...

Until we know what they need we can't plan on how to give it to them. If they're ideally suited for the present situation any changes would be problematical.

[Clinton Huxley]

One argument is that terraforming Mars would increase the environmental niches over all, including for any putative native life forms, so we'd be doing 'em a favour, really..

Unless they'd evolved for the current situation and couldn't handle the change. The Age of Big Bugs depended on high oxygen levels. When it declined so did the monster scorpions.

The weak ecocentric view is that we should terraform it solely for the benefit of the natives, if there are any. So we would engineer conditions that made it easier for the locals to spread, even if those conditions were no use to us...

Until we know what they need we can't plan on how to give it to them. If they're ideally suited for the present situation any changes would be problematical.

I concur. Even if we thought we were doing them a favour, we would probably forget to factor something in and end up royally screwing their planet. "Hey, sorry about that!"

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I concur. Even if we thought we were doing them a favour, we would probably forget to factor something in and end up royally screwing their planet. "Hey, sorry about that!"

There's a great story about aliens who come to a ravaged Earth and save the last intelligent being when it's pet goes crazy on him.

The only thing is that the aliens were bird-like and the "intelligent being" was a pet raven. (Written in the 1940s, btw.)

[normal]

I'd terraform the fuck out of that planet.

This thread excites me, because it's a very nice thought. Going out to space and maybe colonizing planets, I mean. I think it's cool

[Trolldor]

To put it simply, why not?

It's hardly playing god and it is hardly arrogant. If we don't leave the Earth we're fucked. We're likely fucked unless we can travel to a habitable Solar System anyway.

[Ian]

Mars terraforming:


Personally, I think Venus terraforming has a better shot. We can block out sunlight from Venus easier than we can bring heat to Mars. And there's more of an atmosphere to transform; easier to take away a dense atmosphere on Venus than create a liveable one on Mars.


'Course, by the time we can do all that and see useful results, we'll probably find some way of getting to other star systems.

[Thinking Aloud]

Timescales ... Therein lies the downfall of any such project. When you consider how long it would take to install a biosphere, with sufficient life to sustain itself such that it will feed the human population, no-one is going to live to see the profit in it. If it doesn't make money to make a bunch of chief execs rich in their lifetime, it's not going to happen. If humanity was sufficiently altruistic to be able to do terraform another planet, it would be sufficiently motivated to do something about the long-term problems on this planet - and it won't do that because there's no profit in doing so: who's gonna cry for the third generation after us?

[Trolldor]

And there are more problems facing the planet than just us. There is still value in terraforming even if we avoid the man-made disasters.

Provided it's actually possible.

[Atheist-Lite]

I'd suggest pumping part of the atmosphere onto the ocean floor here and terraforming parts of this planet under the sea first. This would act as a test bed for technology without having to worry about expensive rocket fuel. And lets face it not much could go wrong compared with things as they stand already?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Timescales ... Therein lies the downfall of any such project. When you consider how long it would take to install a biosphere, with sufficient life to sustain itself such that it will feed the human population, no-one is going to live to see the profit in it. If it doesn't make money to make a bunch of chief execs rich in their lifetime, it's not going to happen. If humanity was sufficiently altruistic to be able to do terraform another planet, it would be sufficiently motivated to do something about the long-term problems on this planet - and it won't do that because there's no profit in doing so: who's gonna cry for the third generation after us?

That's why I want to do Valles Marineris. We don't have to do a whole planet at once.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd suggest pumping part of the atmosphere onto the ocean floor here and terraforming parts of this planet under the sea first. This would act as a test bed for technology without having to worry about expensive rocket fuel. And lets face it not much could go wrong compared with things as they stand already?

Domes? Where would the sunlight come from?