0 members (),
6
guests, and
1
robot. |
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
Forums59
Topics17,128
Posts314,545
Members6,305
|
Most Online294 Dec 6th, 2017
|
|
There are no members with birthdays on this day. |
|
|
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257 |
I would think the pythons can just stick to eating baby alligators and eventually wipe out the population. Or at least make alligators much more scarce as a predator-prey equilibrium is achieved. Of course, alligators are not the only possible meal for pythons. As long as there is something they can eat, their population will grow. But for that matter, about 6-7% of baby alligators are eaten by big alligators, so the life of a baby alligator has never been carefree.
Boy, we really have gotten off topic!
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
The pythons are literally eating everything. Not just the baby alligators but the possums coons birds and squirrels that the alligators usually eat. It's an ecological nightmare.
And as temperatures(and seas) rise it's a nightmare that will creep northward and westward.
California, on the other hand, will go the way of the Saharan wastelands in Africa. What doesn't burn will be scorched by drought as its inhabitants flee inland and northward. I never hear much about Pacific sea level rise so I guess that doesn't affect the western ports and cities as much as it does the east. It's going to be messy and expensive here.
I've got nothing against exploring space. But mining asteroids and building colonies on the moon or Mars are as far fetched as they ever were. If we spent enough money and resources we could do it but it would never be economically sustainable. We can't even put colonies under the ocean where help is only a mile away...we can't even clean up the trash pit we've turned our oceans into.
The Billionaires Race to Spaceā¢ is nothing more than a race to get worldwide satellite internet system into place so they can mine the working class for more ca$h.
Soft squishy people have no place in space anyway. Robots will own that domain.
There now, I think I've brought it back to topic.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257 |
Actually, I think the moon is an easier environment than a deep sea colony. The pressure difference between inside and out is only 15 PSI. Under water, it's 15 PSI every 30 feet, and you definitely don't want to build an undersea colony in the first 30 feet because of waves and ships. An undersea colony wold also be very easy for terrorists to sabotage. A lunar colony would be much harder.
BTW, much of California is hundreds of feet above current sea level. If you raised sea level a couple of hundred feet, we would have an inland sea in the central valley, but only around Sacramento. Cities to the South are too high to be affected. LA would have another inland sea, but only a small one: The official elevation of LA is 285 feet. San Diego would have an inundated Mission Valley, but much of the non-downtown part of the city is up on mesas.
I doubt we would become more desert because of the inland seas. The California deserts are all east of the mountain ranges and are very lightly populated. They might become even hotter in the summer. They already reach 120 F some days.
Raise sea level 200 feet and Florida is almost all gone.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
Raise sea level 200 feet and pretty much everything is gone. Economies, governments, civilizations. Your lunar colony will be a handful of dessicated corpses as supplies fail to arrive. And that's just in the first 20 feet of sea level rise!
I'm sure California will still be "the place you oughta be" no matter how bad global warming might get. All those wonderful mountains and inland seas will turn it into a virtual Utopia! Just keep your forests raked.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
Actually, I think the moon is an easier environment than a deep sea colony. Yeah, but think of the commute...
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257 |
Sure, it's probably a one-way migration. Once you go, you and all your kids will probably never come back. Not just because of the expense, but also the lack of the muscles necessary for 1G. You can grow your own food. Any Earth technology can be transplanted, so they would not be all that dependent on Earth. They would have plentiful energy because the moon gets more ensolation than Earth. Oxygen and Nitrogen (and also all the other minerals they need) from the lunar regolith. Water from polar ice deposits. The one thing they would need to import is Carbon. Probably not a lot of that in the lunar rocks. But I know some guys with lots of Carbon they want to get rid of cheap, nearby.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
Oh yes! Let's go live in caves on the moon! Where we will become weak as kittens and never see the light of day! The kids will love it there! No water, no air and sure death just millimeters away.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
Other than the adventure of it, for those who may want that kind of adventure, I don't see the usefulness of colonizing off-Earth climes. If the thought is that we will need to escape the planet because humans ruined it, well...
I've always been more attracted to putting my efforts into fixer-uppers and restorations than in breaking new ground.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257
Pooh-Bah
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257 |
There is something to be said for not putting all your eggs in one basket. If a big meteor headed for the Earth, we really could do nothing to stop it. It could be a mass extinction event, unless we have some humans someplace other than Earth. As for your depiction of lunar colony life, I think you are thinking way too small.
Not caves but rather man-made domes a mile across, filled with all sorts of vegetation. Plenty of air, water, and food, with no pollution of any kind. Even the light would be as bright as sunlight during the day, but with no sunburning UV. Best of all, you could strap on a pair of wings and fly. They could even have individual LED pixels on the ceilings so they could show the view outside during the night period, like the Las Vegas downtown aerial light show. They could project 5000 K bluish sky during the day. It would be hard to tell you were in a dome. And of course, there would be many of those domes, so you could visit other domes or go to live there. They could even have different climates. One a beach and lake dome, one a winter dome filled with snow so people could ski, many temperate domes, many 4 season domes, many tropical domes.
|
|
|
|
|