A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Bruh, just realized terraforming starts with terra and that's why it's what it's called
Same lol
This is why it's silly hearing billionaires, who do the most damage to our planet, telling us how urgently we need to "get off this rock" which has supported life for millions of years in favor of some dead planet. It's really just an extension of capitalism that demands infinite space to exploit, instead of being content with sustainability.
Elon’s argument for why we need to spread to other planets holds true even if everything on Earth were going perfectly.
It’s not about getting everyone off Earth - it’s about creating a backup for humanity on other planets. This ensures that the only known flame of consciousness in the universe isn’t extinguished by a nuclear war, pandemic, supervolcano, or asteroid impact. It's about not having all your eggs in one basket.
This is not risk free. When you give people access to space and still have terrorism and wars, things can end badly quickly.
There's also a valid argument around where to best focus those resources now. We are nowhere near ready for space colonization on any scale, let alone sustainable ones.
A City on Mars by the Wienersmiths dives into some of these challenges if you are interested.
By extension it would give more of an excuse for the top 1% to give even less of a fck about earth and the climate. Next thing you'd see is all the rich bailing to another planet while those who can't afford it are left with what's left of earth and the hellscape they left behind (and probably still have more agency over earth than those still living on there).
That's quite cynical view. There's about 0% chance of that happening during their lifetime. Or you think they'll just want to go to mars and sit inside some capsule for the rest of their lives? C'moon now..
The acid rain is going be be so slimming.
The good news is that it will never get to that point. Venus is a different planet with a different makeup and history.
The bad news, it doesn't have to get nearly that bad to be bad for us and the rest of existing life. Not even close. Just a few degrees more, and we're doing really well in getting there.
I’ve heard of the runaway greenhouse gas effect. Is there a limit to that?
The limit is our distance from the Sun. After a certain point the greenhouse gasses can't make up for the fact that we just get less radiation than Venus does. The maximum potential I've seen is 10°C - almost all life would go extinct and we'd have to live on the tropical Antarctic archipelago, but not Venus.
Venusforming earth is a lot like terraforming mars, it's just hard to reach. If 200 years ago we were able to easily reach mars, we would have fucked up that too
But think of the shareholders!!
Venus does have a lot of valuable materials, this could be a good thing.
I'd rather live somewhere habitable than somewhere with "valuable materials".
I can’t wait to see the shareholder value.