NASA Proposes Warming Mars 979
hotsauce writes "The Guardian reports a NASA scientist has proposed releasing a gas on Mars to start a global warming of the planet in order to make it more hospitable for life. No word on how much traction this has amongst geophysicists. I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet."
No ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
safety? (Score:4, Insightful)
No life on Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pop science. (Score:2, Insightful)
And so how would you expect that to make any difference on mars? You would be have to be sure of the results to start. Until we know we are global warming here I say we hold off and not try experiments over a whole planet.
Mars what about Earth??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's outsource Global Warming! (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent!
We cannot control the effects and cost of global warming on our own planet, so let's try it somewhere else and in the long run, reduce costs for earth inhabitants.
Fortunately enough, nobody yet figured out how to make PROFIT with this
Arrogant? (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean as the article states , the process would take thousands of years, and even then, any simulation of the effect it would have on the planet would be sorely lacking in the kind of detail needed to make an accurate prediaction over such a timescale.
I mean let's face it, we are still not totally sure of the impact human kind is having on the enviroment here, especially in comparison to sun spots etc.
global warming (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet.
None, apparently, if you're one of those who thinks that the uncertain economic effects of the Kyoto accord are more significant than the uncertain environmental effects of dumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Or does conservation only apply to other planets?
old news? or no news? (Score:2, Insightful)
"This would take hundreds or even thousands of years. But since the raw materials already exist there, some future space mission could start to turn up the heat in a world frozen for at least 2bn years."
is this a native gas? how would they activate it?
time scale (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're willing to wait a few million years, sure.
Re:No ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forget nation building (Score:1, Insightful)
Yet again, correlation is not causation.
http://stat.tamu.edu/stat30x/notes/node42.html [tamu.edu]
Re:No ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Simulation and Testing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow I suspect that whether it's right or wrong we'll feel just fine about affecting an entire planet with a minimum amount of "simulation and testing". We haven't been shy about affecting the one we live on so what makes anyone think we'll hesitate to start monkeying around with another one.
Re:Pop science. (Score:2, Insightful)
> heard them all and I've seen the real data.
perfect mach of a closed mind.
Why are mankind's actions "polluting"? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why is something "virgin" and untouched by man so intrinsically superior to something that humanity has made use of somehow?
If you can't answer these questions on your own you're nothing more than an uninformed sock puppet for someone else's viewpoint.
Re:No ! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's virgin in that it's LIFELESS. Why should it remain that way?
The ecological problems on earth are the REASON humanity should colonize, not a reason they shouldn't.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Progress is caused by problems.
Yours is a neo-luddism.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
"artificially created greenhouse gases could set the Martian climate simmering."
"This would take hundreds or even thousands of years."
Let's not get too carried away with the 'stupid idea' theme just yet. I don't think "now" is part of the equation.
Re:No ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Solar output is better correlated with temperature (Score:2, Insightful)
You're speaking in ignorance.
Solar output correlates better with global climate change than does CO2.
Do a little googling. One example: stanford.edu [stanford.edu]
Don't bother giving my what ever phony story you have. I've heard them all and I've seen the real data.
Translation: poster's belief is not scientific and fact-based, but ideological and faith-based, therefore additional facts will NOT be considered. Any data that disagrees with poster's preformulated conslusions will be denied as a Papist Plot ...er.... anti-Muslism heresy ...wait... Communist propaganda...got it! ... "right wing lies".
So, Anonymous Coward, if you've seen all the "real data", please give your cutting one sentence rebuttal of the Stanford reference above.
The Earth IS at Equilibrium (Score:1, Insightful)
The Earth is a much more resilient place than people give it credit for. I'll believe the sky is falling when I see it.
Point A to point B (Score:2, Insightful)
Assuming that stuff is as powerfull as they say, that it can raise Mars's temp imagine what it could do to ours...
can you say "oops"?
Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
When Mankind can prove it can live in equilibrium oni Earth, then it can spread elsewhere.
Huh? That's suicidal. How about: until we prove we can live in equilibrium on a planet, we must spread elsewhere.
By the way, living on a planet for geolocially long periods of time will require geologic action, not misguided, pristine inaction.
Explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
What is irresponsible is not to think about it until it's too late.
yeah, don't want to mess Mars up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because if we screw it up, we might turns mars into an inhospitable desert!
Oh wait.
So much for the Prime Directive (Score:2, Insightful)
what about global cooling... (Score:3, Insightful)
i'm not joking, it seems to me that it would be energetically MORE feasible to cool things down in venus's atmosphere than it would be to heat things up in mars, and probably take less time too
to heat mars up, you would need a significantly denser atmosphere... where is that coming from?
while on venus, you just need to precipitate certain things out of the already dense atmosphere
it is easier to remove something already there than to introduce something that isn't there
of course, cooling down venus or heating up mars are both huge undertakings
it just seems to me that the thermodynamics of cooling down venus presents an easier challenge in comparison
Re:No ! (Score:5, Insightful)
It ignores that fact there is no equilibrium on earth. It is constantly changing, and we are changing with it. It also assumes a tremendous value on "virgin soil" as if this one fact makes it better. And what is the value in waiting till we have mastered the earth to start looking at a completely different type of planet... this assumes the Earth data is going to apply to Mars somehow.
This reminds me of the people that say that humans changing the earth aren't natural, therefore it's bad. I always have to wonder what about humans aren't natural, because we are exactly like every other creature on the planet. We have absolutely no choice but to act in our nature. Somewhere along the lines someone decided that if it changes the environment too much, then it's not "natural". This argument isn't sound, or I'd argue that beavers building huge dams and creating gigantic ponds/lakes/starting small ecosystems themsleves aren't "natural".
Don't tell me now that beavers are ok because they look pretty natural doing it, but we as humans don't. Or, is it just us and the beavers now, screwing up the Earth for the whales?
I wonder what point in human evolution we became "unnatural"; Was it the whole opposable thumb thing? Tools? Fire? The wheel? The premiere of "American Idol"? The fact is, all of it is natural, just not "woodsy" like wildlife lovers would like you to believe everything should be.
But back to Mars; Sure, there might be something we could do with the soil on Mars that we can't get back if we make it habitable. On the flip side of that, what good is it if we really can't get to it for any meaningful amount of time?
There's a balance between preserving samples so that they can be observed, and entering the environment and effecting it so that one can utilize the resources.
Fact is there's going to be a balance... we're going to try things, and we'll not always be right, but we'll make progress and learn, and the "naturalist" will tell you it's never time to move forward. The guys at NASA aren't stupid, there will be alot of baby steps and testing before they decide to try anything.
Re:Stupidest thing ever (Score:3, Insightful)
All the key ingredients for the warming media (Fluorine based gas, according to the article) exists on Mars.
And yes, the warming agent will evaporate away in a long run. As Martian air warms it up, the rate of the evaporation would increase. This is easy to understand if you know Maxwellian distribution. If not, look it up. Basically each particles in the gas at a certain temperature doesn't all have the same kinetic energy (== mean speed); some particles have slower than the average speed, while others move much faster. And those particles that are moving faster -- especially faster than the escape velocity of Mars -- have a chance to escape (i.e., evaporate out).
But for those heavy molecular compound, the timescale of evaporation is long, and the article implies that the scale time is about 2 billion years.
It's not hard to derive these conclusions by reading the article. The Gurdian is generally better at it than any other news source in the U.S.
Re:No ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Insightful?
Terraforming Mars at the most optimistic will take centuries. During those centuries we'll have plenty of time to study Mars before there is any noticeable change. I submit that creating an ecosystem on a sterile planet, or one that harbours no multi-cellular life, as seems probable, is not polluting. In this case, the greenhouse would be literal: creating a warm hospitable environment to encourage life.
Mars problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Several thousand years ago, when the last ice had more of the ocean's water locked up in glaciers, North America and Asia were connected. That is how the first people got here...by walking.
It was only after the ice melted and the sea level rose that it required boats.
Re:Ahem (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if the whole world was a democracy (which it's not), the world at large does not have the means to get there first and claim it... and the certaintly wouldn't contribute to the effort even if they did support it. So nyah nyah to them.
=Smidge=
Re:No ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's to say that (evolution --or-- our maker, depending on your beliefs) didn't intend for us to do exactly that? I mean, think about it: While we're stuck on Earth, we are one nuclear war or asteroidal impact away from extinction. How do we know that we weren't (made --or-- evolved) for the purpose of having the intelligence we needed to eventually spread our civilization out to other planets? I mean, if we lived in equilibrium, why would we ever leave the planet? If we leave the planet, we could spread our influence out in a few directions, and possibly even exist to the end of time.
You've gotta think about the bigger picture, here. You cannot assume we have an infinite time available on Earth to do our basic living.
Re:Alot of difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that your best reason, that it might go wrong?
Sorry but that's dumb. Everything might go wrong. Your house might burn to the ground because of an electrical fault. Does that mean you shouldn't use electricity or that you try to minimise the risk through safety standards and certification? You might hit a wall in your car. Does that mean you don't ride in a vehicle or that you should learn to drive properly and buy a car with various safety features? You might get attacked by a dog (while walking). Does that mean we should kill all dogs or enact laws that make owners responsible for their animals? Your computer might be compromised and be used to store kiddy porn. Does that mean you should unplug all the jacks from the wall and lock the PC in a metal box, or does it mean you should be diligent and use appropriate firewall / antivirus software?
I'm not advocating any crazy experiment on Mars - but if there is a carefully reached and reasonable expectation that something will work and the rewards outweigh the risks, then it should be taken. The alternative is for mankind to collectively cower under the table waiting for the next global catastrophe to wipe us all out.
Besides, who knows what kind of fossel record would be being destroyed by exposing the planet to natural weather forces again.
Yeah right. But to apply your own risk aversion argument, how would we ever know about the "fossel" record? After all, there is a very real chance of mission failure when going to Mars. How can we possibly send people or robots to Mars if the probe could blow up? The same goes for any other human endeavour past, present or future.
Hanging around for something - anything - to be 100% certain (except death & tax) is to piss away any future that humanity might have at all.
Re:The Earth IS at Equilibrium (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no life-ending catastrophe even on the most distant horizon.
Well that's clearly false, for a start. What about the death of the sun? Or of the universe?
More importantly, what about the uncertainties? Like nuclear war? Worldwide plague? Asteroid strike?
The fact is, Earth is a single point of failure for the human race, and we can't predict when it will fail or what will cause the failure. The only safe solution is redundancy. Terraforming Mars is the only remotely feasible option in the near future.
Re:Smokers? (Score:0, Insightful)
Manifest Destiny (Score:5, Insightful)
But, like genetic engineering, it is inevitable: humans will become increasingly engineered on the genetic level, that the living space of man will expand to every corner of the earth and beyond..this is our destiny.
But politics will control WHICH humans will do it, who will be the perfect beings, who will conquer Mars, and at what point will a war with Earth break out?
Being anti-genetic engineering or anti-Mars-colonization is like being anti-gun or anti-drug: forces bound to lose because of the great advantages that a sole user of the technology will have, and their power as a group will be unstoppable, whether they are an organized force or not.
I'd really like to expound on this and probably correct some of my wording, but Slashdot isn't generally a place for well-though-out arguments.
Re:No ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, for that matter...who is to say that we even have a purpose?
Re:No ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Any attempt to warm the planet would have to be preceded by dozens of missions and meticulous research and preparation before anyone had any clue whether it would be a worthwhile undertaking. Any biological or geological evidence would surely form part of that evaluation.
My personal feeling is that it would not be worthwhile to warm Mars for hundreds of years. What's the point if there is noone living there? Let's see some people actually set foot on the surface and do the research. Let's see colonization happen with people living under plastic domes. Then we'd be in a much better position to evaluate the relative merits of warming the entire planet.
Re:No ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, it won't work. (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, they have to find them, they've spent $80,000,000,000 extra taxpayers money on that, more than 1000 US lives (roughly worth one extra WTC tower I guess), a top-secret number of 100,000s Iraqi lives, the US's international reputation, and they've been reelected : it must mean they've been somewhat successful, right?
Re:Why are mankind's actions "polluting"? (Score:1, Insightful)
BTW - if you were truly living in harmony with the environment, you would be naked in the forest hunting food, not using a computer and posting on
Re:what about global cooling... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I cannot for the life of me think of a feasible way to get rid of most of a planets atmosphere. You would need to move the gas offworld, or find some way to eliminate it. Somehow I doubt that pumping it into tanks and lauching them into the sun would work terribly well. If we put a black hole in orbit maybe...
Re:The Earth IS at Equilibrium (Score:2, Insightful)
Humans can, with a little enthusiasm, make the planet uninhabitable for themselves, via nuclear winter, global warming, etc, etc. However, making it uninhabitable for people and killing all life on the planet are two very different things. Even if we drastically change the environment, there are plenty of extremophilic life-forms that will simply expand out of their current niche, mutate, and re-fill the planet with life. Cockroaches, bacteria living near volcanic ocean floor vents... Life in general is resilient. You're probably not going to sterilize the planet, at worst you'll make it unlivable for people.
Re:Easy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Um...but yeah...don't believe him, he's just a liberal hippie who doesn't know anything.
I believed in global warming (and that DDT is dangerous, among other things) before I read the book.
Re:No ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you at least read the article? The slashdot writeup was sensationally misleading, as usual. Actually, here's some more info [nasa.gov] on the project, more than is in the Guardian link.
Basically, it is NOT a proposal to warm Mars, it's a study exploring various ways that Mars COULD be heated, and how long such methods would take (conducted by an undergrad student at U. Mass). And they even acknowledge in that link that it would be significantly well into the future before any decision would every be implemented to try warming Mars, and at that point the method of using PFC's would probably be archaic compared to future technology.
So keep your pantyhose on, NASA isn't trying to warm Mars, it's just a study. And in all likelihood it was an offshoot of various studies of global warming on Earth, in which case doing more planetary models of effects of PFCs, among others, would be a good thing!
Re:The Earth IS at Equilibrium (Score:1, Insightful)
Nobody is seriously saying the Earth is going to become uninhabitable, but far less than "uninhabitable" could be quite bad for the quality of human existence, especially if change becomes widespread. If the plains of much of the Midwest of the U.S. and western Canada became unfarmable, for example (think 1930s dustbowl), they would probably still be habitable, but the impact would be very serious. It would get worse if the same sort of thing was happening to many other agricultural areas of the planet at the same time.
Change on Earth is expected. Earth has seen everything from continental glaciation to balmy conditions that make the current warming projections seem mild. Life and the Earth is resiliant to it. Extinctions happen, and then life goes on.
But many human systems have less capacity to absorb change before bad things happen. Many civilizations have collapsed in the face of merely local climatic change and the overuse of local resources. We are running a similar experiment at a global scale, and we don't know the outcome.
In my opinion, the knowledge that other life will go on, and that humans will probably not become completely extinct even if things go badly, is not much of a consolation. To me, dismissing the issue is kind of like running up a huge credit card debt with the expectation that your inheritors will take care of it all, even if they haven't been born yet. Worse, given the uncertainties, we don't know for sure what the current balance is. Maybe it isn't as bad as we think? Sure. Maybe it is worse? Let us hope not. But either way, such an uncertainty is justification for caution rather than a "we don't know for sure, so let's go on a spending spree!" approach, spending until the sky really does fall, when the bank cancels your card and repossesses your home.
That is the point: sure, be skeptical, be happy that all life or all humans aren't going to become extinct even in the worst case, but if the uncertainty is real, that *still* isn't an excuse for business as usual, especially when far less than the worst case is still bad.
Re:Bad idea (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:safety? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have proof that it's dead? Last I heard, the jury is still out on whether it's a "dead" planet. The fact is that there's still a pretty reasonable possibility of microbial life on Mars. We've already managed to make a number of species on this planet extinct. So what, we should just start doing it willy nilly wherever we want?
I know, microbes, big deal. But the fact remains that finding microbial life in our solar system and being able to examine it can give us a great deal of information about how life started here on Earth and even give us an idea for how feasible life is elsewhere in the galaxy and universe.
Personally, I'd like to wait until we're pretty damn positive that Mars is dead before we go screwing with its atmosphere. Or at the very lease, collected samples of whatever variety of microbial life it may harbor. Not to mention, it doesn't do anything for us to create a thicker atmosphere without a magnetic field. It'll just be a warmer deadly place.
Re:Easy! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure he did his "research". I've read Cato Institute studies too that are backed by citations and other studies, and usually the studies are either dumb, contradicted by other studies, or simply do not draw the conclusions the Cato Institute wants you to think. Cato, of course, has the excuse that it's not a scientific body, it's an economic body, and it's trying to find ways to fit the world around economics.
Crichton doesn't have the luxury. He's essentially yelling "You're all wrong" to an audience where the experts continue to disagree with him after he's made his case. If you've spent any time on Usenet, you'll be familiar with lots of people who do this.
There are some consensus's at the moment:
1. The Earth is under a relatively recent spell of disproportionate warming. Whatever else it might be, cyclical seems a tad unlikely.
2. The amount of CO2 in the air is increasing as a result of human activity. (It may be for other reasons too, but right now, human beings are definitely responsible for a massive amount of CO2 generation.) This is self-evident, you can't burn carbon stocks like coal and oil without expecting it to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
3. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The experiments have been done.
Beyond that, we don't know. Most of the economists arguing against the notion there's any threat usually come down to making one of four arguments: That the first is false (no, it's true, ask NASA.) That the second is false (No, that's true too, it's self-evident.) That the third is false (erm, no, do the experiments.) Or all three might be true but we don't know if human activities are enough to make a major change to the climate, and as we don't know, we should pretend we're not and carry on business as usual.
Anyone can make use of the fourth argument because it essentially requires no proof. "They can't predict for sure that GW is caused by humans". Crichton appears to be ignoring what's going on and hoping the fuzziness and FUD inherent in the final GW-kook argument will carry the day. That's probably why there's no avalanch of scientists in existance saying "Wow, Michael, we never thought of that" (mass slapping of foreheads) "We were wrong all along."
Re:No ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pipe Dream (Score:2, Insightful)
Mars has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide because that gas, too, is easily ionized. Nitrogen and oxygen, on the other hand, will leave without the magnetic field. The magnetic field argument is valid.
I'm in favor of trying the experiment. We need to learn how to modify the climate of a planet so we have some chance of fixing what we've done to Earth. Eventually we're going to have a price to pay for our actions, and we need to be ready to do that. Mars could teach us how, and right now it's worthless for anything else.
Re:So much for the Prime Directive (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Easy! (Score:2, Insightful)
Making him supremely qualified to... uh... be a climatologist?
Duty. (Score:5, Insightful)
A project as large as terraforming Mars (or an asteroid) by it's very nature will require massive biological systems for completion. I predict that living creatures will be adapted both to vaccuum and various atmospheres, if we don't find life already there - giant tree cities on comets, kelp ponds in Mars craters, post-human cyborgs, etc.
Creating new biospheres and offworld industries will greatly improve both standards of living and our ecological footprint on Earth. Enough colonization will mean the ability to protect the home world better. Making Mars bloom is our duty and destiny.
Support private spaceflight, it's the only way this can happen. And fire up the florine pumps. 8)
Josh
Re:No ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's to say that (evolution --or-- our maker, depending on your beliefs) didn't intend for us to do exactly that?
More importantly, who's to say that the condition it is in RIGHT NOW is the one, true condition that it must remain in for the remainder of our existance?
People in general have this really silly notion that the way they see something today is 1) the way it has always been, 2) the way it always must be, and 3) the right way for things to be.
Example 1: coast of Oregon. There's a wonderful spit of sand on the ocean side of a river bay. The spit came into existance when the river mouth moved north. Rich people have built million dollar homes on that spit. It wasn't there 40 years ago; there is a really good chance that the river will wash it away again in another 40 years -- but the people who own homes there think "this is the way it MUST be" and will expect taxpayers to help protect them.
Example 2: images from Mars show large areas where it looks like flowing water has eroded the surface. There is no flowing water today. Is "flowing water" the "right" condition and today's arrid nature an anomaly, or is the arrid nature the "right" condition and flowing water the anomaly?
Consider that the attempt at terraforming will yield interesting and novel scientific results that may be directly applicable to the Earth, and it becomes a no-brainer. That it might convert Mars BACK to something it once was is just a beneficial side-effect. At WORST, if everything goes horribly wrong ON MARS, the place will STILL be uninhabitable. "Can't live there now, can't live there then, but learned a lot in the process" is still a positive result.
Why worry? There's no downside. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Easy! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're looking at 150 or so years of decent climate data for the Earth. Then you've got ice cores and geological data which can fill in more data but with longer time rates for their measurements.
Its not that theres a X year cycle and we should be able to see that, its that there are cycles on top of cycles and large drops and increases in temperatrure of the Earth over its history. You have to deal with cycles on a geologic timeframe, on a solar timeframe, and with many many other factors affecting everything.
It is an absolute certainty that we don't have enough data to prove anything definitively in the climate arena.
That why it makes such a fun political topic for so many people!!
Of course... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy! (Score:3, Insightful)
We know periods of high global temperature correlate closely with periods of high atmospheric CO2 concentration. We know that CO2 concentration has been stable since around 1000AD all the way up to when we started burning fossil fuels as a primary source of energy, at which point the levels began to increase, and ever since then the rate of change has been increasing. However, we don't know whether CO2 concentration causes global warming, or the other way around; there is no causal link implied by the data, only a correlation, and when all you have is a correlation, it is easy to get cause and effect confused.
What global warming alarmists fail to address is the very real possibility that a natural warm climate phase evaporates CO2 from seawater and spurs tectonic activity, which would raise atmospheric CO2 concentration as an effect - meaning that our contributions to CO2 concentration really have no effect at all on global climate. What global warming "debunkers" like to do, however, is ignore data and attempt to perform ad hominem attacks on climate scientists.
Granted, there are a lot of people who refer to themselves as "scientists", but are really nothing more than pundits and theoreticians/philosophers; they do not apply the scientific method and/or they are unconcerned with either having evidence to prove their position, or ignore evidence that contradicts their position. Just as there are many politicians who prefer a faith-based approach to public policy, instead of placing trust in sound science as our best tool to understand our situation.
What we should do is look at the facts. The fundamental debate here is between cause and effect of CO2 concentration and global climate. Ignore the zealots and misguided attempts at global legislation for now. We are trying to answer a question so that we can make sound judgement based on the answer - assuming the answer to support one's judgement would be a mistake.
Now, it's not to say that we shouldn't attempt to limit our use of fossil fuels. This would be a wise move as insurance, and for USians. would additionally unsnare us from the quandary of trade with the Middle East. But a panicking approach instead of one gauged for the best long-term benefit is wrong, until the evidence shows that we do indeed have an acute problem on our hands.