Which catastrophic risks does a mars colony mitigate ? Using a list from a recent post by Stuart Armstrong (table by Anders Sandberg) …
Earth impactors : yes
War : probably. Unlikely that Mars colonies would be valuable or strategically important enough to extended a war to Mars, but possible that the same conditions that led to war on Earth could lead to local war on Mars, or that war on Earth could be exploited by factions on Mars
Famine : yes. Keeping a Mars colony fed might be a major challenge especially at first, but independent of the same challenge on Earth. If famine on Earth is caused by a plant pathogen, it could spread to Mars, but there is the nice long quarantine.
Pandemics : probably. Until there is much more advanced propulsion technology that cuts trip time to days, the trip serves as a natural quarantine period. Also, really nasty features like the ability to persist in the environment, or replicate in non-human hosts, or spread via aerosols, don’t present any additional threat on Mars.
Super volcanos : yes. Also, unlike e.g. impactors, there probably isn’t an equivalent Martian hazard.
Supernova, GRB : probably ? Unlike impactors, a supernova or GRB would affect both Earth and Mars. However, if the major impact on Earth is deaths by radiation of exposed people and destruction of agriculture by destruction of the ozone layer, then Mars should be much more resilient, since settlements have to be more radiation hardened anyway, and the agriculture would be under glass or under ground.
Climate change : yes
Global computer failure : probably not ? If Mars colony infrastructure is very robustly designed it might survive without computers. I expect that it would not be possible to software quarantine Mars.
Bioweapons : probably. For Mars to be included in a deliberate pandemic attack, you would need to get the agent into each separate Martian settlement, probably simultaneously. Unlike Earth, separate Martian cities could probably enforce effective travel restrictions and quarantines.
Nano weapons : no. Unlike bio weapons, presumably all you would have to do would be get some spores to somewhere on Mars.
Physics threats : depends on scale of disaster. Merely planetary scale ones (e.g. black hole eats Earth quietly), yes. Larger scale, no.
Super intelligence : no
A few of points that occurred while going though the list.
The above is assuming that the Mars colonies are self-sufficient, otherwise a catastrophe on Earth is a catastrophe for Mars.
Eexistential risks are described a causing actual human extinction, or massive mortality and long term curtailment of human progress (e.g. putting human population and society back to the Stone Age). Mars colonies mitigate against the first, and could mitigate against the second if Mars is developed to the point where it is wealthy and has an independent space program—to the point where Mars could offer meaningful aid to Earth.
Which catastrophic risks does a mars colony mitigate?
…
Climate change : yes
If a Mars colony mitigates catastrophic risk (extinction risk?) from climate change, then climate change is not an existential risk to human civilization on earth.
If humans can thrive on Mars, Earth based humanity will be able to cope with any climate change less drastic than transforming the climate of Earth to something as hostile as the current climate of Mars.
Supernova, GRB : probably ? Unlike impactors, a supernova or GRB would affect both Earth and Mars. However, if the major impact on Earth is deaths by radiation of exposed people and destruction of agriculture by destruction of the ozone layer, then Mars should be much more resilient, since settlements have to be more radiation hardened anyway, and the agriculture would be under glass or under ground.
Is not a good addition. The Mars-hardened facilities will be hardened only for Mars conditions (unless it’s extremely easy to harden against any level of radiation?) in order to cut colonization costs from ‘mindbogglingly expensive and equivalent to decades of world GDP’ to something more reasonable like ‘decade of world GDP’. So given a supernova, they will have to upgrade their facilities anyway and they are worse positioned than anyone on Earth: no ozone layer, no atmosphere in general, small resource & industrial base, etc. Any defense against supernova on Mars could be better done on Earth.
Good point. Mars would only be better off if the colonies over-engineered their radiation protection. Otherwise anything that gets through Earth’s natural protection would probably get through Martian settlements designed to give the same level of protection. It might be relatively cheap to over-engineer (e.g. digging in an extra meter), but it might not.
It might be relatively cheap to over-engineer (e.g. digging in an extra meter), but it might not.
FWIW, while researching my Moore’s law essay, I found materials claiming that underground construction was more expensive but paid for itself via better heating/cooling. But that was for shallow cut-and-scrape constructions and I suspect 1 meter wouldn’t take care of supernova radiation.
I suspect 1 meter wouldn’t take care of supernova radiation.
As far as I understand the issue, the danger is mainly from the temporary ozone layer depletion, with the resulting solar UV rays doing most of the damage, and not from any kind of direct supernova radiation. And UV is not hard to shield from.
Hm, so you’re right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova#Effects_on_Earth In that case, it doesn’t sound like that much of a direct threat at all: we can use cheap underground or UV-glass-filtering greenhouses to grow our food. A disaster, but not really an existential threat.
If a Mars colony mitigates catastrophic risk (existential / extinction risk?) from climate change, then climate change is not an existential risk to human civilization on earth
This does not follow. One possible (although very unlikely) result of climate change is a much more severe situation resulting in a Venus like situation (although not as high as temp and not as much nasty stuff in the atmosphere). If that happens, Mars will be much easier to survive on than Earth, since with a lot of energy from nuclear power, extremely cold environments are much more hospitable than extremely hot environments. Current models makes such a strong runaway result unlikely, but it is a possibility.
Is climate change seriously considered to be an existential risk? It seems to 1st order climate change would just move population densities, to 2nd order there might be net less or net more land and ag resources after the climate change, and either 2nd or 3rd order, the rate of hurricanes and other weather storms is changed.
It doesn’t seem to me that something which reduces human population from 6 billion to 2 billion should be considered an existential threat. A threat, yes, an expense we would prefer not to tolerate, perhaps. But a game ender? Not the way I play.
“On the Earth, the IPCC states that “a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’—analogous to Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities.” http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session31/inf3.pdf
Hmm, the IPCC asserts this statement without providing any argument to support it.
Some quick thoughts: In the beginning, there were no oceans. The earth was molten and without form. Now, assume venusian-runaway is a possibility for for this planet’s climate. Why has it not already occurred, much, much earlier in the planet’s history?
The planet was very much hotter and more humid in the very distant past. The CO2 in the oceans and the methane in the permafrost was captured from the atmosphere. The O2 in the atmosphere is a biogenic waste product of photosynthesis.
I do think the oceans will boil eventually, not because of global warming, but because of solar warming, after the sun has depleted it’s hydrogen.
My understanding is that all the Carbon which is fixed and stored under the ground in petroleum, coal, natural gas, and other “fossil” fuels was in the air of the earth as CO2 before it was fixed by plants and buried. So it would seem that even with ALL the fossil fuel carbon in the atmosphere, the earth supports life. Considering the adaptability of human life, especially with modern technology, I would be surprised if it was concluded that humanity would be wiped out by this.
The Mars colony could be useful to test the tools necessary to overcome the hostile climate, and it could make their development (possibly mass development) a higher priority.
So in case the Earth climate starts to change very rapidly, we would have a choice to use already developed and tested equipment, built in existing factories, instead of trying to invent it amidst global chaos.
If we can build a self sufficient small scale economy which is independent from earth’s ecosystem services and industry base—i.e. an independent martian colony—most listed existential risks a martian colony might mitigate cease to be existential. This is since the mechanism of these existential risks is reduction of ecosystem services provided by earth’s biosphere triggering a breakdown of our interconnected world economy with subsequent starvation of most people or even a breakdown of our interconnected world economy without significantly reduced ecosystem services.
This obviously applies to: < 20km diameter impactors, (current tech) wars, famine, super volcanoes, (nearly all) climate change scenarios, global computer failure.
It also applyes to: most pandemics (sub 100% lethality or shelter avaiable or some region spared), most supernova scenarios (breakdown of agriculture due to Ozone layer disruption, far away enough to not instantly fry the earth), some bio- and nanoweapons (sub 100% lethality or shelter avaiable or some region spared).
So a Mars colony will only exclusively survive some highly specific and thus unlikely scenarios: A nano-outbreak which can break into an earthbound shelter, but does not spread through space, a very intense GRB which hits earth but not Mars (is this even possible?), an earth impactor large enough to heat the atmosphere to several hundred °C, perhaps some weird physics disaster.
So what we should do to mitigate x-risks is building a self sufficient small scale economy which is independent from earth’s ecosystem services and industry base, not ship it to Mars. Though I fear this is not possible at our current tech level.
I’ve thought the same thing. A big, deep, independent, hermetically sealed, geothermally powered complex under say Iceland or New Zealand gets you most of the x-risk mitigation that a martian colony does.
In most cases of “conventional” xrisks (< 10km diameter impactors, (current tech) wars, famine, super volcanoes, (nearly all) climate change scenarios, global computer failure, most pandemics (sub 100% lethality), most supernova scenarios) you don’t even need the shelter.
It is sufficient to have the tech necessary to be self sufficient in a small (say 1000 people) group independently from ecosystem services (i.e. food, water, maybe air—not an issue in most scenarios, organic raw materials, fossil fuels). This is the minimum requirement for a martian colony or a deep shelter anyway and much easier, especially if you use outside air. Though it is still very hard—today we don’t come close to be independent form ecosystem services even with a supply chain of 7 billion people. I doubt it is possible at all short of some sort of MNT.
As long as we are not independent form ecosystem services in a small group a space- or underground- or oceanic colony as protection from xrisks is a pipe dream, because any settlement not completely independent from the mother civilisation will die long before the mother civilisation breaks down. Especially if transport is as demanding as to Mars.
Note that if nanoweapons or bad nanotech is released accidentally then Mars may easily be quarantined. Also, it may help that Mars is up gravity well from Earth.
Which catastrophic risks does a mars colony mitigate ? Using a list from a recent post by Stuart Armstrong (table by Anders Sandberg) …
Earth impactors : yes
War : probably. Unlikely that Mars colonies would be valuable or strategically important enough to extended a war to Mars, but possible that the same conditions that led to war on Earth could lead to local war on Mars, or that war on Earth could be exploited by factions on Mars
Famine : yes. Keeping a Mars colony fed might be a major challenge especially at first, but independent of the same challenge on Earth. If famine on Earth is caused by a plant pathogen, it could spread to Mars, but there is the nice long quarantine.
Pandemics : probably. Until there is much more advanced propulsion technology that cuts trip time to days, the trip serves as a natural quarantine period. Also, really nasty features like the ability to persist in the environment, or replicate in non-human hosts, or spread via aerosols, don’t present any additional threat on Mars.
Super volcanos : yes. Also, unlike e.g. impactors, there probably isn’t an equivalent Martian hazard.
Supernova, GRB : probably ? Unlike impactors, a supernova or GRB would affect both Earth and Mars. However, if the major impact on Earth is deaths by radiation of exposed people and destruction of agriculture by destruction of the ozone layer, then Mars should be much more resilient, since settlements have to be more radiation hardened anyway, and the agriculture would be under glass or under ground.
Climate change : yes
Global computer failure : probably not ? If Mars colony infrastructure is very robustly designed it might survive without computers. I expect that it would not be possible to software quarantine Mars.
Bioweapons : probably. For Mars to be included in a deliberate pandemic attack, you would need to get the agent into each separate Martian settlement, probably simultaneously. Unlike Earth, separate Martian cities could probably enforce effective travel restrictions and quarantines.
Nano weapons : no. Unlike bio weapons, presumably all you would have to do would be get some spores to somewhere on Mars.
Physics threats : depends on scale of disaster. Merely planetary scale ones (e.g. black hole eats Earth quietly), yes. Larger scale, no.
Super intelligence : no
A few of points that occurred while going though the list.
The above is assuming that the Mars colonies are self-sufficient, otherwise a catastrophe on Earth is a catastrophe for Mars.
Eexistential risks are described a causing actual human extinction, or massive mortality and long term curtailment of human progress (e.g. putting human population and society back to the Stone Age). Mars colonies mitigate against the first, and could mitigate against the second if Mars is developed to the point where it is wealthy and has an independent space program—to the point where Mars could offer meaningful aid to Earth.
If a Mars colony mitigates catastrophic risk (extinction risk?) from climate change,
then climate change is not an existential risk to human civilization on earth.
If humans can thrive on Mars, Earth based humanity will be able to cope with any climate change less drastic than transforming the climate of Earth to something as hostile as the current climate of Mars.
By the same logic,
Is not a good addition. The Mars-hardened facilities will be hardened only for Mars conditions (unless it’s extremely easy to harden against any level of radiation?) in order to cut colonization costs from ‘mindbogglingly expensive and equivalent to decades of world GDP’ to something more reasonable like ‘decade of world GDP’. So given a supernova, they will have to upgrade their facilities anyway and they are worse positioned than anyone on Earth: no ozone layer, no atmosphere in general, small resource & industrial base, etc. Any defense against supernova on Mars could be better done on Earth.
Good point. Mars would only be better off if the colonies over-engineered their radiation protection. Otherwise anything that gets through Earth’s natural protection would probably get through Martian settlements designed to give the same level of protection. It might be relatively cheap to over-engineer (e.g. digging in an extra meter), but it might not.
FWIW, while researching my Moore’s law essay, I found materials claiming that underground construction was more expensive but paid for itself via better heating/cooling. But that was for shallow cut-and-scrape constructions and I suspect 1 meter wouldn’t take care of supernova radiation.
As far as I understand the issue, the danger is mainly from the temporary ozone layer depletion, with the resulting solar UV rays doing most of the damage, and not from any kind of direct supernova radiation. And UV is not hard to shield from.
Hm, so you’re right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova#Effects_on_Earth In that case, it doesn’t sound like that much of a direct threat at all: we can use cheap underground or UV-glass-filtering greenhouses to grow our food. A disaster, but not really an existential threat.
This does not follow. One possible (although very unlikely) result of climate change is a much more severe situation resulting in a Venus like situation (although not as high as temp and not as much nasty stuff in the atmosphere). If that happens, Mars will be much easier to survive on than Earth, since with a lot of energy from nuclear power, extremely cold environments are much more hospitable than extremely hot environments. Current models makes such a strong runaway result unlikely, but it is a possibility.
Is climate change seriously considered to be an existential risk? It seems to 1st order climate change would just move population densities, to 2nd order there might be net less or net more land and ag resources after the climate change, and either 2nd or 3rd order, the rate of hurricanes and other weather storms is changed.
It doesn’t seem to me that something which reduces human population from 6 billion to 2 billion should be considered an existential threat. A threat, yes, an expense we would prefer not to tolerate, perhaps. But a game ender? Not the way I play.
Runaway (“Venusian”) climate change is an existential risk, though most consider that a pretty unlikely scenario.
Hmm, the IPCC asserts this statement without providing any argument to support it.
Some quick thoughts: In the beginning, there were no oceans. The earth was molten and without form. Now, assume venusian-runaway is a possibility for for this planet’s climate. Why has it not already occurred, much, much earlier in the planet’s history?
The planet was very much hotter and more humid in the very distant past. The CO2 in the oceans and the methane in the permafrost was captured from the atmosphere. The O2 in the atmosphere is a biogenic waste product of photosynthesis.
I do think the oceans will boil eventually, not because of global warming, but because of solar warming, after the sun has depleted it’s hydrogen.
My understanding is that all the Carbon which is fixed and stored under the ground in petroleum, coal, natural gas, and other “fossil” fuels was in the air of the earth as CO2 before it was fixed by plants and buried. So it would seem that even with ALL the fossil fuel carbon in the atmosphere, the earth supports life. Considering the adaptability of human life, especially with modern technology, I would be surprised if it was concluded that humanity would be wiped out by this.
The Mars colony could be useful to test the tools necessary to overcome the hostile climate, and it could make their development (possibly mass development) a higher priority.
So in case the Earth climate starts to change very rapidly, we would have a choice to use already developed and tested equipment, built in existing factories, instead of trying to invent it amidst global chaos.
If we can build a self sufficient small scale economy which is independent from earth’s ecosystem services and industry base—i.e. an independent martian colony—most listed existential risks a martian colony might mitigate cease to be existential. This is since the mechanism of these existential risks is reduction of ecosystem services provided by earth’s biosphere triggering a breakdown of our interconnected world economy with subsequent starvation of most people or even a breakdown of our interconnected world economy without significantly reduced ecosystem services.
This obviously applies to: < 20km diameter impactors, (current tech) wars, famine, super volcanoes, (nearly all) climate change scenarios, global computer failure.
It also applyes to: most pandemics (sub 100% lethality or shelter avaiable or some region spared), most supernova scenarios (breakdown of agriculture due to Ozone layer disruption, far away enough to not instantly fry the earth), some bio- and nanoweapons (sub 100% lethality or shelter avaiable or some region spared).
So a Mars colony will only exclusively survive some highly specific and thus unlikely scenarios: A nano-outbreak which can break into an earthbound shelter, but does not spread through space, a very intense GRB which hits earth but not Mars (is this even possible?), an earth impactor large enough to heat the atmosphere to several hundred °C, perhaps some weird physics disaster.
So what we should do to mitigate x-risks is building a self sufficient small scale economy which is independent from earth’s ecosystem services and industry base, not ship it to Mars. Though I fear this is not possible at our current tech level.
I’ve thought the same thing. A big, deep, independent, hermetically sealed, geothermally powered complex under say Iceland or New Zealand gets you most of the x-risk mitigation that a martian colony does.
In most cases of “conventional” xrisks (< 10km diameter impactors, (current tech) wars, famine, super volcanoes, (nearly all) climate change scenarios, global computer failure, most pandemics (sub 100% lethality), most supernova scenarios) you don’t even need the shelter.
It is sufficient to have the tech necessary to be self sufficient in a small (say 1000 people) group independently from ecosystem services (i.e. food, water, maybe air—not an issue in most scenarios, organic raw materials, fossil fuels). This is the minimum requirement for a martian colony or a deep shelter anyway and much easier, especially if you use outside air. Though it is still very hard—today we don’t come close to be independent form ecosystem services even with a supply chain of 7 billion people. I doubt it is possible at all short of some sort of MNT.
As long as we are not independent form ecosystem services in a small group a space- or underground- or oceanic colony as protection from xrisks is a pipe dream, because any settlement not completely independent from the mother civilisation will die long before the mother civilisation breaks down. Especially if transport is as demanding as to Mars.
Note that if nanoweapons or bad nanotech is released accidentally then Mars may easily be quarantined. Also, it may help that Mars is up gravity well from Earth.