Posted on 05/17/2015 5:16:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It’s no secret that uncurbed climate change and population growth are going to (and already have) put stress on the planet. But the situation is getting so bad that one prominent NASA scientist says we have to start thinking about terraforming Mars and that, in order for the human race to survive at current levels, we will eventually “need at least three planets.”
“The entire ecosystem is crashing,” Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Center said Thursday. “Essentially, there’s too many of us. We’ve been far too successful as the human animal. People allege we’re short 40-50 percent of a planet now. As the Asians and their billions come up to our living systems, we’re going to need three more planets.”
Bushnell was discussing the release of The Millennium Project’s “State of the Future,” an annual report that looks at global challenges and how they might be solved. He said that Mars is a good start, but we’d soon need even more space to live.
“If NASA terraforms Mars, that’ll take about 120 years, and that’s only one planet,” he said. “We’d need more shortly.”
It’s not the first time someone has floated the need for humans to colonize other planets, but usually such ideas are proposed as a way for the human race to survive in the event of a cataclysmic asteroid collision or nuclear war. In 2012, the World Wildlife Fund also suggested the three-planet idea, stating that we're using about 50 percent more resources than the Earth can support, and that by 2050 we’d need three planets to sustain that rate.
Bushnell didn’t say when he thought we might need three planets or what planets those might be—Mars is a good start, but beyond that, the Solar System is looking pretty barren as far as terraform-able planets go.
This is how seawater irrigation would work.
"The point isn’t to be alarmist or cynical, says Jerome Glenn, CEO of the Millennium Project. It’s about identifying the challenges Earth faces and finding a way to rise above them. “We have no right to be pessimistic. We have to find out what’s intelligent to do to make this species survive,” he told me. “If you think the problems aren’t going to get better, then why try. And if you think there aren’t problems, then why change anything?”
In any case, Bushnell wasn’t suggesting that we absolutely need to leave the Earth—he was saying that we need to stop consuming like we are. He’s got one solution in mind: Salt water farming.
Halophytes, a class of plant that grows well in salt water, could potentially be used to create biofuel by growing plants in the middle of the oceans (or at least using salt water to irrigate plants we do have in agriculturally-unproductive parts of the world). Scientists are working on the possibility, and an MIT project suggested that some pilot programs started in India, Pakistan, Laos, Algeria, and other poor countries should be started sometime this year, but so far, not much progress has been made. Bushnell says it’d solve most of our problems.
“If you grew halophytes on wastelands using seawater, in 10-15 years you’d have fuel that cost $50 a barrel. That’s half of what petroleum costs today,” he said. “With that, you could solve land, food, water, energy, and climate. All of that comes together.”
If we can’t do that, it just may be time to start buying land on Mars.
Can we put the all of the people like the ones at ferguson on a different planet, and let them burn that one down?
Pure BS!
Geez, what nutcases...
We cannot even get one manned vehicle to Mars, much less get a whole lot of people there, and then “terraform” it at the same time.
These people need to retire and start writing science fiction novels. At least it would be honest work.
Bingo!!!!!!! The most highly acclaimed seven exclamation mark award is yours. Congratulations.
Maybe liberals can go to Mars, and create their nirvana there? Just imagine — no conservative politicians or conservative voters to get in their way, no established cultures or societies with cultural norms opposed to liberalism.
This has got it be a liberal dream, to start society over and construct a while new society based on liberal ideas.
stress on the planet.”
Oh i HOPE that its not Microaggrieved... there’s no TELLING what it might do.
Dear Earth, WE’RE REALLY Ever So Sorry ! Honest
I have a superb idea. Let’s convince all the people that work, farm, build, create, lead towards the goals of the Founding Fathers to quit having children and reward those with no education, no work ethic, no job, no love of country, no love of God, no sense of anything except entitlement and dedication to the destruction of the Christian World to not only reproduce, but reproduce here. Oh, and while you are at it, value the Delta Smelt over man. That should solve all our problems.
Maybe if they fire these incompetent morons, they won’t have the time to spout off endlessly from their hallucinatory parallel realities.
Obama’s NASA Scientist living in La La Land just like their Boss
Dennis M. Bushnell, BlueTech Forum
Dennis Bushnell, Imagine Solutions Conference & Initiatives
Dennis M. Bushnell, lifeboat foundation
Dennis Bushnell as guest in The Space Show, aired on April 27, 2008
5 Questions for Dennis M. Bushnell (Chief Scientist at NASA) on the U.S. Space Shuttle Program, July 19, 2010, www.britannica.com
Dennis Bushnell: Conquering Climate Change, The Futurist, May-June, 2010, World Future Society
Dennis Bushnell: Algae: A Panacea Crop?, The Futurist, March-April 2009 Vol. 43, No. 2, World Future Society
Jim Hidges: For Bushnell, Green Is Global, Personal, NASA
Denise Adams: Bushnell on the Environment: ‘We should have changed things 20 years ago, NASA
A bit of a Greenie, eh?
Pish posh. We’ll simply ruin it too so why bother? We’ll probably even change the climate. Oh, and be funded by the Koch brothers who invented evil. :>}
So much of the chatter of world affairs seems to point to the idea that some vast percentage of people are not needed. I think the Elitests would just love to kill off 80% of the population worldwide. They, of course, would be utterly untouched by the purge, but at the far end of it, they could settle down on their own 500-acre estates, with a few lucky slaves to care for them. It is the Progressive Dream.
But -- you know -- if the ol' "three planets" thing ends up working, then the population cull probably won't be needed ...
Earth does. Mars don't.
One for China and India. One for the Duggars. The 3rd for the rest of us.
> Can we put the all of the people like the ones at ferguson on a different planet, and let them burn that one down?
Along with the homonazis and Muslim. That way they will all kill themselves too while they’re at it....
No, actually the planet couldn't care less about anything we do. Does it strike you as peculiar that in the same breath these Chicken Littles fret about keeping the human race alive they whine that there are too many of us? It would be an amusing paradox if it didn't reveal the genocidal hypocrisy of the left.
It's an added twist to throw in the hoax of global warmin....sorry, climate change.
Ganymede
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