It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

[Professor Bear]

And honestly, hands up - who among you would volunteer to get shot off to Mars or somewhere? That's a big ask, knowing you would never see friends or family again.

A better question would be why NASA would be recruiting from a comic book forum populated by men in their late 60s.
https://www.popsci.com/article/science/why-thousands-people-are-willing-die-mars/

[JayzusB.Christ]

It isn't quite the perfect example - the Easter Islanders were able to move on to other lands.  We don't have that option.

Uh... Pitcairn Island, over twelve hundred miles away? And not forgetting that by the point where they might have considered this option there likely weren't enough trees left to make boats anyway - once the people who landed there originally were settled in (on fertile land, with an abundance of fish in the water) there wasn't much chance of them moving on.

Current thinking on Easter Island is that this is largely tosh. Things only started going to shit for the Rapa Nui people and their monumental culture when (surprise) Dutch colonists showed up in the 1720s: the infamous tree clearance was either what all agricultural societies have to do (and appears to have been sustainable as any other) or was exacerbated by rats.

Why are you continuing your bigoted campaign against North European white males, the most persecuted race in history?

Real response:  Cheers; I never knew that.  I usually rely on Q.I. to debunk theories I thought were gospel,  but this board has played a big part too.

Maybe Lord of the Flies is a better example?  I know the island is actually a microcosmic version of the global nuclear conflict going on around it, but the ending (or at least the bit just before the ending) seems painfully appropriate to the current climate situation too.

[TordelBack]

5his wasn't deep into the 1800s either, but likely around the mid-1700s . At a guess, things probably went to shit in the 1740s or 50s, as diseases, rats, attacks, and a changing weather system took its toll.

Dunno what to tell you about any putative evacuation - as it never happened speculating about the logistics seems odd. Current  archaeological thinking is that the sophisticated monument-building culture chugged along relativey happily for at least 3 centuries from the 1400s to the 1720s and Dutch contact, and then - within a generation - monument building ceased and many were in ruins by the 1750s, and a century later the island was depopulated.  Correlation ain't causation, but you'd be ill-advised not to condider European contact and note that equivalent utter devastation followed for almost every indiginous culture from the 16th-19th centuries.

So rather than the Malthusian morality tale that the Rapa Nui people are frequently presented as, it might be more valid to see their later history in the light of the poisonous expansion of European interests.

[shaolin_monkey]

The amount the Big Fossil Fuel names spend on lies, disinfo, and propaganda is calculated.



Article here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/03/25/oil-and-gas-giants-spend-millions-lobbying-to-block-climate-change-policies-infographic/?fbclid=IwAR2FxtNJqQlexCDwPiNBPmxsak6XAmMFm4i4_aL1eDhJadNy8q_3vzbE-NI#5f6451687c4f

[paddykafka]

And honestly, hands up - who among you would volunteer to get shot off to Mars or somewhere? That's a big ask, knowing you would never see friends or family again.

A better question would be why NASA would be recruiting from a comic book forum populated by men in their late 60s.
https://www.popsci.com/article/science/why-thousands-people-are-willing-die-mars/

I've got to admit, that to a certain - albeit very small - extent, I could be tempted, given that I've little in the way of personal ties holding me down to this rock. I think it's worth noting that, particularly from about 173 years ago -and for quite a few generations up until relatively recently - a great many of my fellow Irish were forced by famine and abysmal economic circumstances, to emigrate to far-off places like America, for example, with no prospect of ever seeing their family or friends again.

That being said, it would of course be remiss of me, not to note the obvious distinctions and differences between the New World to which those people were travelling, and the very serious challenges and limitations that those of our generation would have to face going to Mars. I just wonder if, perhaps, it is those very real difficulties that would put so many people off participating in such a venture, as opposed to the anguish they would feel at having to say goodbye, forever, to their kith and kin?

Needless to say, I'm just putting this out there as one possible theory.

And if I could not have the Galaxy's greatest comic delivered to me in some format or other, then you could definitely count me out of the whole enterprise. 

[Gary James]

A better question would be why NASA would be recruiting from a comic book forum populated by men in their late 60s.
https://www.popsci.com/article/science/why-thousands-people-are-willing-die-mars/

That project makes me slightly nervous about the fate of anyone applying - while it is great in theory, the harsh reality is that anyone who goes to Mars is going to have to be adept at a number of extremely technical tasks. That's the whole reason people train like mad for months just to get to the ISS, and that is practically on our doorstep.
Soooo close to saying "you could practically commute," but given that some of the rockets in regular use are old Soviet ones - would anyone really want to? Talk about Russian Roulette...

Correlation ain't causation, but you'd be ill-advised not to condider European contact and note that equivalent utter devastation followed for almost every indiginous culture from the 16th-19th centuries.

While it reduces the native population's agency somewhat, and is a slightly dangerous line of thinking, I can't help but think that the take-away from that situation has a really clear, and extremely specific, warning for us all:
Humanity screws stuff up.

If we are extremely broad in covering things that humans have destroyed, then the extinction of the hominids we shared the planet with,  the wooly mammoth and other large species all the way up to the eradication of the Dodo are all humanity's fault. If we want to kick back and say "yeah, but that's all in the past," we're going to have to find an answer for what is happening now.
We can't even be trusted, as a species, to not screw up things out of sight under water. And then there's the massive and horrifying damage to New Zealand and Australia's ecosystems, which is an ongoing problem that is likely to have at least a few species wondering why the two-leggged monsters are intent on killing everything in their wake. Because... Yeah, we're the boogeyman for other things that live on Earth. Deal with it.
We. Really. Suck.

Man, this is depressing. There's a reason I prefer to focus on the brighter stuff, like batteries that run on sweat - for all the absolutely awful things which get reported, there are things coming along that are going to change how we (as a species, across the entire planet) will be consuming energy, exploitiing resources, and treating our fellow living entities on the planet. It is kinda like Sisyphus pushing with that boulder - it may take us some time, and it definitely won't be easy, but we're making a little progress.
Hopefully not with the outcome that the boulder keeps rolling back down the hill every so often. Or squishing humanity. Or... Actually that's an awful comparison. Sorry...

...it would of course be remiss of me, not to note the obvious distinctions and differences between the New World to which those people were travelling, and the very serious challenges and limitations that those of our generation would have to face going to Mars.

Putting people on Mars isn't going to be the big step, just as putting people on the moon wasn't - in retrospect - all that big a deal, outside of cultural excitement. It wasn't the point of the moon mission to drastically advance anything - they were largely using the same stuff they had to hand for a few years - but what came after was important. It was like dominos, and without that one piece toppling just right, then all the other advances, leading up to SPACEX launching a sports car into space merely because it could, wouldn't have been possible.
We aren't quite at the place where a solar system spanning internet could be put into operation (and it is longer away than it sounds), and communication is always going to be limited with delays (you can't science the fuck out of that one. Ever), but getting humanity on Mars is a step towards that rough idea. I'll admit that I have no idea how relays are going to work, given the problematic orbits or Earth and Mars, but there are smart people who can think those things out.
The flashy crowd-pleasing spectacles are never the really important moments. What comes after, the slow progress where we get all kinds of new technologies springing up that nobody expected, is what we should celebrate. When people outside SF communities finally get that notion into their heads, we get to grin and say "David Gerrold was right."Of course, they won't know who the hell he is, so...

[Funt Solo]

Earth is Easter Island.

Current thinking on Easter Island is that this is largely tosh.

Earth is the commonly held but easily understood misconception applied to Easter Island.

OR

Humanity fiddles while Rome burns (except Rome here is the Earth, and Humanity isn't Nero - and the fact that the fiddle hadn't been invented when he was supposed to be playing it is not relevant because it's just a useful analogy).

And there's not a giant fiddle.

And I'm not suggesting that every human owns a fiddle.

Also: Rome is not on fire (at least, not on the scale the statement suggests - no doubt there is a fire somewhere in Rome at this point in time.)

*Mutter mumble groan*

[Dandontdare]

A little light relief from the grimness, a song from an artist I love about saving what we've got vs relying on space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHTsHuiPuCE

[shaolin_monkey]

A little light relief from the grimness, a song from an artist I love about saving what we've got vs relying on space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHTsHuiPuCE

That was awesome - thank you. "We have it all here."

Any discussion of a colony onthe Moon or Mars is misdirection from dealing with what we have here and now.

As an intellectual exercise it is a fun diversion, but the reality is every attempt to create any kind of self-sustaining biosphere cut-off from our pre-existing natural one, on or off planet, has failed. Any colony would rely on a constant stream of supplies from Earth, or it would die very quickly.

So whether we stay here or sail into the void we will still rely on Earth. As such, we need to focus all our efforts on maintaining the hospitable environment of Earth.

Back to square one folks - what are we going to do to prevent our planet becoming any more dangerous towards us?

[IndigoPrime]

You say that, but I half remember a movie, and I'm pretty sure all you need to survive on Mars is some potatoes and a space suit.

[shaolin_monkey]

Has everyone seen that leaked report from JP Morgan?

In case you're not sure who they are:

" J.P. Morgan is the world's largest financial backer of fossil fuel companies, helping to fund fracking, pipeline projects, and Arctic oil and gas exploration. The company has contributed $75 billion to such projects since the Paris climate agreement was forged in 2015."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/21/jp-morgan-economists-warn-catastrophic-outcomes-human-caused-climate-crisis


Full leaked report here:

https://rebellion.earth/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/JPM_Risky_business__the_climate_and_the_macroeconomy_2020-01-14_3230707.pdf.pdf

[The Legendary Shark]

As usual (they have a long history of it), JPM are playing both sides.

[shaolin_monkey]

That stinks of greenwashing. Changing their offices to renewables versus trillions spent over two years supporting fracking, oil and gas exploration, and Arctic drilling, is very much one-sided if you ask me.

[The Legendary Shark]

If they can make money out of oil, they will. If they can make money out of solar, they will. If they can make money out of both, they will. They don't care where their profits come from so long as there's profits.

[shaolin_monkey]

That's very true. So let's look forward to a day when investing in oil is not profitable, whereas investing in renewables is.

Perhaps it's not that far off:

https://youtu.be/fBAPJg_FAfI