Re:The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @09:45AM
(#26328954)
The problem isn't the engineering, as usual, it's political. Can you realistically foresee humanity taking on such long term projects? We can't even get people to stop burning fossil fuels to "mine" cryptocurrency.
Re:The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
by vimacs2 on Thursday March 04, 2021 @09:43AM
(#26343024)
Sure but you're thinking current humanity and contrary to modern times, there were plenty of civilisations that did engage in long term infrastructure in the past.
We're talking millions of years in the future and assuming "we" are still around, I doubt that a 21st century layperson would be able to deduce that they ever stemmed from the same genus, never mind species - even assuming no genetic engineering or cyborgs.
Life extension is also likely going to play a major factor in the future and it's a lot harder to dismiss the merits of long term thinking when it's a very likely possibility that you will be around to experience the consequences of your current short-sightedness.
Another commenter suggested moving the planet and got down voted to oblivion but it's not at all a ridiculous suggestion in these kinds of time scales. You could place giant ion thrusters on the moon and set it in an orbit where tidal effects would nudge the Earth outwards over a few million years. This can be made subtle enough as to not even be noticeable to life on Earth.
Of course a cheaper solution is to just use a solar shade that can incrementally decrease it's opacity to compensate for the brightening sun but this would not be enough when the Sun transitions into it's red giant phase