As a species, for long-term survival, we have two choices: ensure our survival on Earth, or go elsewhere. There is no certainty that our survival here is assured (and a considerable body of evidence to suggest it may be at risk), and there is no certainty that a mission to develop other planets or non-planetary habitats will succeed. Therefore failure to massively invest in both is to risk destruction of our entire species.
Now recognise that the development of any extraterrestrial environment capable of supporting an independent (i.e. large) human population will require a much deeper understanding of climates (and other ecosystem elements) than we have today.
Put simply: cutting climate research is a gamble with everyone's lives, and let's also go to Mars ASAP and start trying stuff.
In geologic time frames, we are likely to be entering a domain where glaciation entirely disappears, including in Antarctica. The world was last here ~34M years ago, and sea levels were 200ft (60m) higher. I'm sure anyone reading this understands that this will have huge impacts on our day to day, including the drowning of most of the today's population centers.
(If anyone is curious, research the Eocene, the era that likely has the best predictive power for what will be happening to our climate over the next few thousand years). Just imagine it running in reverse, at a greatly accelerated rate.
And if you're wondering how we might avoid this fate, from an engineering perspective we need to recreate something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
co2 material safety data sheet says 5000 ppm is max allowable for an 8 hour work day. [1]
co2 levels (appear to) have a direct impact on cognition [2], specifically strategy and information usage.
Ecoene had levels around 2000ppm. It'll be interesting to see if we overshoot or undershoot. Sensitive people start noticing effects at around 1k, perhaps as high as 2k for insensitive people. 2-5k "Headaches, sleepiness and stagnant, stale, stuffy air. Poor concentration, loss of attention, increased heart rate and slight nausea may also be present." [3]
I don't think there have been any studies of long term exposure to 2k+ ppm (with no recovery time). as far as i know, nobody has to deal with that level of exposure for months or years. It's likely not good. But, as you say, not Venus.
[1] https://www.airgas.com/msds/001013.pdf
[2] http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/15-10037/
[3] https://www.kane.co.uk/knowledge-centre/what-are-safe-levels... (not a great source, but plausible)
Have we really reached the point where it's necessary to claim political correctness before embarking upon a discussion?
Do you think it's necessary in order to have your opinion taken seriously, or to avoid moral opprobrium?
If the worst comes to pass and the species needs to throw a hail mary, I have to think our chances of success would be improved (even if slightly) if we were to have these sorts of details ironed-out in advance.
Suppose we started to really use Fusion power not just at our current energy needs, but enough to directly warm the planet. There are hard limits on just how much heat per m^2 you can dump before you start to cook the planet.
Such a civilization may prefer low atmospheric pressure and a planet further from the sun simply for cooling.
Could you point me to a few papers which expound on this view? I'd be interested to see the mathematical models behind this.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0469(1963)0...
It's stable, as when you add up all the positive and negative feedback effects, the result is negative. The most important negative comes from the thermal radiation of the Earth into space, which increases with increasing temperature, resulting in more cooling. Methane in Siberian ice is a hypothesised positive feedback effect: higher temperature => more methane => more warming.
If all these effects ever add up to more than 0 (the "tipping point"), the system will no longer be stable, and will travel around until it finds another stable equilibrium. The actual consequences of this are nowhere stated because they are completely unknown. But we're not talking about measuring sea-levels, we're talking a completely different climate (e.g. Venus).