Astronomer royal calls for 'Plan B' to prevent runaway climate change

[bananas]

Source: Guardian

Hacking the planet's climate by launching mirrors into space, triggering algal blooms in the oceans and seeding clouds are among experimental "Plan B" schemes world leaders would have to consider if the rise in carbon emissions cannot be curbed within a couple of decades, according to one of Britain's most senior scientists.

Geoengineering, though controversial and "an utter political nightmare", would buy time to develop cleaner sources of energy, the astronomer royal Lord Rees will say in a speech to the annual British Science Festival in Newcastle on Thursday.

Rees, who is a former president of the Royal Society and a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, will close the festival with a wide-ranging lecture covering everything from astronomy and global health to the place of science in culture.

<snip>

Looking ahead in his own field of astronomy, Rees will say he is excited by the regular discovery of planets orbiting other stars. In the past decade, space telescopes such as Nasa's Kepler have pushed the number of planets scientists know about into the thousands, but they predict there are probably many billions in our galaxy alone, and some of them could be twins of Earth. With ever-improving instruments, he will say, scientists who are now at the start of their careers may be able to answer the question of whether or not there is life beyond Earth.

Back on our own planet, Rees will also call for a more brotherly attitude from his fellow scientists to those of faith. Science, he will say, is the one culture that is truly global and should transcend all barriers of nationality and religion. "The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism," he will say. "But that's a theme for another talk."

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/11/astronomer-royal-global-warming-lord-rees

[joshcryer]

1. No geoengineering, please.

This isn't a solution, this is a hands in the sand alternate.

[Salviati]

2. It's too late for that, we're already geoengineering, just not on purpose...

I don't have a problem with thinking about ways to deal with the issue, but we have to be very deliberate and careful about it.

I'm also generally pretty leery about "solutions" that merely treat the symptoms, rather than the root cause. Efforts to affect the albedo of the earth through various means might slow down warming, but they don't take carbon out of the atmosphere, perhaps they could be useful as a stopgap while longer term solutions take effect, but they aren't in and of themselves solutions.

[joshcryer]

3. I have been predicting geoengineering for a decade or so.

So yeah, I know this is what we're going to do, I just don't like it, because it means we're going to burn every bit of stuff left in the ground. We'll eventually be treating the ocean as an aquarium to change its acidity levels caused by excess CO2. It's insanity.

[Ghost Dog]

12. We need to cull our population.

Starting with the 1%...

[GliderGuider]

13. We need to *end up* with just 1%

If we really wanted to become a ssutainable presence on the planet, 99% of us would need to shuffle off this mortal coil.

No really, how sustainable are we?

The conclusions in that article will shock most people, but I think it presents a realistic portrait of just how unsustainable the human experiment is. I think Mother Nature is now in the process of presenting us with the bill for our global party. It's a little pricier than we expected...

[Ghost Dog]

14. Since our 'elites' are entirely (ir)responsible for the situation

we presently find ourselves in, we should start by cutting out, chopping off and destroying utterly that cancerous outgrowth.

In terms of resource (waste and) compulsive CONsumption, natural life-destruction and, yes, sheer evil, getting the current 1% off our backs would eliminate (applying here the Pareto Principle) 20% of the problem, according to my calculations based on nearly 60 years of (what? you call this 'life'?) here (Western Europe) this time around....

Thanks for your intellectual and emotional intelligence and understanding, GG, folks.

[GliderGuider]

16. A lot of people agree with that position.

I don't agree, however.

Did the French Revolution result in "Liberté, égalité, fraternité"? Certainly not immediately (and arguably, not at all). It resulted in the Reign of Terror. How about the recent revolutions of the Arab Spring? What about the Bolshevik revolution that dethroned the czars?

My point is that getting rid of the leaders never gets rid of the problem. Others simply arise to fill the vacuum left by the decapitation. And, human nature being what it is, if power is going unused someone will step forward to seize the levers.

IMO the problem is not the current socio-economic-political leadership - the leaders are just slightly luckier, better-placed versions of us. Stanley Milgram's experiments showed that most ordinary people have the potential of becoming tyrants.

It's certainly popular to blame the 1% and dream that their removal would open up the space for a 99% utopia to emergy. It's also facile reasoning. The 1% emerges from the 99%, just as a new leader emerges without fail from the pack whenever the alpha wolf dies.

Revolutionary utiopia is a nice dream, but it ain't reality. Reality is much grittier, and much harder work than just dethroning the old boss to make way for a new one.

[Ghost Dog]

17. Yes. I completely agree with every word/thought you write here. However,

and nevertheless, (the French Revolution went a long way towards shaping W. Europe as we know it today; and 'freedom' in the Americas..) Sometimes, whatever the cost, Justice must be served.

[GliderGuider]

20. Cool. So long as we walk into the bloodbath with our eyes open, it's all good.

[Ghost Dog]

25. No sane person wants that.

Clear communications help...

[JackRiddler]

29. Cliches about the French Revolution...

Also Milgram. Showed nothing of the sort. 2/3 obeyed authority figures to commit horrific acts if manipulated into doing so, but they did not become tyrants as you have it. And more than 1/3 refused to obey - enough to stop any system if it's actually applicable to real world.

The "terror" is largely in the imagination of the reaction that eventually took hold. There were worse years under the reaction, actually. In the year of the "terror," as it was labeled later, France was under attack. It was under the Jacobins that the war was turned around.

Also, people are not wolves. Wolves are not typical of all mammals, let alone the primates to whom we are closer, which also vary greatly and are not always driven by hard male alpha figures as you suggest.

So excuse me if I don't think the rest of your reasoning is any better grounded.

[GliderGuider]

32. Cliches aside, my point was simply this

Revolutions change the situation, but they never help as much as the revolutionaries hope going in.

Afterwards there is usually a long-term reversion towards the norm. The norms include the fact that some people are irresistibly drawn to power, and the rest of us have a tendency to fall in step behind them. People have a very strong tendency to be entrained by the group dynamic - even if it involves behavior we wouldn't exhibit when we're alone. It's the way our social behavior evolved: entrainment supports group cohesion. Unfortunately it also supports mob psychology and groupthink.

Humans have exhibited this behavior across all cultures and times that we know of. The evidence is all around us today if we look closely.

[GliderGuider]

35. And to join this back to the theme of the OP

I've concluded after a decade or so of investigation that the evolved nature of human group dynamics and risk perception underlies our ongoing lack of action on climate change, and will also drive our panicked embrace of geoengineering. As the risks of climate change move from being abstract, academic issues to become events that hit us in our daily lives, strong leaders will step forward with bold "solutions" and most people will eagerly fall into step behind them.

What we see in the OP is the early phase of this process. There is still room at the moment for some of us to carp and cavil, As the situation becomes more severe, there will be mounting social pressure on those who object to geoengineering to STFU for the sake of economic growth and our children's future.

[hunter]

22. It's not bloody if they are simply taxed out of existence.

Set some upper limit for income and wealth, some lower limit, and go.

Most taxes would not go to "infrastructure improvements," not things like highways that increase consumption, they would go to birth control and education worldwide, and then environmentally low impact things like the arts. Throw away the cars and wars, sit down with a good book or go for a long walk in the surrounding countryside.

It would almost have to be a religious movement and I don't think that's going to happen until Mother Nature grabs our civilization by the balls and flips it into the dirt. (Misandrist imagery quite deliberate here, since misogynist patriarchal societies seem to be a large part of our problem...)

[Ghost Dog]

34. Yes... Taxation... Mmmm.

(That's what the original Caliphate was built on: reasonable taxes).

[bananas]

4. Lessons of Volcanic Eruptions

A former President of the AGU Atmospheric Sciences Section describes some important lessons from volcanoes:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101672430

[joshcryer]

5. It's been known and proposed since 2007:

It's nothing new or novel.

And it's a very dangerous direction to go.

[bananas]

8. It was proposed in the early 1970's

The first use of the term geoengineering in approximately the sense defined
above was by Marchetti in the early 1970s to describe the mitigation of the climatic
impact of fossil fuel combustion by the injection of CO2 into the deep
ocean (14).

Annu. Rev. Energy. Environ. 2000.25:245-284. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org
by UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON - HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARIES on 08/08/06. For personal use only.

ftp://luna.atmos.washington.edu/pub/breth/PCC/SI2006/readings/Keith_geoengr_AnnRevEnergy_2000.pdf

[joshcryer]

9. Oh, right, the video even says that was the original route.

Sorry, I meant to say it's being proposed seriously again since that date, maybe earlier, but it seems to me it's already been decided which is why reduction efforts have been meager at best.

[bananas]

6. "Greenpeace's chief scientist, said that Rees was right about the many downsides and unknowns"

Doug Parr, Greenpeace's chief scientist, said that Rees was right about the many downsides and unknowns of geo-engineering.

[joshcryer]

7. The fact that it's even being considered proves we failed.

[trusty elf]

10. What if everybody turned on their air conditioners and opened the windows?

[IMG][/IMG]

[Coyotl]

68. AC creates heat while cooling a space. Turn them all OFF for the desired effect & save energy.

Thus, less climate change.

[trusty elf]

75. I didn't think anybody would take that comment seriously....

especially with the pic of Palin soaked in oil.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. Terraform Earth first before we talk about Mars.

[cprise]

15. Now that science is starting to explain where religion comes from

--and making rapid progress-- there is the possibility that the whole science and religion debate will become moot.

[sendero]

18. The idea that some science fiction action.

...is a solution reminds me of folks who thing every evil in the world can be solved using cruise missiles.

No thanks.

[Peace Patriot]

19. I'm afraid he's right--geoengineering is the only thing that will save us.

We need to expand our awesome (but heretofore fatal) cleverness, as a species, to how to fix what we've done to the planet.

There is simply NO WAY that we can rein in the population explosion and mega-greed that are driving global warming. It quite obviously cannot be done.

As to the latter--the mega-greed--the forces of greed have defeated our once viable democracy AND are at work in China as well--THE two greatest polluters of the planet. Without democratic control in either place, the pollution will continue unchecked.

Methods of population control are also not working. We are going backwards on population control here--with attacks on women's health clinics and the whole fascist agenda of turning women back into baby machines. And China's solution--limiting births by law--is too draconian, and is not sufficient anyway to solve the planetary problem: too many people, and all of them wanting cars, 24 hour lighting, air conditioning, heaters, power tools, year round fruits and vegetables flown in by jets from faraway places, the latest fashions tankered over the oceans, cow foods (cows very polluting of the atmosphere), and all manner of polluting products, from toilet paper (many a carbon-sequestering forest felled just for that alone) to computers (far more polluting than we realize) and on and on.

The few people being made uber-rich by supplying all of these products WILL NOT PERMIT any curtailment of their activities. "We the People" OBVIOUSLY have no power to override them.

The planet is going down. There is no question about it. A couple of years ago, the World Wildlife Fund stated that we have 50 years--at current levels of pollution and deforestation-- to the death of the planet. 50 years! To the DEATH of the planet! And we've made little or no progress on curtailing any of these planet-killing activities since then, and have no prospects for any progress in the near future, due to corporate control of our government, here, and out-of-control greed here and elsewhere.

I HOPE that there is a technical solution! The only thing I have faith in now IS our quite amazing technical ability. It has gotten us into the most terrible trouble, but I think that it is the only way out of it, at this point. I am an environmentalist. I spent ten years of my life trying to prevent the destruction of just one small part of earth's forest system--and failed. And the reason I and those whom I worked with failed is that the deforesting corporations are just too powerful. THEY control our allegedly elected officials, our laws, our government agencies, the media, the science and business departments of our universities, the courts and everything else. They destroy and pollute at will and there is no stopping them.

Or, at least, there is no stopping them IN TIME to save earth's ecosystem. We may well have a democracy revolution here but that is going to take time. The same for the other biggest polluter, China. There ISN'T time. That is the problem.

There are also new environmental movements that are possible--big changes of habits by many people--and a lot of local/individual actions that are being taken--from the local, organic food revolution to cities "going green"--but again, time is a factor as to the spread of such movements and actions.

I have thought about this long and hard. I agree with the royal astronomer. We need to get clever-er because we are clearly NOT going to get sustainable any time soon.

We have some further threats to life on earth that compound the problem of climate change--for instance, this on-going nuclear disaster in Japan, which now threatens all life in the Pacific Ocean. No solution in sight--and it is NEVER MENTIONED in our (corporate media controlled) political discussions or by our government!

That is flabbergasting. But, given the same phenomenon on climate change--SILENCE, while the life of the planet quickly ebbs away--it is really not all that surprising.

This is what we are facing--silence and collusion by all the powers-that-be.

I think that's why this British astronomer talks about "Plan B." Plan A, that the governments of the world would mandate and enforce reversal of carbon emissions, is "off the table." Plan A HAS to include the U.S. and China, and both governments are owned by the polluters. End of Plan A.

So, geoengineering is it.

One other thing we should think about is terraforming. Given the ballooning human population of earth, the vast levels of current pollution, the certainty of yet MORE pollution, the impossibility of a political solution (electing anybody who would change this), and the inevitable slowness of local action and large-scale movements, we need to start "greening" ANOTHER planet, as well as re-greening this one, artificially. Human life on earth has become UNSUSTAINABLE. EVEN IF we are able to stop global warming with a technical solution, we will still not have solved the problem of population growth and the product needs and desires of expanding humanity.

Further, it is very likely, if certain developments in the medical science field continue, that human life will keep getting longer and humans may end up becoming very long-lived if not immortal. Barring nuclear meltdown, nuclear war, social implosion and breakdown of civilized life, or other kinds of disasters--including the already in-progress disasters of global warming (which could well produce chaos and shorten life-spans)--it won't be long before genetic engineering, artificial body parts for all parts of the body (even perhaps the brain!) (brain cells have now been grown in "dishes"--cells that start making electrical and chemical connections with each other) and other advances for the extension of life become commonly available. We don't have the room, on earth. We really don't. If we are going to continue in this way--making ever more human beings, and extending the lifespans of humans, and if all of these humans are going to have modern conveniences--we MUST find more room, in addition to restoring THIS planetary environment.

The Moon and Mars both have water. We need to figure out how to make them have trees and grasses and an atmosphere.

It's rather an artificial mental construct to dub geoengineering and terraforming as unnatural, when those solutions rely on Nature to complete themselves. Reflectors, for instance, used to fend off some of the sun's rays, would have the intent, at least, to create better conditions behind and under the reflectors for Nature to flourish--for ice to form, for polar bears to have a habitat, for ocean temperatures to decrease, helping both fish and whales and humans in coastal flood zones, and so on. And terraforming does something similar--creates the conditions for life to exist. After certain actions are taken, to start things off, Nature then has to do the rest--and Nature is exceedingly creative at filling every niche with life.

Also, geoengineering for our immediate problem--the over-warming of earth--may buy us time to address the larger problems of fossil fuels, greed, lack of democracy and overpopulation.

So I say to the corporate entities who have destroyed our democracy and despoiled our very home, earth, go for it! Do your best! If you can create a refrigerator--so clever!--you can create polar ice caps. If you can create the iPhone, certainly you can turn CO2 into oxygen. If you can grow living human brain cells in dishes, certainly you can re-populate the earth with bees and birds and other critters and fill it again with trees. If you can build a nuclear bomb, certainly you can deal with the sun's rays. If you can invent the Ziplock bag, certainly you can zip the planet back into a viable place to live and get the Mars and Moon projects started to improve our options. You might even redeem yourselves so that we don't have to ban you from the solar system.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Please stop thinking about terraforming

Humanity will not have the remotest chance of trying it for centuries. It's orders of magnitude more difficult than solving all the environmental problems of Earth. There are good reasons why neither the Moon nor Mars has a breathable, or remotely thick enough, atmosphere - their size, the lack of a magnetic field to stop the solar wind slowly stripping any atmosphere off, and more. It should not be mentioned in a serious discussion of the environment.

[Peace Patriot]

31. You want the human race to have a future?

Geoengineering and terraforming ARE that future. I see no other way.

We've faced difficult technical problems before--many, many things that were said to be impossible by the duller minds among us. There are thousands of examples, throughout history--from sailing on the open ocean and navigating the globe, to putting men on the moon, from controlling fire to controlling electricity to controlling the atom (sort of), from water wheels to aqueducts to suspension bridges to skyscrapers on rollers for earthquake safety, from the cotton gin to iPhones. I'm sure there were skeptics about the pyramids. It's what we do. Somebody imagines something new, somebody else says, "Naw!" Then the tinkering begins. Our culture is especially adept at technology. That is what I'm saying about NASA scientists--they are the very best at solving "unsolvable" technical problems and doing "the impossible." Time to put them in charge of saving the planet and finding us another one and terraforming it.

You know, if you throw a few rocks into a creek, you can restore a fishery. It doesn't take much to nudge Nature into creating habitat and life. It's true that Mars and the Moon would not be so simple. They would be very difficult, but there are other candidates--the moons of the outer planets, for instance--as well as artificial biosphere satellites. But mainly I'm arguing with all the skeptics throughout all the ages who said, "You can't do that"--then it was done. Certain kinds of humans LOVE that challenge, and have time and again proven that the seemingly impossible is possible.

I can't think of anything worse to say to people, at this moment of planetary crisis--or really at any moment--than, "Stop thinking about" something. ("Stop thinking about terraforming.&quot If we all "stop thinking" about it, then of course it will be impossible. New technologies and new scientific discoveries derive as much from dreaming--from thinking about the impossible--as from tinkering and experimenting. Both are needed. You've GOT TO think about the impossible to MAKE IT possible. Difficulties? Bah! Tell that to the Phoenicians, to the Polynesians, to the Vikings, to the Mayans and the Egyptians, to Leonardo da Vinci and Nicholas Tesla and Albert Einstein. Stop thinking about it! Bad advice.

[muriel_volestrangler]

33. In a 'planetary crisis', you need to think about fixing the planet

Not pipe dreams of what could be done on far less suitable planets with far more effort. If everything was going smoothly on Earth, then we'd have the leisure to say "could we create habitats where we could live elsewhere?", but we don't. It's all we can do to send a rover of just a few tons to Mars. An engineering project to transform the entire planet is not remotely possible. Meanwhile, we have problems on Earth - despite the environment being almost perfect for us. Small differences in our environment here cause the modern world, with 7 billion and rising people, big problems - and you can't solve them by looking for huge differences on another planet and say "we'll direct our resources there instead".

"It doesn't take much to nudge Nature into creating habitat and life."

You actually have no idea about that at all. We only know it's happened once, and that took billions of years. The moons of outer planets are even more remote; nothing approaching earth life, driven by photosynthesis, is possible out there. If you could seed them with some bacteria that could survive, what good is that? We're not talking about a drive to save the extremophiles. if you "throw a few rocks into a creek", then you're doing it next to where there is already life, which just has to move in.

Thinking that terraforming other worlds is related, in any way whatsoever, to the environmental problems of Earth, is a waste of time. It might also induce a false sense of complacency. It's Earth we need to live on, and there is no substitute.

[Peace Patriot]

37. Well, I admit I'm fantasizing that we could put NASA's technology geniuses in charge...

...of saving Planet Earth from global warming, and--to solve the over-population crisis--find us another planet and terraform it.

Frankly, at this point, I'd put them in charge of everything--education, the EPA, the White House, the banksters, the Pentagon, et al.

But YOUR solution--that 'we' fix Planet Earth and not bother about anything else--is equally a fantasy. Ain't gonna happen. This TITANIC is headed at top speed right into the iceberg. There is NO STOPPING the corporate greed that is driving it, and NO WAY to force our bought-and-paid-for political leaders to curtail them.

So, allow me a bit of fantasy about who COULD stop catastrophic climate change, if somehow we could put them in charge.

I did NOT say forget Planet Earth and go trolling for another potential Garden of Eden. I said we need to do BOTH. Cuz, if scientists who do the impossible on a routine basis--such as NASA science teams--manage to fix the global warming of Planet Earth with some of their "impossible" solutions--we STILL have the human population balloon that will kill Planet Earth in other ways.

Once again, you are saying that something is "not possible." (And you've inflated that to "not remotely possible.&quot Human flight was "not possible." The pyramids were "not possible." Crossing the oceans was "not possible." Penicillin was "not possible." The list is very long of the impossible things that have become possible and real.

Stop thinking, is your advice. It is very bad advice.

You: "Thinking that terraforming other worlds is related, in any way whatsoever, to the environmental problems of Earth, is a waste of time."

Thinking is NEVER a waste of time. And thinking about terraforming other worlds could well lead to the solutions could be employed here, on Planet Earth.

It would, at the least, increase understanding of the complexity of living environments. At best, it could yield solutions that are directly applicable to Planet Earth.

And, who knows if the people who sent a still operating spacecraft outside of our solar system, into interstellar space--and have done so many other astonishing things--could in truth figure out how to create livable environments on other orbs? To say, "don't think about it" reminds me of the Catholic prelates who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. They didn't want to think about it and they didn't want anybody else to think about it either, and tried their damnedest to STOP THOUGHT.

[muriel_volestrangler]

39. It's far easier to support the extra billions on Earth

Earth has a decent amount of both sunlight and water - a combination no other planet or moon has, and the basic energy source and working fluid that life needs. The effort needed to use them here is many magnitudes smaller than doing it anywhere else.

I think the problem is that one word is given to the science-fiction process - "terraforming" - and some people think that is one task, like sending a spacecraft out of the solar system is one task. 'Terraforming' is doing what it took natural processes billions of years to do, over an entire planet, in such a short time scale that you think it's a solution to overpopulation. You think we can ship billions of people to dead, cold, airless worlds and have them live happy lives within what - decades?

It is literally science fiction. It is not in any way a feasible solution to our current problems. Pretending that it is diverts attention from real solutions.

[oNobodyo]

42. It's not science fiction...

Only your interpretation of the word "terraforming" makes it so.

There isn't a need to ship billions of people anywhere.

The problem with population isn't the population itself it's the needs of that population. Instead of thinking of terraforming with the goal of making a planet habitable for billions, think about it terms of making a planet habitable for enough people to help provide for those needs.

Terraforming doesn't need to immediately result in being suitable for human life to be called terraforming. It's much easier to make it suitable for plant life or even microbial life.

And sure we don't use but a fraction of the available solar energy that hits this planet every day but even if we did that's but an even smaller fraction of what's available outside this atmosphere.

How would you feel about all the factories and power plants being shipped off of this planet? Wouldn't that make your goal of "Clean Up" a little easier to manage?

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. This is put forward as a claim to solve the environmental problems on Earth

So, yes, there would be a need to ship billions of people off. Ship factories off? (a) Then we don't have the products (b) That would also be a huge effort, because factories are massive too. Recreating an industrial civilisation on another planet (one that is then capable of launching rockets back to us to deliver the products you want manufactured millions of miles away) is not just like saying "we'll build the next factory out there". And the same goes for power plants. Move them elsewhere and you still need to get the energy back to us. Even putting them in orbit (which is not 'terraforming' by any definition - and note that it is terraforming that I am saying is science fiction, in this sub-thread) is extremely expensive, and as you point out, we don't use but a fraction of the available solar energy that hits this planet every day - so the far-easier fix for "what do we use instead of fossil fuels" is "solar energy that already arrives here", not "solar energy that we have to go to heroic lengths to collect and then tranfer to Earth in a different form".

"Terraforming doesn't need to immediately result in being suitable for human life to be called terraforming. It's much easier to make it suitable for plant life or even microbial life."

This is a thread about Earth's environment. Getting microbial life to survive on another planet might be a nice hobby, but it would do precisely zero to fix our problems. So, for that matter, would terraforming a planet so that plant life (a huge task - plants need oxygen in the atmosphere at similar levels to us, water, nitrates and more) alone could survive there. We're not saying that we have such a shortage of food that we need to send it by rocket from Mars.

[oNobodyo]

46. Sigh...

Arguments answered elsewhere in the thread.

Some basic science won't hurt though...

An extremophile (from Latin extremus meaning "extreme" and Greek philiā (φιλία meaning "love&quot is an organism that thrives in physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to most life on Earth.[1][2] In contrast, organisms that live in more moderate environments may be termed mesophiles or neutrophiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile

It's hard to keep oxygen molecules around, despite the fact that it's the third-most abundant element in the universe, forged in the superhot, superdense core of stars. That's because oxygen wants to react; it can form compounds with nearly every other element on the periodic tableSo how did Earth end up with an atmosphere made up of roughly 21 percent of the stuff?

The answer is tiny organisms known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These microbes conduct photosynthesis: using sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates and, yes, oxygen. In fact, all the plants on Earth incorporate symbiotic cyanobacteria (known as chloroplasts) to do their photosynthesis for them down to this day.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere

As for the argument that this does 0 about the environmental degradation here on the planet consider the causes of it...manufacturing, energy production and food production...Now consider an exponentially increasing portion of those activities being moved off planet...

[muriel_volestrangler]

49. It took hundreds of millions of years for cyanobacteria to build up enough oxygen in the atmosphere

that plants could evolve and survive. Yes, it would be a lovely hobby to see if we could watch extremophiles or cyanobacteria colonise a planet over millions of years. And it would have nothing to do with solving the Earth's environmental problems.

It would take far more effort, on Earth, just to collect the returning rockets containing the goods you want to manufacture off-planet, refuel them, and return them to wherever you have built your factories, than to just make the stuff here. And that's without having to manufacture the rockets to set up colonies to do the manufacturing. This isn't like offshoring production to another country. No-one can survive off earth without a huge effort on earth to keep them alive. Plus, of course, who'd want to spend their life working in a factory in a place where only extreme technology is keeping you alive?

I really don't think you have considered, for a moment, how hard it is to establish a new civilisation on a deadly planet. Fixing all our current problems would be a piece of cake in comparison.

[oNobodyo]

53. Once again...Sigh...

There's already serious threat of not being able to find factory work on this planet because of robotic manufacturing...

The point wasn't to say that it wouldn't take time to make a planet habitable for a complete population. In fact as I previously said explicitly is that it only needed to support a small number locally.

"It would take far more effort, on Earth, just to collect the returning rockets containing the goods you want to manufacture off-planet, refuel them, and return them to wherever you have built your factories, than to just make the stuff here."

This is completely false...They don't need to be "rockets" at all, refueled or launched from a planet since electric thrusters are fine for tugging stuff around a 0 g environment and dropping it into the earths gravity well from a robotic factory built in space.

In fact, in a frictionless environment the energy requirements to move anything is greatly reduced not to mention how a number of manufacturing process' that require a vacuum be created on earth at huge energy costs comes at a pretty low cost.

I don't think that you've considered that it's already a little too late and the expansion is inevitable even if it were possible to get 7 billion people to go green.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/15/bill_mckibben_being_green_wont_solve_the_problem/

[muriel_volestrangler]

55. You need a rocket to get off a planet

They have gravity wells too. And if you're doing this in earth orbit, then you have to build your huge satellites somewhere, get them out of that gravity well, and get them to earth.

See if you can name the industry that you think is producing significant problems for the environment on earth that could be done in space with less effect on earth.

[oNobodyo]

57. too easy...

Initially, but also as I said earlier most of the materials are already up there already bought and paid for in the form of dying satellites that are otherwise unrecoverable.

You build them at the lagrange points and you get the bits and pieces there with electric propulsion...already used, already proven.

A better question is what industry isn't having significant environmental impact or couldn't be done with less impact in space?

[muriel_volestrangler]

59. What industry could be recreated with dead satellites?

You've failed to mention any industry so far. Remember, this needs to have a significant positive effect on the earth's environment.

Name any industry that can be feasibly moved to space. There is none. Because it's too difficult to keep anyone in space to run it.

[oNobodyo]

61. Actually...

Any of them that can produce it's product via 3d printing and since the premise was that dead satellites would be turned into sintering material to produce the literal framework for a materials processing infrastructure rather than try to export that infrastructure from a gravity well...and that's the whole point. By building the infrastructure to use materials already floating around in space you negate the cost of having to lift them off the planet to produce X.

Production in nearly every industry is so automated already that humans rarely compete with robots unless it's for pennies a day so saying that it can't be done because it needs humans to do it is a fallacious argument at best.

Here's a small example of what can be done via 3d printing
http://www.wimp.com/functionaltools/

And I would remind you that in an earlier post you yourself mentioned the fact that billionaires were willing to pay a high premium just to take a short ride into space...So who knows what they will put on order.

[muriel_volestrangler]

64. What is the pollution from running 3D printers on earth that needs to be avoided?

Remember, this is about saving the Earth (so what billionaires fancy having waiting for them for a few days in space is irrelevant).

"Production in nearly every industry is so automated already that humans rarely compete with robots"

Again, what is gained by putting the robots in space? Be specific about the industry, so we can point out how many people actually do run the factories, and we can judge the environmental problems they cause on Earth. Remember that a lot of industries get offshored because they need cheap labour.

[oNobodyo]

65. Seriously?

"What is the pollution from running 3D printers on earth that needs to be avoided?"

3d printing can produce virtually any product so therefore it could negate the pollution of any of those industries that produce... products...Is that not a broad enough target for you to aim at?

'Remember, this is about saving the Earth (so what billionaires fancy having waiting for them for a few days in space is irrelevant)."

Unless it happens to a be a product that would be made by materials mined on earth, with energy generated on earth and it's something that will be used on earth...thereby displacing all the subsequent associated pollution in that manufacturing stream.

"Again, what is gained by putting the robots in space?"

Asked, answered and ignored previously...

The simple answer is that they can build things and things that can build things. A lot of things like electronics and solar cells require a vacuum to produce. Producing a vacuum on earth is energy intensive and free there. Moving things on an assembly line require more energy to do because of a little thing called gravity. The moon and asteroids contain more, cheaper to transport, less destructive to mine materials.

"Remember that a lot of industries get offshored because they need cheap labour."

Which was my point about humans competing with robots. It's already too expensive to have a human do most factory work in the US and the trend is continuing to the point where it threatens the jobs of those pennies per day workers.

3D Printed Guns Won't Hurt You - but Jobs of 50 Million Women Could Be in Danger (of losing their jobs to 3d printers)
http://truth-out.org/news/item/18622-the-3d-printed-guns-wont-hurt-you

I repeat for what feels like the bazillionth time...3d printing can replicate virtually any product and if done in space it doesn't need earth bound power generation or mining once it's established.

[muriel_volestrangler]

66. Then run your super-duper 3D printers on Earth

You need a reason to run your 3d printers in space rather than on earth, where their products will be used.

"3d printing can produce virtually any product"

Anyone who says this has no understanding whatsoever of materials science. There's so much more to production than making something the right shape.

"Unless it happens to a be a product that would be made by materials mined on earth, with energy generated on earth and it's
something that will be used on earth...thereby displacing all the subsequent associated pollution in that manufacturing stream. "

Yet again, you need to actually name a major industry causing environmental problems, not just assume there is one.

"Moving things on an assembly line require more energy to do because of a little thing called gravity."

No, not really. Assembly lines are largely flat. The difference in energy consumed between moving objects on rollers or wheels on Earth, and the same line in space, is negligble. But the absence of gravity makes it much harder to keep an object where you want it - the slightest movement and it can float off. Add to that the huge cost of keeping alive the people who run the factory, and there's not point, apart from a few very specialised, high cost, low volume applications - which won't help the environment significantly by moving them off the planet.

If garments are some day manufactured by something like a 3D printer, there's no advantage to it happening in space. The raw material is down here (organic material or hydrocarbons). Your article is not relevant to manufacturing in space.

Solar cell power generation can be done on Earth as well as in space - where we have oxygen for the people who build, install and maintain them. The idea that you can do all this in space when it takes billions a year just to keep alive a handful of people in the ISS is ridiculous.

[oNobodyo]

73. sigh...

"You need a reason to run your 3d printers in space rather than on earth, where their products will be used."

Cheap vacuum required for manufacturing, lower energy requirement to move products around factory, Lower energy required to move very large objects, lower energy to acquire resources, more abundant resources, less environmental damage to acquire resources, displaces the need for locally produced and more environmentally damaging energy production, builds the infrastructure for future exploration without having to lift everything into earth orbit thereby lowering the cost of all space missions and increasing capabilities...and that's just off the top of my head.


"The difference in energy consumed between moving objects on rollers or wheels on Earth, and the same line in space, is negligble."

"the slightest movement and it can float off."

Contradictory statement made Isaac Newton roll over in his grave.

"Add to that the huge cost of keeping alive the people who run the factory"

Except that there are no people only robots?

"apart from a few very specialised, high cost, low volume applications "

I wonder why you would consider electronics a low volume and low impact product to create...

"there's no advantage to it happening in space."

Assertion disproven multiple times already.

"The idea that you can do all this in space when it takes billions a year just to keep alive a handful of people in the ISS is ridiculous."

Except that the potential market for asteroid mining alone in the neighborhood of $15 trillion annually and that robots don't require air and water...For an example of scale...1 nickle asteroid a half mile in circumference would be equal to the entire planets "gdp" for a year.

And I never said anywhere that you couldn't or shouldn't pursue local solutions as well, only that after 40 yrs they've proven to be relatively ineffective. While on the other hand you stand in angry opposition to this potential solution as if it would harm you personally...Most curious.

[sendero]

27. I take a pretty cynical view of all this..

... the elites are not particularly worried about these issues if anything they would prefer to depopulate the planet a bit.

IMHO climate change, peak oil and any other number of possible mal events are going to synergize to do just that (reduce the population dramatically) and are all already too far along to stop.

We're not talking centuries here either, decades at best.

The only thing I can see that might save us would be some dramatic breakthrough in energy technology. Not impossible, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Kennah]

74. It will neither save nor destroy us, but it will stave off the inevitable--collapse of civilization

[snagglepuss]

23. .

[tabasco]

24. But it's going to SNOW this winter in many areas

[yurbud]

26. algae is a win win: you can use it to make fuel too, ethanol and biodiesel

[daleo]

28. Covering hundreds of millions of roofs with solar panels

Would be a good first step. It would generate electricity, displace greenhouse gases and slightly increase the Earth's albedo.

[JackRiddler]

30. Self-important fantasy.

So we're going to fail collectively to implement the known corrections to this problem.

But then, magically, we will save ourselves anyway by gambling on some Rube Goldberg outer space contraption that will succeed fully on the first try, without unintended consequences.

[oNobodyo]

36. I really love these arguments...

and the tortured mental gymnastics that everyone engages in when they arise...

"it's over population" - It's not, it's consumption and population growth is actually slowing as is consumption.

"if we don't do something then millions will die" - That solves the previous problem and encourages those with that belief or would prefer that end, to 'do nothing'.

"we should not attempt a solution because it will only encourage people to make more mistakes" - Apply this argument to any other problem and then explain to me how you effectively differ from the previous 'do nothing' crowd.

"we should not attempt a solution because it might go horribly wrong" - Considering that no solution means it most assuredly going 'horribly wrong' aren't you just choosing one definite 'horribly wrong' over a potential 'horribly wrong' because it's more familiar?

"we should not attempt this solution because it's not my favorite solution" - Although this one might make you feel better in a smug self superior way, you know that you're not going to get 7 billion people to all dance to the same tune. So again how do you differ from the 'do nothing' crowd?

"This is the only solution" - See the prior statement and stop your smirking because it applies to you too.

"We should not attempt to make other near planets habitable before solving all the problems on this one first" - Consider the analogy of being on a sinking boat and saying "we should not move a people to the life raft until we've bailed all the water out." Even though it would cause the boat to ride higher in the water, slow the sinking and there may better ways to bail found on that life raft.

or the variation...

"If humanity can't solve it's problems then humanity doesn't deserve to go to other planets" - This is analogous to saying "if the poor can't stop being poor then the poor deserve to be poor even it it kills them" It's not just humanity at stake but the trillions of other non human lives on this planet and everything that we, they and us could achieve given enough time and space to achieve it in.

"Every solution just creates more problems" - This is the very essence of life itself and the end of all struggling the antithesis of life.

Too many of these arguments seem to hinge on the belief that humanity is a disease that needs eradicated, controlled or punished for being the imperfect creatures that we are. At their core they spring from the phobic need for cleanliness, purity and simplicity but this only results in a shining, sterile and lifeless universe of black and white.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Life is good, plant a tree.

[politicat]

38. +10000.

We have to try the big projects, the small scale individual behavioral shifts, the cultural transitions, everything. Because we screwed this up, so we have the responsibility to make restitution. Or to atone, if that language works better.

I honestly don't get the pre-millenial dispensationalist theory that the End times are coming so why bother. By Biblical text, humanity was told to be good stewards pretty much first thing, and according to Jesus himself, faith without the work is dead. Not to mention how utterly pissed this mess would make both the OT Jehovah (you messed up MY stuff?!?111!!! I smited Sodom for being RUDE. I sent a BEAR to eat little kids for sniggering at an old crank's bald head. SRSLY?, you think I'm going to let trashing my creation slide!?!) and NT Jesus (clean up after yourself being a basic piece of Do unto others...) Since the PMD god seems to be pretty badass, it seems a PMD believer would not want to be caught crapping on the carpet...

And I don't get the despair that drives the Clean Up This Place Before We Go Elsewhere crowd and the Can't Fix It, Why Bother, Better Die side. It's not like we've TRIED fixing it, and going elsewhere is still in the early stages, so cleaning up while we build the interplanetary Conestoga is totally reasonable. Is it mass depression? Fear-based paralysis? Or something like the executive function dysfunction that is at the root of the hoarding variety of OCD -- too many options and too many decisions for the executive function to cope.

I read science fiction because it offers hope that we can, and will. And if that means flooding the Sahara, the Gobi and the Mohave with sea water to kick-start the rain cycle and lower sea levels, I'll take a job laying pipe or assembling pumps. If it means converting suburbia to tiny-house co-housing and urban farming and tending a household biodiesel tank, let's go. If it means bioengineering tree lichen to help trees take up more carbon and growing our protein in vats and giving up on factory grain farming, okay. But my solar panels and conservation and minimal consumption and biking and limited travel and backyard garden and local foods aren't enough. It's time to take 2% of the world's wealth (not income, not real property) and fund this stuff, big and little.

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. How much energy do you think it takes to build and launch an "interplanetary Conestoga"?

Look at the effort it took to send a few astronauts to the moon - the amount of hardware, and fuel for that matter. Multiply that by a billion, and you have more energy and material needs than we've ever needed for the entire planet.

If 'go elsewhere' is meant to be part of a solution to environmental problems, then Clean Up This Place Before We Go Elsewhere is not 'despair', it's the only possible order to do it in. We can continue sending probes, we could set up a few experimental posts, but these do not fix the energy and environment requirements of Earth.

[oNobodyo]

41. That's the problem...

Energy requirements on the planet will continue to grow proportional to population and multiplied by the requirements of technology.

On the other hand if we were to compare relative energy density of the time when "Conestogas" were the fashion and the energy required to build one, I think that you'd see that we're well within that same ratio today.

The sticking point isn't engineering, energy or materials since the latter two are actually quite abundant in space...Abundant enough in fact to fix a lot of the energy and material needs of this planet. The sticking point is the same as every other big project that doesn't show immediate short term profits.

Energy and materials are repesented by dollars. Dollars are controlled by those seeking short term profits and those that leave it to amass in stagnant piles.

The very same reason that "Clean(ing) Up This Place Before We Go Elsewhere" is also limping along.

Government used to reclaim these stagnate pools of capital and spend it on these kinds of big projects and we were all the better for it but it too has been captured by the ideology of the short term profit and stagnation or resources in a race to the bottom.

And I didn't mean to ever suggest that it was an either/or question. The only either/or question is "do something or do nothing" and no matter how grand your scheme or how perfect a solution it might be, it's only a fantasy if it leads to "do nothing"

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. "energy or materials ... are actually quite abundant in space" - no, materials are not

That's the meaning of the word - 'space'. There's nothing there. Rocks are available at the other end. With a huge effort, you can convert them into useful objects. But you need to build rockets here on Earth to get there first.

"On the other hand if we were to compare relative energy density of the time when "Conestogas" were the fashion and the energy required to build one, I think that you'd see that we're well within that same ratio today. "

Really? Why do you think that only multi-millionaires can afford to get a few days in space, let alone get another rocket launched with them that could take them as far as the Moon, whereas average people were able to scrape enough together to build or buy a wagon? It's because the resources that go into building a rocket capable of lifting several tonnes to orbit (and you need tonnes per person - all the life support) are huge. Then you need another stage, also in orbit, capable of carrying people in safety, and landing it. Only then have you got to the materials you call 'abundant'. Curiosity cost $2.5 billion and that's just a few tonnes of equipment without any humans. Multiply it by 10, and you might keep a human alive. Multiply that by a billion, and you're analogy of 'moving people to the life raft' would start to be relevant - you'd move a seventh of the world population. But that's $25 billion billion, or nearly 300,000 times the yearly Gross World Product of $85 trillion.

This is why we've got to fix the planet first. The equivalent in your liferaft analogy is that we could throw a piece of paper overboard and say "look - we've lightened the load!". And all to get to somewhere that is orders of magnitude harder to live in. You could stay on Earth and fix everything for the people you were going to send to Mars or wherever for a tiny fraction of the effort.

[oNobodyo]

45. I repeat...

You don't have to move billions of people only the means to produce the goods that those people need...Please do stop mischaracterizing my argument and framing it as false when you're selecting very narrow parameters not included by my original argument...

Materials...

http://www.planetaryresources.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/space-big-enough-two-asteroid-mining-companies-212904493.html

Asteroid Mining: The New Space Race Could be Worth Trillions
http://markets.financialcontent.com/stocks/news/read/21291440/Asteroid_Mining

I'd also throw in the potential of recycling the hundreds of thousands of tons of space junk already floating around in orbit to that available resources bucket.

Manufacturing...

Nasa to begin 3D printing in SPACE: Agency funds development of factory that will create MILE-long shuttle parts while in orbit
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2411007/Nasa-begin-3D-printing-SPACE-SpiderFab-factory-create-MILE-long-shuttle-parts-orbit.html

http://www.therobotreport.com/index.php/industrial_robots

Energy...

http://spaceenergy.com/
http://space-solar-power.net/

I also repeat..."you aren't going to get 7 billion people to dance to the same tune"

It's been more than 40 yrs trying to get the billions of people on this planet to dance to the tune that you're playing and it hasn't worked and equates to doing nothing. I've been trying for at least that long and there's so little time left even for a plan B.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Life is good, plant a tree...ON MARS

[muriel_volestrangler]

50. Plant a tree on Mars and it will die

unless you manufacture immense amounts of support equipment for it.

Your ideas of living in space would do nothing to solve environmental problems on Earth. If you actually think they would, then be specific: say what you would do out there, what it would take in support from Earth to set up and keep going, and how much it would displace on Earth. Vague hand-waving of 'manufacturing' or 'energy' doesn't cut it (and I presume you're talking about food production as a joke). Then I'll tell you how much easier it would be to do it on Earth, just in a more sustainable way than we do now.

Since you aren't going to get 7 billion people to dance to the same tune, how do you propose to get a project going that will remove a significant environmental problem from Earth and do something in space or on a planet or moon instead?

"the tune that you're playing"?

What tune? I'm just pointing out that terraforming somewhere else won't solve our environmental problems. I'm not saying 'do nothing' - I'm saying 'do things on Earth, where the problem is, not potter around in space where we have no capability of doing anything than can have any significance on the environment here'.

[politicat]

47. To fund it, about 2% of the world's wealth.

In terms of energy, we need two engineering breakthroughs (which are within grasp) to provide sufficient enery to power our surface clean-up needs and the lift to the top of the gravity well. We need orbital solar collectors that transmit power by microwave to the ground. We've done the satellites; in terms of tech, we know how they work. We've also done power transmission to ground by microwave, so again, we know how it works. It's just a matter of building them and lifting and developing the ground infrastructure to feed that power into the grid. The tech is on the shelf right now. Right now, there's no immediate profit, so that's why it's not being done. But deploying those takes care of our power needs here for both cleanup and further technological drvelopment. With near limitless, non-polluting power, deep well sequestration, desalinization, refreezing the arctic, and non-fossil fuel transportation become trivial in engineering terms.

Second, to build the ships to retrieve raw materiel from the asteroid belt and to transport to Mars and Luna, we need to build the space elevator so we can stop using rockets. That's the technical challenge right now -- building the carbon-fiber cable. But we're getting there -- that tech improves every year, and most of that improvement is coming from independent developers, not corporate R&d or government. Once we have a top step above the gravity well, it becomes much easier to build a space-based shipyard. A hell of a lot of a permanent space craft can be built with 3-D printing technology, because it's not the vacuum of space that requires all that heavy shielding, it's lift and re-entry. eliminate those two factors and a space craft can be something a lot like a hamster ball or a big tin can. Space ships should be built in space because building them on the surface takes far more energy. (We don't build container ships or carriers in Iowa because it costs too much to get them to where they're used. Same principle for space.)

And these can be funded fully, with a lot to spare for remediation on the ground, by 1% of global wealth. (Currently estimated at $223 TRILLION; $2 trillion is about 4x what NASA estimates is needed to fully deploy the solar satellite system and fund R&D on the elevator.)

It's not that we can't, because we have the knowledge. Right now, it is purely a matter of will and despair and fear of the unknown.

[oNobodyo]

48. Actually...

We don't need to ship everything to space at all...nor do we need a space elevator (initially)

We can use existing technology (small robots with ion drives) to tug space junk out to a Lagrange point (preferably the one between earth and moon) grind it into a fine powder and then laser sinter it into something useful like the platform for a larger processing plant...

The initial costs would be on the same scale as the ISS.

[politicat]

51. Absolutely.

We're clever monkeys -- we do great things with tools.

[muriel_volestrangler]

52. Orbital solar power is ridiculously expensive

because it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to build it and maintain it.

How much power has been transmitted to the ground by microwave? How much did it cost?

A space elevator would be lovely (and would be a prerequisite for any of the ideas that people on this thread think they can do in space). But it's nowhere near reality yet, and would be an engineering project far larger than anything humans have yet attempted.

If NASA thinks it can set up a solar satellite system AND complete the R&D for a space elevator with $500 billion, then it's lost its mind. The US spends more than that on petroleum each year (7 billion barrels). If you could set up a world power system and work out how to make travel to orbit cheap for that amount, then private investors would have done it already.

[oNobodyo]

54. It's already being done.

Links were made available.

[muriel_volestrangler]

56. I see no links that satellites are sending power to earth (nt)

[oNobodyo]

58. The question wasn't if they were already doing it but if it could be done.

Did you miss these?

http://spaceenergy.com/
http://space-solar-power.net/

And my premise didn't even require that it be sent back to earth but that it be used there instead of on earth.

[muriel_volestrangler]

60. You said 'it's already being done'

Those are speculative companies that think they will, one day, be able to do something in space.

The entire thread is about things that can be used on Earth. That's the point - to fix environmental problems on Earth. Extra activity elsewhere doesn't fix Earth's problems, as I've said before.

Give us the link to NASA saying they could build a world-powering solar energy system for $500 billion.

[oNobodyo]

62. I did...

and it's gone beyond speculation and to the point where the infrastructure is already being developed...in other words "it's already being done"

I do remember what the thread is about...

Geoengineering or Terraforming this planet to stop runaway warming with secondary emphasis on the need for multiple plans to adapt and ameliorate it...

Runaway warming I would remind you is a global extinction scenario for nearly every specie on the planet save for certain extremophiles and having all of ones eggs in the same basket is rarely a good idea and never when those eggs constitute the only known life in the entire universe.

"Give us the link to NASA saying they could build a world-powering solar energy system for $500 billion."

And yet again you attempt to set up a strawman argument....Please stop, it's really not very polite.

At what point was the claim made that you could or had to power the entire planet from space based power stations for $500 billion?

I've quite explicitely said that the power needs only be used THERE instead of here to be of positive effect. With space based power you don't have to lift power sources for every satellite which is the majority of their mass now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

63. Sorry, that was politicat in #47, not you

"$2 trillion is about 4x what NASA estimates is needed to fully deploy the solar satellite system and fund R&D on the elevator"

You were the one you claimed "the initial costs would be on the same scale as the ISS" which is, I think, even more ridiculous. But feel free to justify you own nonsense.

"it's gone beyond speculation and to the point where the infrastructure is already being developed."

Links, please. What you have linked to is clearly speculation. There is no 'infrastructure'. One company hopes it can invent something and get some intellectual property ("our business plan centres on the rapid and deliberate creation of state-of-the-art Intellectual Property" - good to know they think the IP won't happen by accident); the other is a guy with a patent which depends on "Empty external tanks from Space Shuttle launches". Well, that's him fucked, isn't it? No, there is no infrastructure being developed.

[oNobodyo]

69. sigh...

The "intial cost" of using small electric space tugs to move decommisioned satellites to a lagrange point to be recycled...These are small, inexpensive and so simple that you could build one in your garage.

Recycling need be gentle nor precise...a simple grinding operation to produce sinterable material...once sinterable it can be formed into any shape.

There's literally hundreds of thousands of tons of this material that would otherwise just burn up on reentry and go to waste.

"No, there is no infrastructure being developed."

The two links I grabbed were at random and specifically geared towards energy production in space...HOWEVER...

Here's a company building the infrastructure down to it's own launch facilities...ever heard of it?

http://www.spacex.com/

Here's one with Richard Branson as an initial investor...ever heard of him?

http://www.planetaryresources.com/technology/

Here's a list of private spaceflight companies (in varying states of development and OPERATION)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies

There's a reason an account as old as mine has so few posts and it isn't because I'm shy, lack strong opinion, knowledge, the ability to argue under duress or the experience to do so...

[muriel_volestrangler]

70. "These are small, inexpensive and so simple that you could build one in your garage"

I don't know why I have wasted my time talking to you. That is the most absurd thing I have yet seen on this thread. It not only doesn't deserve and answer, I'm not going to both reading the rest of the post below it. If you post crap like that, you're not worth anyone's time.

[oNobodyo]

72. LOL

An ion thruster is just two charged plates with high voltage applied...

Here is a very rudimentary one built on someones desk...

And here is a plasma jet made out of a coke bottle...

None of this is especially new, controversial or complicated technology...It long ago filtered down to the hobbiest level.

"If you post crap like that, you're not worth anyone's time."

and perhaps you shouldn't be quite so abusive to members?

[Coyotl]

67. Maybe plant some trees before putting mirrors in space?? Stop deforestation??

[oNobodyo]

71. Why not both?

There isn't really that much time left to just plant trees and stopping deforestation won't stop climate change. If we stopped ALL human activity today and forever the planet is still headed for a big die off.

[DetlefK]

76. We will stop our attacks on religion when they comply with a simple demand:

"Prove it."

I have no problem with there probably being a God. Prove his existence and I will believe in him. Until then, just shut up.