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.
If all Leftists would mort themselves they would cut 3 billion people and save the planet. I surmise that they don’t really care.
The answer to climate change?
Climate change.
You know, if the Milky Way and Andromeda are destined to collide; those three planets best be in some other galaxy.
Just say’n.
NASA should start worrying about that and screw the Muzzie outreach.
“If NASA terraforms Mars”
I’m reminded of an old theoretical project - I think it was called Morning Star, or something like that - that dealt with the terraforming of Venus. The idea was, IIRC, to grow algae or other simple plants in orbital space stations, and then seed the carbon dioxide clouds in the upper atmosphere. The idea being the plants would “eat” the CO2, creating oxygen a layer at a time, eventually reaching the surface. IIRC, the idea grew out of a similar proposal from Carl Sagan (or maybe it is the Sagan idea I’m thinking about).
Pretty wild idea, but maybe no nuttier than the Mars proposals and what not.
It’s bad to “stress” the earth, but okay to terraform Mars?
The last I checked oil was 50.00 a barrel....
Assign Venus as the luxury resort for bureaucrats and traders, and build rockets with large passenger capacities to head in that direction.
It’s a good thing we put men on the moon in the 60’s and 70’s.
These guys couldn’t put a man in the next county.
Scary
“Population Bomb” by Paul Erlich was required reading in my 1969 Zoology class. Still have my copy. We’re All Gonna Die!! crap has been going on for almost 50 years.
Yes, that’s why winter has gone from six months long to seven months long in my area - “global warmingcooling”...
One for the Blacks, one for the LGBTQIA’s and one for the rest of us? Or are we going to need more?
It may be the case some day in the distant future that humans are spread across the galaxy, but it won't be because they traveled directly from Earth. It will be because a few people colonized a new planet, had babies, and those children (or their children's children) went on to yet other planets.
I don't know what the carrying capacity of Earth is. I strongly suspect it is much larger than the current 7 Billion. I'm guessing it's larger than the peak population the Earth will see before the demographic transition finally reaches India and Africa.
Scientists trying to make things more clear by saying silly things like "we need three planets for all the humans" just leads to more confusion and nonsense.
50% of the population, across the spectrum, are clinically insane...
Rinse and repeat.
I heard this in the 70s.
We can’t even get a manned vehicle to earth orbit. We have to rely on the Russians.
No, we just need the sun.
I think NASA has outlived its usefulness. The American space program is essentially over.
I think you have to stand back and look at the advancements of the past one-hundred years. Look at the lifestyle and comforts of 1915 and compare to today. A guy gets up....checks his cellphone for weather, and has a doppler-radar display that shows the storms approaching. He has a car with GPS to guide him over to the airport. He’ll fly from Dallas to Alexandria, Egypt. He’ll tour the Pyramids tomorrow....riding in a air-conditioned bus. He’ll drink French glacier water while resting at a resort along the Nile. He’ll return next week to Dallas with some fantastic disease that you’d die from in 1915, but get treatment and easily survive.
So look ahead now by one-hundred years. We will advance with some special engine and be able to reach Mars in three weeks by the mid-way point of this century (thirty-five years away). 3-D printing will eventually allow you to have a 1935 Auburn Roadster-looking car on a 2015 Ford Mustang chassis. Probably a hundred scientists will be living on the moon in some type of lab for weeks at a time.
By 2200 (185 years away), we will have scouted out 200 different planets beyond the solar system and probably have five or six colonies set up and running. Five-million people will have left the planet and there’s talk of a fear of too many people now desiring to leave and some countries unable to function because they’ve lost a fair amount of the population.
The truth is....we are now advancing at a fantastic rate, and we simply can’t recognize that. We’ve barely had GPS capability two decades now...remember when you had that Hammond Atlas under the seat of your car for traveling purposes? Remember when you had to carry a check-book around with you to pay bills? Remember when you forgot something and spent thirty minutes looking for a pay-phone to call home? Remember when you got all political and wanted to chat about Republicans....you had to go to the local bar (now just log onto FreeRepublic)?
“It’s no secret that uncurbed climate change and population growth are going to (and already have) put stress on the planet”
Well, the great thing about Mars is that it must be perfect for human habitation since there’s no evil, civilization-destroying climate change there, right? Thank goodness we pay all of these geniuses at NASA billions of dollar a year to come up with these terrific ideas!
We can’t even get a manned vehicle to earth orbit. We have to rely on the Russians.
...
We don’t have to rely on the Russians, we chose to rely on them until we transition away from the expensive and dangerous Shuttle. A transition that’s going very well, BTW.
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