I think if you want to make Earth similar to Mars all you have to do is remove the magnetosphere. It wouldn’t take long (geologically) for solar winds to rip away the atmosphere and radiation to sterilize the surface. Perhaps a necessary first step to colonization is a foolproof synthetic magnetosphere. How else do you shield an entire planet/moon?

If I recall, the biggest failure of biosphere2 was, with all that money, planning, and brain power they forgot to factor in the oxygen the bacteria in the soil would use and factor in the formation of calcium carbonate on the exposed concrete and had to (secretly) add pure oxygen to the system at least once.

Also contributing to the failure, Steve Bannon was put in charge (despite major objections by the team) and immediately the project fell apart among allegations of abuse and safety concerns he admitted in court… “ He also testified that when the woman submitted a five-page complaint outlining safety problems at the site, he promised to shove the complaint "down her throat".”…the crew sued over this and won $600000 in compensation!

“Witnesses”? 😂 I have some questions for them.

There’s actually more evidence the asteroid wasn’t the major dinosaur killer…the KT boundary layer, created by the asteroid dust and charcoal from global fires is NOT full of dinosaur bones. If one event killed 75% of species and 95% of all biomass, that geological layer would be absolutely full of fossils, but it’s not…it’s nearly empty, but the layers preceding it show a steady decline in animal populations long before the final death blow.

Yellowstone, the American super volcano, is overdue for a similarly disastrous eruption.
Our grasp of volcanology is far too tenuous to claim we would have a million years of warning before a similar major eruption. We might get no warning at all. Surprise eruptions aren’t abnormal even with all our monitoring…and the strength of eruptions is almost always a surprise.

The acidification of the ocean that preceded the other climate-caused extinction events is occurring today. Once diatoms and plankton can no longer create their exoskeletons the ocean food web dissolves, then the land food web dissolves, then clouds of hydrogen gas start erupting from the deep ocean when bacteria consume the billions of tons of dead ocean life, further poisoning the oceans and atmosphere. Yes, that will likely take hundreds or even thousands of years to play out, but the food webs are already falling apart from other pressures before the plankton even fails. Interesting unprecedented times are ahead.

My uncle worked at NASA…he was in charge of all the Apollo moon rocks, allocating them for study, did the cutting of them with a Diamond saw, and later curated the collection for decades. He also helped train the Apollo astronauts on geology so they could collect interesting and new samples and not more of what we already had.
He was also my dad’s roommate at Stanford.
I wonder if he had anything to do with the encased rock….the photo is too low grade to see exactly what you’re talking about.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'anhydrite, groundwater, gypsum, geology, hydrology, german, town, tom scott' to 'anhydrite, groundwater, gypsum, geology, hydrology, geothermal drilling, tom scott' - edited by Eklek

One of the things that makes me anti-nuclear is the radioactive and toxic waste. Weaponization, accidents and disasters all have a chance to happen, but are hypothetical. However, nuclear waste is created when things are running perfectly as planned, it's part of the plan.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx
"Direct disposal (after storage) to a geological repository. The material has very long-lived radioactivity, and will take about 300,000 years to reach the same level as the original ore.
Aqueous reprocessing to remove only uranium and plutonium. The material then only takes about 9000 years to reach the same level of radioactivity as the original ore."

I love how they say "only about 9000 years" like it's not a big deal hahah

Renewable green energy all the way :-)

I appreciate your argument, but I don't share your alarm.

Displaced by sea level rise (which would be a gradual thing, but I agree very serious), combined with droughts/floods might potentially fall under "decimation". But only, I think, to the historical definition of 10% dead. Include wars resulting from territory and resource squabbles (should that count as fallout of climate change?), and it could be (much) worse. But still not on a 4-year timescale.

Second, if we're already "way past the tipping point", it logically follows that blame for that can't really be laid on Trump. His policies can certainly make things worse, but I think that 4 years of terrible climate policy in ONE country on Earth (granted, a country with a lot of influence) simply aren't going to be catastrophically, drastically worse than 4 years of magically ideal climate policy (even in a hypothetical scenario where Nader or Stein or Clinton or whatever ideal person was president and could dictate perfect climate policy without being filtered by congress).


So to answer your question, basically no, I don't think that "raising our emission levels exponentially while advocating closed borders will have an irreversible negative effect on the planet and humanity."

One, "exponentially" is an exaggeration. US emissions under Trump won't be an order of magnitude higher than they were under Obama, or would have been under Clinton. In the range of 10% to 50% higher seems well possible, but 100% higher (double) would be next to impossible. Worse, yes. Exponentially worse, no.

Two, "irreversible" is a word I would hesitate to use because it carries an implication that there is some magic bullet to immediately fix things. If a plague wiped humanity off the face of the Earth tomorrow, it would take some time for climate to adjust to pre-industrial levels. Like you said, it might take 25-50 years before things even could start getting better. But eventually, it could be mostly like we were never here. Some things about climate would never be the same, but in broad terms, things could get back to "normal" eventually.

On the other hand, if the plague wipes us all out on the last day of Trump's 4 years in office, it might take longer for that adjustment to happen. But not by a comparatively massive margin. So that's why I dislike "irreversible"; depending on what timescale you are referencing things are either already irreversible, or pretty close to a statistical wash (what's another 4 years in a recovery timeline of 250 years, or 100 in 10000?), or not worth worrying about at all (on a geological timescale that doesn't care 2 cents about things like species extinctions). Does that make sense?

Finally, "negative effect on the planet and humanity" is something that I totally agree with. And that negative effect will be real and significant. But I don't think that the walking disaster that is Trump will make things inescapably, horrifically worse. Not enough worse that it makes a persuasive argument to me that I should have voted for Clinton (again, I didn't vote for Trump, but I didn't vote for Clinton either).

I dunno. Maybe I'm a cockeyed optimist.

"Literally doom the human race."

I used to be a global warming denier, then a skeptic. I've come around that it is real and that it is caused in large part by human actions. I do admit that I'm still a bit skeptical about how catastrophic it would be to do nothing. Doom the human race? Nah. Decimate the human race (literal/historical definition of "decimate" meaning 10% dead)? Possible, but I think unlikely -- extremely unlikely unless deaths by famine/disease are wholly attributed to climate change. Lots and lots of people displaced over the next 100-200 years if, say, all polar and glacial ice melted (resulting in a ~70 meter sea level rise)? For sure. But they won't drown unless they are incapable of moving away from the ocean at a rate of at least a few meters per year.

In climate terms, a 4 year presidential term is a fraction of a second. In geological terms, 4 years is absolutely nothing. If the (admittedly terrible) climate policies of any single person, even one as powerful as the "leader of the free world" President of the United States over 4 years could literally doom the human race, we'd have been dead a LONG time ago.

I'm not saying it isn't important, and that it won't matter at all what Trump does with regards to climate, the EPA, etc. But even if you limit the timescale to sensible human terms (say, since the Industrial Revolution roughly 250 years ago), another 4 years, no matter how bad, aren't going to throw us over some sort of unrecoverable tipping point.

"I covered this entire planet once."

I didn't know that and doubted it, so I googled. Link says that before around 1 billion years ago, water (ocean) covered 95% of the surface of the earth, and then continents erupted relatively quickly, geologically speaking.

However, I think that 95% coverage figure (and possibly more earlier on?) would mostly be owed to the crust and mantle being relatively flat and smooth after cooling down from being a largely molten ball very early on. Now that the earth has cooled enough to allow plate tectonics to push stuff around and create subduction zones and mountain ranges, there are too many high-elevation points (and low elevation chasms for the ocean to fill in) for the ocean to ever cover the entire earth again. Even if all of the ice on the earth melted, apparently sea level would only rise by about 70 meters / 230 feet.

So the "and I can always cover it again" bit at the end is a bit overstated. We'd almost certainly be dead as a species if conditions were extreme enough to melt all of the ice around the world, but not because of being drowned off of dry land to live on.

First up, it's not 500 million years. Nuclear waste (typically Plutonium 239) has a half life of around 24000 years, an eyeblink geologically. Even if it wouldn't be too flash for life as we know it for a while, the planet will be fine, and life will recover.

But yeah, there are undeniably problems with nuclear energy, which are addressed in the related video (http://videosift.com/video/Nuclear-energy-is-terrible).

We have essentially 3 choices:

1: ditch our energy rich lifestyle and go back to an agrarian economy with no cars, internet or whatever. This also means ditching lots of really nice stuff, like medical technology (drugs and MRI machines don't grow from pixie dust). Pretty unlikely, IMO.

2: Accept that the eco-system is basically fucked and learn to live with climate change. Depressingly, this is probably the most likely scenario.

3: Invest heavily into other energy sources. And, like it or not, that's got to include some form of nuclear. Renewable (solar, wind, tide) etc, will help, but they won't cover all of our energy needs and they have their own problems. So ideally, it's fusion, but practically, thorium seems the next best bet.

See, this is why it needs to be shown the rise in joules, and a total energy rise in the entire planetary system, not just some arbitrary surface temperature rise....because people like you (no insult intended here) genuinely see the small relative figure and think...eh its no big deal.

Its a huge deal.

We are losing gigantic chunks of the otherwise permanent ice shelf in south and north arctic areas.

With those gone, we have otherwise what would have been massive mirrors, which reflect light...now acting as big old heating blankets (the water is effectively a black body to sunlight, absorbs it like no other..).

That right there is called a positive feedback loop. You start with something small, and within no time (geologically speaking), its in runaway growth.

The frozen tundra in greenland is home to enormous pockets of trapped methane....not for much longer. (source: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n1/abs/ngeo2305.html)

Methane's impact on global warming (i.e. energy RETENTION within our planetary weather system) is 25 times greater than an equivalent amount of C02. (source: http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html).

Further to this video, when you heat up the ocean systems beyond a certain threshold, the natrual pumping systems which circulate warm surface water to the deeper parts of the ocean for cooling, just flat out stop working. (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19895974), leading to the slow heat-death of a vast swath of temperatue sensitive biomes....which, when they are active and growing healthily, actually contribute to c02 depletion (carbon based lifeforms 'use up' carbon to be 'made').

...I could go on, but you see....even just a cursory glance at some of the 'smaller' impacts is pretty compelling enough to consider the phrase 'no big deal' a bit of a misnomer.

Do your research....it is catastrophic, and it is likely to happen in your lifetime (if you are under 30 atm).

Your grandchildren and great grandchildren will be living in a drastically different global environment.

No biggie though, cause we got electric cars coming online in the next 30 years or so

My original thought was maybe a frozen methane hydrate, it didn't behave like a pure liquid.

From http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean-chemistry/climate-change-and-methane-hydrates/
-Methane hydrates belong to a group of substances called clathrates – substances in which one molecule type forms a crystal-like cage structure and encloses another type of molecule. If the cage-forming molecule is water, it is called a hydrate. If the molecule trapped in the water cage is a gas, it is a gas hydrate, in this case methane hydrate.
Methane hydrates can only form under very specific physical, chemical and geological conditions. High water pressures and low temperatures provide the best conditions for methane hydrate formation.

I wouldn't keep beating this horse bloody if yours hadn't died HUNDREDS of years prior.

We're NOT talking about philosophy. This is NOT a perspective based on convictions alone. We are talking about TEST-ABLE SCI-ENCE...

This is the world (universe, perhaps multiverse) which engineers towards space discovery, sustainability of planetary bodies and their varied biology, geology, chemistry, and all of the sciences explainable through the holiest of holy languages -- MATHEMATICS -- based on innovation and implementation through repeatable testing.

Your beliefs do NOT contribute to that, though they do contribute elsewhere -- the realms of philosophy and mythology. I guess we call that religion. But not science.

In this life, we are concerned with temporal discovery and how to engineer with such discoveries. We're not concerned about the afterlife in THIS life. We are concerned with science, especially because it has a track record of proven results which we all benefit from.

It doesn't matter what you believe or once believed, there is a rigorous process for scientific knowledge; including a peer review process. All humans have emotional pain, but that shouldn't hold us back in the dark ages before reason.

No disrespect intended towards your cousin, but Darwin espoused a different view about transitional fossils:

"But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."

Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species

Darwin didn't believe all fossils were transitional in the sense I am referring to. He believed that there would be specific fossils showing the links between families, but he thought the reason they couldn't be found was because of the relatively few amount of fossils we had back then. Today hundreds of millions to perhaps billions of fossils have been found, but those pesky transitional forms are still nowhere to be seen.

What an idiot you sound like.
If you look at 'geology reports' you'll learn that what happening in our atmosphere IS DEFINATELY something new, both because it's happening because of humans and because of the rate at which we are affecting change, way faster than volcanoes have (possibly with the exception of super volcanoes).
The ocean buffer is not infinite, and it's already past it's ability to 'buffer' us and is both getting more acidic and warmer top to bottom.
I would love to see you publicly take an IQ test next to Bill Nye. I'd give you a spread of 25IQ points and still be willing to put a $G on Bill to win. If it's a science test, I'll give you 25% and I'll put $5K on Bill to win. You have shown conclusively you don't understand science.
Chogie?

What an idiot. Yes, the temps have been up for a while. Just like we've had mini-ice ages and mini-bumps throughout history. Look at geology reports (oh, wait, he's only a mechanical engineer.) Nothing new here, folks. Yes, we're pumping out carbon dioxide. So did volcanos in the distant past. So what? We've got a lot of buffer called the ocean. Lastly, Dr. Nye, two coincident facts don't show causality. Oh, you wear a bow-tie, you must be smart. See? Classic example of two facts that are coincident but not related. Except for the you're being smart part. That part isn't true. Michael Crichton had it right in State of Fear.