Elon Musk's Latest Idea: Let's Nuke Mars 261
KindMind writes: The Register reports that Elon Musk, in an appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, said that to begin with, human residents on the red planet would need to live in "transparent domes." Before a move to more hospitable habitats, one needs only "to warm it up" and Musk thinks there's a fast way and a slow way to do that. The fast way "is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles" and the slow way "is to release greenhouse gases, like we are doing on Earth."
It is about time we nuke that smug red planet (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet (Score:5, Informative)
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And if you adjusted the sizes of the states in the map to be proportional to population or electoral college votes, you could get a much more clear picture of the election results.
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The use of red as an identifying color by Republicans is an ironic reference to arbitrary media manipulation of party color assignments in line with political correctness. In TV election coverage, it was once conventional to use blue for Republican and red for Democrat. Then they began switching colors in alternate elections for "fairness", and that's when the Republicans decided to adopt red as their color.
Greenhouse gasses? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Greenhouse gasses? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is often pointed out, but the thought is it took millions/billions of years for solar wind to erode away the atomosphere. Could we not produce it faster than solar wind ripped it away?
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Still need the magnetosphere for radiation. Far better to make a colony of underground mole people, cheaper, safer, and everyone can have whatever view outside that they want. I don't get all this crazy dome love. They are just plain needlessly risky.
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Based on how good we are at producing greenhouse gasses here on Earth, I'd wager we'd have little trouble keeping up with the losses due to solar wind.
I'll take that wager, since our issue with green house gasses here on earth comes from our burning of fossil fuels.
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Do we know one way or another if Mars has coal, oil, and natural gas underground the way Earth does?
Re:Greenhouse gasses? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Greenhouse gasses? (Score:5, Interesting)
On geologic time scales, that's true. On time scales relevant to human occupation and terraforming, it's not an issue.
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However, on the timescales relevant to human occupation and terraforming... the fallout from the (tens of?) thousands of thermonuclear weapons is very much an issue. To have any significant effect, they'll have to be either near surface (the second worst for fallout) or surface (the worst) bursts. And no, "clean" weapons won't really make much of a difference. They're only "clean" in c
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Sure, but everything depends on a the timeframe of your project, doesn't it? The atmosphere won't be appreciably eroded in anything like the timeframe in which modern humans have existed. There'll be plenty of time to develop ways of bringing more water to the planet.
The bigger issue is the potential effects of living your lifetime in a continual flux of charged particles dropping down from space. There's reason to believe that spending a lot of time outside of a protective magnetosphere might lead to e
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Bring on the Later Heavy Bombardment!
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If you would surround Mars with an earth like atmosphere right now (with some magic ofc), the solar wind would need 10 million years to reduce it to problematic levels.
Also you seem not to know what the 'Van Allen belt' actually is.
So bottom line, adding/reactivating the Marsian atmosphere for humans would work just fine.
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Both are important.
Venus has no magnetosphere, and it's got a hellish thick atmosphere... so, yes, you're right in a sense that gravity alone is enough to hold certain types of gasses in an atmosphere for a reasonable amount of time. But, Venus is bleeding that atmosphere away in a comet-like tail. Venus once was very much like Earth with vast oceans, but almost all of that water turned into water vapor which was then split by ionizing radiation from the solar wind. The lighter hydrogen and oxygen ion
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And someday Earth's core will cool and we'll lose our magnetosphere and our atmosphere will be stripped away, too. It's not the loss of atmosphere that's a problem, only the loss of atmosphere on a time scale where we can't replenish it and/or move on to another planet to colonize. Assuming we can put an atmosphere back onto Mars in under, say, 250 years, the odds are good we could keep it there faster than the tens-of-thousands-to-millions of years it would take to deplete again.
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Did you learn that from a cereal box or something?
If the Van Allen belts work so well at that, than why does Venus have a thicker atmosphere while having no magnetosphere, and being closer to the sun?
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I only wish government money would be spent this well. I'll take spurring real innovation over pointless wars any day.
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It used to be, they have cleaned up their act in recent years...
Gravity (Score:2)
Is Mars massive enough to have the gravitational pull to keep all of those greenhouse gases from escaping into space?
Blow up the Moon! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Come on, Cohagen... (Score:2)
Henchmen offered (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Mr. Musk,
on your idea to nuke the poles of Mars I was very intrigued. I would like to apply as a loyal henchman for your endeavour.
Key characteristics:
* no questions asked
* red shirt preferred
* no family ties
* screaming capability above normal
* natural aversion against superheroes
* weapon experience : none, but I can look (very) scary
Previous experience : none, but eager to learn.
I look forward to an interview in which I can explain my qualifications further.
Regards,
D. Nachos
Terraforming Mars (Score:2)
The idea here is probably to release the carbon dioxide and water vapor frozen at the poles. The problem is I don't think that there is enough carbon dioxide there, and without massive amounts of carbon dioxide the water will freeze right out. I think the only possibility is to release a tailored mix of long lived gasses that will warm Mars as much as possible.
Mars can't possibly be kept warm without help. Many of the greenhouse gasses will break down eventually, and the solar wind will strip off even ca
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Contrary to that 2007 article, the variations in the Sun's output is not noticeably warming the Earth nor, presumably, Mars. In a few hundred millions of years it will, but that's longer than I want to wait.
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You do realize that it's carbon dioxide ice, not water ice, and that it sublimes (doesn't melt) around -109F / -78C, which is much colder than ice melting at 32F / 0C.
smaller, thinner (Score:2)
Mars is smaller than Earth. Gravity-wise, Mars can't hold on to an atmosphere the way the Earth can. Plus solar wind, plus lack of protection from cosmic radiation.
It would be like living on top of Everest. O2 would be scarce, and it would bleed away quickly. Plus you couldn't stay out long without radiation shielding.
We can terraform Mars, but it would be expensive and not worth it. Easier and cheaper to do something about the runaway greenhouse issue on Venus; thin things out, reduce the atmospheric press
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Just... What?
We could just ... 'thin things out'. Sure. And let's not forget that Venus could 'house enough solar' to export.
Do you even read what you type?
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You forgot about the acid in the atmosphere or the corrosive ground. You couldn't live on the surface. Even probes can't stand the surface for any length of time.
You'd have to live in some bioshock infinite balloon habitation. That poses a whole other set of problems that honestly is more extreme than living on mars or the moon.
On mars you can at least build habitation 20 feet below the surface and be protected from cosmic radiation. Ditto with the moon. Hell there might be lava tubes on the moon which
War of the Worlds (Score:2)
Hasn't anyone read the book? Those Martians have it coming...preemptive strike!
Become Morlocks (Score:2)
Because Earthlings will have to live underground on Mars.
Brillant idea! (Score:2)
Someone help me out with the science... (Score:2)
So nukes aside, let's explore the other option... how would one produce greenhouse gasses on mars? I can't stand the bullshit rhetoric argument that we're pretty damned good at it here on earth, so it must be easy on mars..... On earth we have millions of people, on earth we have COAL, on earth we have industry driven by the consumerism of those millions of people... none of those things exist on mars. There is no energy on mars AT ALL except the sun hitting the planet, and here on earth, using the power
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Considering we put our first lander on Mars in 75, the first 50 years of exploration will be up in 2025. I don't think it's too unreasonable to be talking about it now.
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So nukes aside, let's explore the other option... how would one produce greenhouse gasses on mars? I can't stand the bullshit rhetoric argument that we're pretty damned good at it here on earth, so it must be easy on mars..... On earth we have millions of people, on earth we have COAL, on earth we have industry driven by the consumerism of those millions of people... none of those things exist on mars. There is no energy on mars AT ALL except the sun hitting the planet, and here on earth, using the power of the sun has been argued as the REMEDY for greenhouse gasses! So WTF? Where does the energy and chemistry come from that will produce billions of tons of greenhouse gasses on mars? Sounds like unicorn fart futures are way up!
Why put nukes aside? The polar icecaps hold a lot of CO2 and H2O, with enough energy we could melt them. We could use conventional explosives but nukes would be more efficient. Another option to melt them (and add heat to the system) by using a large reflector in space to direct extra sunlight to the planetary surface. Once you get to a certain point the process should start to feedback on itself, as the planetary temperature warms it would melt more ice which adds greenhouse gasses which warms the plan
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I believe I asked for science... not speculation. Your cavalier use of the word "probably" has nothing to do with actual probability, and should probably be replaced with the word "speculatively" or "imaginatively."
Seems insufficient (Score:2)
According to some quick internet research:
1) A 30x increase in atmosphere would be required in order to walk around with an oxygen tank unprotected without your blood boiling.
2) Melting the polar ice caps completely would approximately double the atmospheric pressure.
So it's unclear to me what advantage the nukes would bring.
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Interesting, but if all the dry ice in the polar caps only causes a 2x increase it's hard to believe that there's enough dry ice on the rest of the planet to cause a 50x increase (considering one wouldn't expect carbon dioxide to be in solid form that often away from the poles). Source please?
Sounds explosive (Score:2)
SimEarth (Score:2)
Reminds me a lot of the terraform Mars scenario in SimEarth.
Step 1: Hit Mars with a couple of comets (brings in water and stirs up dust) ...
Step 2:
Step 3: Prof-... er, I mean watch the forests of Mars burn because you left your oxygen generators on for too long
Quit spending money on space! (Score:2)
Quit spending money on space!
There are plenty of place on Earth we should be nuking first.
Make sure you don't use the Falcon to launch it... (Score:2)
...we'd hate to have it blow up prematurely.
Sorry, I couldn't help it.
But seriously, Elon, keep doing what you are doing. And let's worry about un-fucking this planet before we start fucking up another one.
Late-Breaking News: IT'S HAPPENING! (Score:5, Funny)
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, emerged from Council chambers, and addressed the planet thus:
"IT'S HAPPENING!" thundered the Speaker's voice across the frozen plains. "The first blueworlders came in their natural static form, sending stationary representatives to orbit our world and settle onto our plains. You said that if all they could do was remain in high orbit or dig a little trench that was so tiny that any freshly-hatched podling could cover it over in an afternoon, that the obese and sedentary blueworlers were mostly harmless."
"WE TRIED TO WARN YOU, BUT YOU DIDN'T LISTEN! Then came the mobile ones. Brave fighters for the Martian Defense Force have deflected a few of them into deep space, shot others down in fiery blazes of glory, but still the invaders came. Their mechanized terrors evolved rapidly in size and capability with every wave - the first a small short-lived rock-pushing prototype, the second two larger and armed with gelsac-shredding drills, which left a trail of destruction in their wake during yeernaks of struggle, and the latest one descended from a skyhook, powered by Pew-238, and armed with a fully operational photonic weapon system."
"And now - now, after our atmospheric scientists have confirmed the effectiveness of their hundred-yeernak small-scale test on their own world - we have their declaration of intent to use chain reactions of core annihilation to scour the snows and release so much carbdiox that they create a greenhouse effect here - in order to saturate our elegantly-dessicated sands with the toxic and corrosive dihidrox filth that now covers three quarters of their hot, blue, gellhole of a world. THIS IS THE FUTURE YOU CHOSE!"
"BUT YOU CAN STOP IT, PODMATES! All it takes, all it takes, podmates, is an investment in advancing the tribalism of the organic self-replicators that tend to the blueworlders. The Blueworlder Social and Physical Sciences Committee reports that the self-replicators are flawed, critically so, and tend to devolve into tribal groups prone to infighting, primitive displays of aggression, and intertribal warfare. The only flag their mechanized monsters shall raise will be our own red flags, and they will raise our flag over their own world, hoisted by their own proverbial petards. REJOICE, PODMATES! WE SHALL BURY THEM!"
When a junior analyst reminded K'Breel that maybe the real threat was the self-replicators, and that the creatures the Council had spent a full 30% of the planetary budget fighting, were not, in fact, the primary threat -- that their rapid evolution was actually the result of the controlled and directed guidance of thousands of organic minds working in concert -- and that his report, "Organic Blueworlders Determined to Strike in Homeland" had been summarily ignored, K'Breel had the reporter's gelsacs nailed to two small white rectangular posts and promptly incinerated in carbohydrox fires. Slithering back to the Council chambers as the posts smoldered in the background, the Speaker was heard to mutter "As if a small group of thoughtful, committed organics could change the fate of the world for the better or the worse; as if it ever has..."
Eh, almost right (Score:2)
If he had said that he wanted to drill to the core of mars and inject fissionable material directly into the core to start it back up and hopefully jump start it's magnetosphere he would have had an interesting idea on bringing a dead planet back to life.
An april 1st headline in september? (Score:2)
Crossing the threshold (Score:2)
Am I the only one that think that Elon Musk has crossed the line from visionary to full blown nutjob?
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Only if you ever though he was a visionary.
Lower Gravity on Mars is a problem (Score:5, Informative)
The surface gravity on Mars is 38% of that on Earth [wikipedia.org]. It is not known if this is enough to hold a breathable atmosphere. Additionally, the lower gravity of Mars would require 2.6 times Earth’s column air mass to obtain 100 kPa pressure at the surface. Earth's atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15×1018 kg three quarters of which is within about 11 km of the surface [wikipedia.org]. The atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The Kármán line, at 100 km, is often used as the border between the atmosphere and outer space. So the atmosphere on Mars would have to extend to 260kms to have the same surface air pressure as Earth.
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Someone hand that man a mod-up, he put it way better than me a few posts below. This is basically the problem we face here, Mars would already have an atmosphere, if it could retain it.
Nuking Barsoom is an act of aggression! (Score:2)
How long would that warming last? (Score:2)
As I understand it, Mars has virtually no magnetic field so it receives the full brunt of the solar wind without much resistance. I recall reading (somewhere) that was theory as to why Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere any more. If you release all/most of the CO2 in the polar ice caps, what's to stop the solar wind from stripping that away, too? Plus, what little atmosphere is left on the planet -- still enough to produce the occasional dust storm -- would then producing storms with an exciting new in
Not gonna work (Score:3)
The idea itself is compelling, but you miss one very important little detail: Mars is WAY smaller than our planet. And I mean WAY smaller. It's a little over half the diameter of our planet. Its mass is 1/10th of the Earth's mass. Average density is 2/3 of that of our planet. Escape velocity is half of that we have here.
The problem ain't that it cannot create an atmosphere. The problem is that it cannot retain it.
Re:There's still no magnetosphere (Score:5, Interesting)
What is being proposed is terraforming, which even with nukes is not "quick" in human terms.
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I think people are missing the sheer scale of this, what I assume is tongue-in-cheek. suggestion. We're talking about a planet here. It would take an awful lot of nukes to vapourise enough ice to create any kind of increasd atmosphere pressure, even if there was enough ice to do so. Afterwards it would be quite radioactive and there are no guarantees it wouldn't just quickly freeze again. You'd be much better served parking giant solar concentrator arrays above the poles and blasting away instead.
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Except most of his crazy ideas either never get implemented, or don't work. People focus on his successes so much they tend not to see his failures.
So. Most of my crazy ideas (or yours) never get implemented either. SOME of his crazy ideas have been implemented. Which is why he is funding a real rocket company and we... well, we're posting on Slashdot.
Just crash comets into the planet (Score:2)
Lets you solve the lack of oxygen and other problems all at one go.
Of course that completely ignores the moon is the much more appropriate choice for colonization to begin with.
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An atmosphere on Mars would degrade over time, without replenishment if we don't have a magnetosphere. So basically, we'd need to crash a comet or two onto the planet every century.
If the Mars atmosphere was degrading that quickly (century timescales) due to the solar wind and no magnetosphere, then Mars would have no atmosphere right now. From what I have read, any changes we make would last a million years or so. The real changes happen when you tip the system into a new equilibrium. If you add more greenhouse gasses, then that causes warming. The warming causes frozen CO2 to pass back into the atmosphere, causing still more warming. The idea of thermonuclear bombs at the poles
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"Martians" could import hydrocarbons from Titan.
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Energy source: Nuclear. Chlorine is likely quite common. You'd have to find Fluorine...there is likely a lot there somewhere. Carbon, as you said can come from CO2. You wouldn't need to make that much. Some chlorofluorocarbons are extremely potent greenhouse gasses that have a long life in the atmosphere...half-life in multiple decades if not a century.
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There's a spacecraft depicted in Neal Stephenson's book Anathem that strikes me as already easy to conceive.
That ship was actually based on a real concept [wikipedia.org].
(Also features in KSP [youtube.com] :)
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Also shows up in a book by Poul Anderson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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In particular, those who see no value in space programs have no business commenting on proposals like this. If Mars is useless, then why not let Elon Musk waste his own money nuking it?
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Actually... you would need both.
Gravity to keep an atmosphere is easy. Hell even pluto has a detectable atmosphere even though it's smaller than the moon.
Solar winds do strip atmosphere and over time will leave you like mars of the moon.
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And the parent post demonstrates why America is languishing as a civilization. Behold the "can't do" attitude. Dream small. Spend big. (I'm thinking about the California high speed rail line here...amongst the slowest and most expensive in the world). America is becoming a corrupt small-minded oligarchy.
I think the poster is understating how much protection the atmosphere provides. The Earth's atmosphere alone provides radiation protection equivalent to about a three foot thick slab of metal. As fo
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Nuking the poles would release enough CO2 to start a warming process. This would cause more frozen CO2 to be released from the ground. Eventually you would start releasing water vapour. The initial kick from the thermonuclear bombs would likely start other feedbacks in the system.
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Show me calculations, not seat-of-the-pants assumptions. Because here's a factually supported assumption: if the CO2 and water vapor froze out of the atmosphere to start with, pushing it back into the atmosphere isn't going to rev
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you are a mars climate change denier?
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After we nuked the Poles we'd need to round them up on boxcars and transport them to a facility to be greenhouse gassed.
then baked in ovens until Atmosphere!
Hush, Peon! (Score:2)
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Most high energy radiation is blocked by a simple function of mass. Optical transmission has almost no bearing on other areas of the EM spectrum.
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yes, but there are organisms that would be happy to live in that, if it was warmer, that would then make oxygen atmosphere. it's happened before on another world near you
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Hey God told Bush we had to go to Mars. After freeing Iraq from tyranny. You haven't been listening to His Burning Shrub.
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Yeah... the sand worms!
Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure (Score:5, Funny)
You need to drink some water and go take a nap.
You need to jam a great big black dick up your ass
I was skeptical at first, but I just tried your suggestion and it worked! Thanks!
Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure (Score:4, Informative)
You need to jam a great big black dick up your ass
You need to return to your containment unit (http://www.4chan.org/b/) and stay there, or we'll be forced to use The Hose on you. Again.
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SJW
If raising the signal-to-noise ratio of Slashdot by discouraging shitheads from hanging around makes me a SJW, then so be it.
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Really, kid, go back to 4chan. That's clearly where you belong. Or go do your homework or something.
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Using the term retard is a hurtful reference to those of the non-brain enabled persuasion. This means that you yourself are a Reactionary Derper.
Apparently, you haven't done the math (Score:2)
Please pull out your calculator and just try and figure out what even a 0.5 degree temp difference means when applied worldwide.
You're talking about much more energetic storms. Now judging by your Faux News brainwashed redneck post, I'm sure you live nowhere near a hurricane, but those tornadoes are more than likely to rip your trailer-home to shreds.
In fact, the only good news about Global Warming is that it will completely eliminate Florida. All the oceans have to do is rise a few more inches. Which is c
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The Earth is accumulating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of energy every second due to anthropogenic global warming. Since 1998 that amounts to around 2,269,012,000 total Hiroshima bombs. Here's a page that illustrates that. [4hiroshimas.com]
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... 1. Scientist...enough said ...
People with you're attitude you scare me. Enough said.
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... 1. Scientist...enough said ...
People with you're attitude you scare me. Enough said.
Wow, I was so scared I used the contraction instead of the possessive. Fuck.
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If you take a piss on Mars, it will rapidly become frosty.
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i'm all for nuking mars.
wasn't aware there might be an upside until now, but really, who doesn't think nuking mars is an awesome idea?
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i'm all for nuking mars.
wasn't aware there might be an upside until now, but really, who doesn't think nuking mars is an awesome idea?
Might warm it up or cause nuclear winter on what is already a ball of frozen rock.
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Haven't those poor people suffered enough over the centuries?
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I find it pretty damn funny that alarmists have begun calling global warming climate change like skeptics have always called it. And now they're saying we're heading for amother Little Ice age like we 'realists' have always speculated. And now they're saying CO2 is the weakest gas like we've always said....
I find it pretty damn funny that "skeptics" think "alarmists" have just recently switched to climate change from global warming when the term climate change has been used at least since the 1950's. See: "Plass, G.N., 1956, The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change, Tellus VIII, 2. (1956), p. 140-154."
No scientist has said we're heading for another Little Ice Age, just that the Sun may enter a period like the Maunder Minimum. The Maunder Minimum and low solar output in general was not the cause of the