zip accident wrote:I've said before I like Venus better than Mars for terraforming, and living on the Moon and asteroids better than either.
We're in the minority. But it really is the better target, I agree.
Because though Venus is a hellhole - ironically, due to climate change, as it's crushing atmosphere (90 atmospheres of pressure) is mostly CO2, which makes it hotter on Venus than on Mercury, even though Mercury is the closest to the Sun - it's Earth-sized.
Venus's gravity is 8.8m/s^2 to Earth's 9.8m/s^2. Whereas Mars is only 3.7m/s^2, which is closer to the Moon (1.6m/s^2) than to Earth. A 7521 mile diameter to Earth's 7926 miles.
And, unlike Mars, she can hold an atmosphere. it doesn't have Earth's magnetic field. unfortunately, but it does have an induced magnetic field. It can repel the solar wind, where Mars absolutely can't.
The reason people don't even consider Venus is because, right now, she is a hell hole. Crushing atmosphere, as hot as it gets on any planet, perpetual storms and acid rain.
Like, we've sent probes to Venus and they barely last hours. Specially reinforced probes and we can't stop them from rapidly dying to the conditions there.
So, yeah, a manned mission to a planet where we can't even keep armoured robots alive for more than a few hours? No fucking chance. And that's why no-one considers Venus and plumps for Mars.
But if you can fix Venus's run away climate change, then she would settle down to being the closest planet to Earth we'll ever have, until we get warp drives and go interstellar.
But, yes, to return to Neil deGrasse Tyson's point, to "fix" Venus requires reversing run-away climate change. And if we can do that on Venus, then we can avoid it happening on Earth.
For me, though, it comes back to one simple statistic. The world has around 38 years of oil left. A few more decades natural gas, and around a century of coal.
Those are all "at current rates of usage", so expect the reality to be less than that. Because demand is going up. But also it doesn't take account of the natural "cascade" that will happen. When there is no more oil, than natural gas and coal will be leaned on more heavily. Once natural methane's dead, everything goes on the shoulders of coal. Like, it cannot be "at current rates of usage" because, as we lose one, we weigh down the others much more heavily.
Could more oil and gas fields be found? Yes. And they probably will be. But it's never going to be as much as we've already found. It's not going to make any significant dent in these basic facts.
As oil runs out, then gas runs out, then coal runs out, there's only one way that their prices can go - exponentially upwards to pricelessness. We'll all be, little by little, priced out of the market. Indeed, that's the only thing that'll actually help extend the remaining time to any reasonable extent. That we increasingly learn to live without it. And, of course, if we're doing that, then might as well learn to live without it forever.
This is a dead man walking. Fossil fuels are on their last legs. We cannot continue with them indefinitely, because they don't last indefinitely. There is a very definite finale for fossil fuels on the horizon right now.
Of course, I entirely get why the fossil fuel billionaires are going to keep going to the proverbial "last drop". Because there's still trillions of dollar down there. As the price inevitably rises exponentially, they get filthy rich. There's still a killing to be made in these final days.
But, for everyone else, it's time to give up on it. To transition away.
We need to leave what's left in the ground. Because it'll have a tremendous negative effect on climate change, and it's not worth it for, at best, less than 40 years of oil. Where a tank of fuel already costs you more than a battery recharge, and it'll only just exponentially worse economically.
One way or the other, we end up in the same place. We'll end up with renewables, because they'll be the only things left.
The clue is in the question, as a game show host once said. Renewables renew, non-renewables don't.
There's only a temporary illusion of choice. But there really isn't one. Some greedy cunts get rich on the slight delay to the inevitable, and climate change gets vastly worse. But it makes no difference to the overall outcome.
And if we start now, then we can avoid "the war for Greenland". Putin will increasingly have no funds to invade anyone else. Saudi will have to let its women work, as it's not in an economic position to have "kept women" anymore and it needs the taxes. We can stop our mostly disastrous interference in the Middle East. Renewables like solar and batteries have the means to put "the means of (energy) production" in the hands of working families, sneaking us out from under the thumbs of "Robber Baron" greedy tyrants, when each home can be, to some extent, its own island from the worst of their machinations.
Energy is at the root of it all. Free abundant energy in the hands of the people changes the script completely. It rewrites far more than simply your next electricity bill.
This is the insanity to me. On the one hand, climate destruction and economic collapse and then the fossil fuels betray us by running out anyway. On the other hand, a solar roof and you passively get energy for nothing. Over its lifetime, it pays for itself (many times over) so, in terms of "lifetime cost", they're less than free. It, little by little, collapses the root of all the world's tyrants' power over us. Better air to breathe, better water to drink. The recovery of nature.
The option you're being offered is paradise in comparison. Yet the instinct to stick with the status quo - the devil we know - is so immensely strong. But it will be our undoing unless we can learn to resist it. The status quo is collapsing, the world is turning to shit in front of our eyes. "The system" is going to catastrophically collapse, as it cannot be sustained. We have to switch to a new "system" or this train's going to smash into the buffers at a million miles an hour, and we end up in a Medieval "horse and cart" world once again.
Renewables are our only route out of this inevitable catastrophe (well, okay, there's also potentially nuclear fusion - but that's been "around the corner" for 70 years so far. Maybe it really is now genuinely around the corner, but we can't wait another 70 years. Renewables work now. We have no idea when or if nuclear fusion could be made viable as a solution. Go with renewables and if nuclear fusion does show up as our saviour, that's great, but we can't depend on it swooping in to save us, as it might never come in time).
Only catastrophe - as we're increasingly witnessing - is gained by delay. Eventually, there will be no choice anyway. We're not really playing of time, we're just making things worse for no reason, to avoid accepting the known inevitable conclusion that we'll end up here regardless.
These are the death throes of the old order. Religious nutjobs trying to reassert themselves, as they see the writing on the wall. Tyrants clinging to their last vestiges of power to remain relevant.
Don't get me wrong. Death throes are exactly when the cornered wolf is most deadly. They have nothing to lose, so go insane in their desperation.
But they are dying. Effectively already dead. This is just their final gasp of air - the ultimate freak out, in a vain attempt at survival of their broken old systems - and they will be deadly, but soon they will be dead.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
