Quote:

There's very little we could do that would harm the planet.
http://qntm.org/destroy



I disagree with this assertion. The qntm guy missed the point altogether. It is not about destroying the earth itself, it is about making it inhabitable. Namely altering the atmosphere.

The main thing that we can affect is the atmosphere. We already know that in the early years of the earth, there was no atmosphere to speak of and that is was generally made by the many colonies of bacteria that emitted oxygen. The beings on earth can certainly affect this. Now we are emitting other things that cause an effect. We have never seen the effect of this before so we will spend alot of time arguing about it.

But we can know more by studying the atmospheres on other planets like Mars and Venus. Both very different atmospheres. We have evidence that Mars once had rivers and that water was there. But that all changed for some reason.

So far in our search, we have not quite found a planet like ours - that could support life like ours. I bet that this has something to do with a proper balance being attained here. I would also bet that the kind of equilibrium we have here is hard to come by. If we frustrate it too much, we could be in danger of a serious global change.

We have had changes like this before - like the dinosours dying just from a meteor or something. We have evidence of cataclismic events that chanegd everything on the face of the earth and changed the course of the species. I don't doubt for one minute that with our technology, we could make very significant changes that could have very long term effects.
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Brent
RioCar MK][a 20GB+80GB
'96 Saab 900s (Not any more)
Still looking for a good way to install in a 2010 BMW 3 series with iDrive/NAV