Links to some interactive maps of US coastal cities where you can flood low-lying areas. Bad news for Miami and New Orleans if it happens.
What Could Disappear - NYTimes.com
Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?
- Thread starter Flunklesnarkin_sl
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What Could Disappear - NYTimes.com
Cad
scientia potentia est
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If a supernova is going to kill us Mars won't be any safer. I don't really know how far we'd have to go if there was a supernova close to earth to survive it.
Oh don't get me wrong. We should colonize as many planets as we can.
You can't say we should colonize Mars though at the same time you are saying Earth is doomed because we don't have the technology to move good topsoil to Canada though ...
You can't say we should colonize Mars though at the same time you are saying Earth is doomed because we don't have the technology to move good topsoil to Canada though ...
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I wish you guys would hurry up and reach a consensus so that I can plan the rest of my week accordingly.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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its just the sad throw-away culture we live in. "oh, your planet is broken? throw it away and buy a new one."
Eomer
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I'm not sure why you're so hung up on human extinction, though. There's a whole shitload of horrific scenarios that we should be looking to avoid that still stop short of extinction. Why do you keep coming back to it?
It's not just New York. It's damn near ever major city on the planet. And sea level rise is one consequence of climate change among many.
I don't think that supernovas in general are particularly threatening to us, because the chances of one happening near enough to be dangerous are quite low. Our sun is in a pretty quiet, cozy part of the Milk Way. It's not like there's a shitload of blue hyper giants nearby, all ready to cook off. The big concern is a gamma ray burst somewhere in the Milky Way whose axis of rotation is pointed at us. That's really, really bad news. It's also incredibly unlikely, as only a few of those happen in a given galaxy in a million years. And again, it would have to be pointed at us.
I'm also not clear on why people are trying to associate addressing/mitigating climate change with interstellar colonization. To me they're two quite different, separate issues. We should be addressing climate change because the sooner we do, the easier it will be and the less damaging it will be. Serious action needs to start happening yesterday. Colonization of space is a long term goal, but realistically is decades away if not longer, depending on how you define "colonization". I don't really see how the two are directly related.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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Oh I agree completely; I think we should take environment change very seriously and attempt to avoid these scenarios. This all started from a comment that was saying if Dinosaurs can go extinct, so can we. And I said it would be very difficult for us to go extinct in a similar manner due to no real competition for us, and it snowballed. No real reason to focus on human extinction in particular.
He is focused on that because on this side of extinction we can survive almost anything.
If people start dying off in the millions next year you don't think we will band together and make a few safe habitats and ride it out?
There are a ton of things we need to do in order to be better to the environment but it will take an extinction level event to wipe us out and not 50 years of rising temperatures.
Asshat wormie
2023 Asshat Award Winner
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I dont. I imagine we will regress to tribal mindsets and form small groups which will war with each other for resources.
Eomer
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I would hope that your goal for humanity over the next century or two is a bit higher than "clinging to existence in isolated, near-polar settlements practicing near-subsistence agriculture". There's a big difference between surviving and thriving.
You do realize that the climate has a huge amount of inertia, and that even if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow, that temperatures would continue to rise for millenia, right? "2C of warming" means what the climate will be at 2100 or whatever. But even if we've stopped all emissions by then, temperatures will continue to climb long, long after because of past emissions.
You are purposely being obtuse. Cad isn't saying that is optimal or preferred. He is saying that if we don't have an extinction event we will "survive" anything. Not that we will thrive or live good lives.
You are bringing up the atmosphere on Earth but do you think we should be colonizing Mars or the moon?
You are bringing up the atmosphere on Earth but do you think we should be colonizing Mars or the moon?
Cad
scientia potentia est
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Elect me dictator for life and I think even hodj would agree with my agenda. I'd immediately prune our blow up brown people overseas budget by about 200 billion and invest in:
$50B/year - hire all the best physicists and associated engineers in the world and put them on Fusion, 100%, make it work, period. I'd also give citizenship to anybody that gets hired onto the project and makes a contribution in the eyes of the "citizenship group". That should allow us to poach all the best from all over the world.
Triple NASA's budget and make propulsion tech and colonization their focus. Their budget is about $20B so tripling it would cost me $40B. Good to go.
$25B a year on Genetic Engineering. Same as Fusion, hire all the best biologists with two goals in mind: editing the genes of developing embryos to eliminate genetic defects and allow for selection of those with higher intelligence, better strength/stamina, etc. This is probably where me and a lot of others will diverge, but I see nothing wrong with improving ourselves genetically so long as it's not a requirement. You should be able to make babies au natural if you choose. Second goal of Genetic Engineering would be gene therapy on adult individuals, to correct genetic defects/problems that are discovered later.
I'd also love to put billions per year into virus research and destruction methods, the way big Pharma is doing it now is asinine.
The rest of my billions would go towards my boarding school education plan for all, which would finally take control of the sorry state of education in this country and get primary education out of the hands of those least equipped to handle it: parents. I've explained this in previous posts so I won't go into it again, but if you're curious I'll explain.
These things combined would improve our lives an immeasurable amount, remove a lot of our concern over what we're doing to the environment (but not all) and improve quality of life for all social classes, for the measly cost of not blowing up Achmed this year.
gogusrl
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Cad
scientia potentia est
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Well that's kind of dumb on it's face because the notion of Dinosaurs going extinct is dated anyway. I've got dinosaur descendants shitting on my car every time I park in the city.
Eomer
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Actually, the discussion before hodj got in there and hodj'd it was more a general discussion of climate change. It started with BrotherWu posting a shitty chart that tries to make it look like humans can't possibly influence the climate and went from there:Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work? - Page 167
So I don't really see how I'm being obtuse here. Just because hodj and Cad went full autism about whether or not climate change could cause humans to go extinct, doesn't mean that's what the discussion was originally about.
Realistically we are decades away from being able to support a large scale colony on the moon or Mars. And probably even further away from such a colony actually being self-supporting, without need of re-supply from Earth. I'm all for continued public and private investment in both manned and unmanned space exploration. But I'm also realistic about the near and medium term prospects. Humanity is a long, long ways away from truly colonizing the moon, Mars, or anywhere else other than Earth.a_skeleton_03_sl said:
Again, what does the Earth's atmosphere and/or climate change have to do with space exploration or colonization?