From the Andrew Lillico (via Bishop Hill) the costs of terraforming Mars -vs- mitigating Earthly climate change seem to have similar values and timescales. Josh provides a cartoon as well.
We can terraform Mars for the same cost as mitigating climate change. Which would you rather?
One frequentlyquotedstudy of the global costs of mitigating climate change put them at around $3 trillion by 2100, with the main benefits being felt between 2100 and 2200. Here is alternative way to spend around the same amount of money with around the same timescale of payback: terraforming Mars. A standard estimate is that, for about $2-$3 trillion, in between 100 and 200 years we would be able to get Mars from its current “red planet” (dead planet) status to ” blue planet” (i.e. a dense enough atmosphere and high enough temperature for Martian water in the poles and soil to melt, creating seas) – achievable in about 100 years – and from there to microbes and algae getting us to “green planet” status within 200 to 600 years.
There are two standard objections to such terraforming. First, it is said to be too expensive, altogether, to be plausible. Second, it is said to require too long a timescale to be plausible. Both of these objections appear decisively answered by climate change policies and indeed energy policies in general. Between now and the 2035 alone, global investment in energy and energy efficiency (in many cases with a many-decades payback period) is estimated at about $40 trillion, of which $6 trillion is in renewables and $1 trillion in low-carbon nuclear. We are willing to spend many trillions on projects that could take over a century to come to fruition.
Josh is on the case:
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Is there a glitch in the giddyup? All of my comments (or most of them) are going directly to moderation since yesterday.
Mars will need two more marzs moved to it in mass before it has a chance of maintaining ground level temperatures equivalent to our environment on earth.
Pamela, there are billions of people on this planet who’s grasp of physics, chemistry, biology, geology and meteorology is SO poor that they have more trust in corrupt politics than they have wits to rub together. Most of them find their way here from time to time. The only way to be sure to find a lost ring is to collect everything it may have fallen into… *I* am not responsible for the slow-down and still off an apology for it. I could have done more in my life to either educate or mislead these fools to their early deaths and have not.
Oops, left out the bit that “global warmists believe global warming so much that they think it can terraform other planets on cow farts alone”
Terraforming Mars is science fiction. Maybe not if we enclose Mars in a giant glass sphere. Trust the cost-benefit analysis of the experts. Lomborg surveyed 60 eminent economists including Nobel Laureates in economics. They say money is better spent in deworming of schoolchildren than in climate change. These guys are really smart!
EM-drive would make Mars much more accessible.
Equating the two is generally pointless – unless you could actually do something on a terra formed Mars, i.e. you have to include the costs of moving you + civilisation over there (plus, you would actually need to feel an urge to move there).
100 years? I had recently seen a show with an astro-physicist from Munich on terra forming Mars and he said it would take several 10,000 years… you might wanna find consensus on that number before calculating the cost…
Gives us a suitable place to send the climate change scientists and their followers though. Al Gore should be able to personally finance the first probe by now.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
It will be the Chinese who do it
Terraforming Mars is theoretically feasible, but a fundamentally bad idea.
The one thing that can never be changed is the gravity, which is one third of Earth’s. Anyone who lives with that for any length of time would have extreme difficulty re-adapting to Earth-like gravity, which is what our bodies are designed for.
We can create as much Earth-like habitable space as we want for millennia by constructing habitats in space, like the cylinders proposed by Gerard O’Neill back in the 1970’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder.
Structures like this can be built relatively small to start with, but over time can be made truly immense, and gravity – based on rotation – can be set at any desired value. The materials to construct them will be mined from asteroids, no need to lift mass into Earth orbit – other than the people to live in them.
But terraforming Mars would destroy the Martian environment and the native Martians. Have you no respect for the environment?
Slightly on-topic: The original article was actually putting the costs of mitigating climate change on this planet into context.
The point being that terraforming a whole other planet (in the same time) is obviously very expensive. Many people seem to think it’s just a few pennies on the fuel bill.
The article was a discussion piece asking people to consider whether this phenomenal expense is really what they want to do.
Only marginally off topic, but an interesting story, if true, which demonstartes how life can survive even in the most extreme environments such that climate change poses no significant risk to life on planet earth. See:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2728979/Never-mind-alien-life-SEA-PLANKTON-space-Creatures-living-surface-ISS-officials-say.html .
TimTheToolMan
ROFLMAO
The Project Manager must ensure that Al Gore never gets near Mars for fear of unprecedented CO2 precipitation turning the planet into a Snow Globe
Everybody here underestimates the ability of comets to create atmospheres. It takes neither (much) time nor a complex process. For instance the nitrogen of our atmosphere was basically brought by comets.
Just consider the Halley comet as an example. Its mass is 2.10^14 kg and is very small compared to planet’s sizes with a size of only 11 km.
Now consider the comet hitting Mars surface – the huge energy liberated by the collision causes the whole comet and parts of Mars to evaporate. So we obtain instantly 2.10^14 kg of gaz (lower bound).
The Earth’s atmosphere weighs 5.10^18 kg. As Mars is smaller, the volume of Mars atmosphere is about 10 times smaller than Earth so if Mars had the same atmosphere as Earth it would weigh about 10^17 kg.
Now you just compare with the vaporized comet – the gaz released represents 0.5 % of an Earth equivalent atmosphere (actually more because one should add the gaz of vaporised Mars surface). And as Mars atmosphere density is about 1 % of the Earth, our single comet would simply approximately double the current Mars atmosphere.
So if the target is to obtain a density about 30% of Earth’s atmosphere (e.g summit of Himalaya), one would need approximately 30 comets of the size of Halley.
This is clearly no impossible target and certainly one that would be worth to spend money on.
The selection of the comets and the modification of their orbit to impact Mars is another matter but one that can be solved too.
Last would come fine tuning of the atmospheric composition via biologic processes. Sure that would take time but as the CAGW morons are talking about centuries, for such a much worthier goal we can afford centuries to transform Mars too.
We could use two photon torpedoes and a Heisenberg Compensator to generate the magnetic field to keep the atmosphere on Mars. Unfortunately photon torpedoes will cost 10-20 trillion to develop and so this project is not a viable alternative to the 2-3 trillion “save the earth” project. Why, we could save the Earth 10 times over for the same price as terraforming Mars! Just think about it for a second. We can afford to destroy the Earth 10 times and rebuild it for the same price as terraforming Mars. So why are we so worried about destroying it just this once?
TimTheToolMan
The first ship should include hairdressers, phone sanitisers and climate scientists
Well at least there will be two useful people on the ship!
Matt says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:30 pm
“Equating the two is generally pointless – unless you could actually do something on a terra formed Mars, i.e. you have to include the costs of moving you ”
You are right. I checked out a few moving companies, and even with free packing material I cannot afford to move to Mars.
We will lend them the windmills off the North Wales coast. they can be powered up as fans to repel the solar wind. They will have to pay packaging and post costs.
We get our wonderful view back and they get a whole planet to play with.
Pat Frank says:
“Probably the first thing to do in terraforming Mars is drop a bunch of icy comets onto it.”
Took my best idea right there. However I can add that with good enough science and math, the mass of added comets would move the orbit a little as it is added (I am thinking of sending a lot of comets). So the impacts should be calculated in such a way as to provide the ideal rotational speed, and with each nudge adding to the orbital velocity in the right way so it doesn’t go wandering away.
In the end the planet could weigh perhaps only 0.1% more but have enough water and atmosphere to sustain a wide variety of life.
Once it warms a bit there may be quite a number of surprises concerning water below ground and life forms that live on sulfur.
Like so much ‘climate science’, this is ‘science fiction’.
The closest you could get to terraforming Mars is to build bio-domes that are air tight with fusion reactors to produce energy to keep them warm and grow-lights so plants can photosynthesis normally.
Terraforming Mars??
Already have the blue print in author Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Mars trilogy.
The three novels are Red Mars – Colonization-(1993), Green Mars -Terraforming-(1994), and Blue Mars -Long-term results- (1996).
Available on the internet for those who want a good Sci-fi read.
Slow down people, some of you have fallen into the “Eating people is wrong*” trap. I think what the article does is highlights the cost and futility of trying to mitigate climate change using the terraforming of Mars (a task comparable in complexity and cost) as a straw man.
*the instant reaction to Swift’s “Modest Proposal”
You just need to find the giant Oxygen Generators left there by an ancient alien civilization. There’s this Schwarzenegger guy who can tell you where they are.
At 58, if it weren’t for hairdressers my hair would now be salmon colored as my strawberry blond/copper/nutmeg/cinnamon hair gets streaked with gray. So I would have to have hairdressers on Mars. As for the golden eyes, that would be too cool. There is one drawback. my Irish skin would not like that sun. Not one bit. The upside? I am drawn mysteriously to anything colored any shade of red. For that matter, even the Barbie Doll I got for one of my childhood birthdays (which I still have) has red hair. So what the hell. Send me up with a lifetime supply of sunscreen. Bonus. The less than Earth gravity would mean that I would weigh less. What’s not to like?