White House Climate Change Report....

[Machinesworking]

the chances of it happening in x amount of time are low but the chances of it happening are pretty much 100%
at least one of the major extinctions wiping out half the life on this planet was attributed to meteors. On a global and long term scale its something we need to think about.if half the life was wiped out we would surely be in that half, for all out power we are fragile creatures.

[stringtapper]

So what's the problem exactly…?

[LoopStationZebra]

[LoopStationZebra]

The result of increasing space junk is simple = more collisions will result in dozens of vital communication and GPS satellites being destroyed.

What does this mean for humanity?

Considering that at this point virtually all communications have to go through satellites, commerce would come to a screeching and catastrophic halt. All global markets would immediately go dark and we'd enter a dark age. While land lines and undersea cables could carry part of that load, there's no way that internet and exchange traffic could be rerouted fast enough to avoid market crashes and panic.

Of course, this is exactly what a lot of you commie bastards want (destruction of the free market and a return to living off Mother Earth or Gaia or whatever hippy shit) but be careful what you wish for...

[TomViolenz]

While space junk is really also an issue worth looking at, for exactly the reasons you state, what's being the really life threatening danger to all of humanity would be an actual impact of something BIG from space. Like a comet. That would not just fuck up our way of life and our petty disputes about political systems on an electronic medium, but that would fuck us up for real.

Many people say: Huh, there is nothing that can be done about it, so stop worrying.

But that's not actually true. If we would know of the dangerous ones coming with enough warning (depending on the size and speed), we could probably start a major effort, that could mitgate the risk.
But that means again caring for people sometime in the future: People that are with a very high likelyhood not us or any of our next if kin. So screw them, right?!
At least that seems to be the thinking amongst the people responsible for financing space research nowadays IMO!

[re:dream]

You guys worry about strange shit

[H20nly]

[beats me]

If the technology existed to save the planet from some extinction event whether it came from the core, the skies, or space not one corporation or government would do a damn thing with it until it was assured that a short list of people would get mega rich off it.

Even then, the people who have the technology and means probably are already mega rich and would rather put their time and money into a personal mountain fortress in the hopes it can outlast the fallout. To them there’s no WIN in saving the planet’s populous, and personal fortresses are badass.

[eyeknow]

haha!

[andydes]

The result of increasing space junk is simple = more collisions will result in dozens of vital communication and GPS satellites being destroyed.

What does this mean for humanity?

We'd lose our best tools for monitoring the planet and give idiot bloggers another excuse to add to a long line of bullshit about why we should burn as much as we can as fast as we can.

"we were just about to disprove climate change, but the conspiracy of freedom hating scientists destroyed all the satalites"

[yur2die4]

On the topic of climate change, I think we are to a point where our minds are best invested in bracing ourselves for it by new technologies and concepts catered towards making life live able in the places most affected.

As for space junk. I imagine how vast the surface of the earth is. I mean, we live on it. It is massive. And them to think that there is a greater surface area / circumference of the orbits of random tiny debris zipping around causing catastrophic impacts. Needle in a haystack would be easy haha. Then again, magnets are pretty handy

[H20nly]

Then again, magnets are pretty handy

so is atmospheric entry. it has a way of minimizing the debris.

[andydes]

On the topic of climate change, I think we are to a point where our minds are best invested in bracing ourselves for it by new technologies and concepts catered towards making life live able in the places most affected.

Ah yes. Adaption.

Do you mean adaption plan A, with long term international strategies, where the world pulls together to deal with problems in advance, including who pays for technological solutions and how to peacefully resettle about a billion people?

Or do you mean adaption plan B, where we roll from one crisis to another, with people in poor countries taking the brunt of it and people in rich countries bitching about the amount of foreign aid they give and levels of immigration?

Because if we could do plan A, we wouldn't be in this mess, and plan B sounds a lot like fuck it.

[re:dream]

Plan B is a good programme for medium term megadeath scenarios, brought about either by ecosystem collapse or the implosion of social systems under the pressure of resource competition.

The point is not simply that this is a significant risk which can be averted with some good leadership, clever innovation and wise choices; it is that it arises within time scales that are meaningful to our civilization. It is something that will either happen, or not happen within the next 100, 200 years.

Large scale meteor inputs are a risk. I am not a denialist. But

(1) the innovations required to deal with them are science fictional in nature
(2) they are not an issue on a time scale that is meaningful to us. They happen on a time scale of tens to hundreds of millions of years. Our entire civilizational history is not even an eyeblink on that time scale.

This latter point means that ...

...our present day civilization could arise, suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse, and a new civilization could arise, suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse, and then a new civilization could arise, suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse, and then a new civilization could arise, and eventually suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse, and then a new civilization could arise, suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse after ten thousand years,and then a new civilization could arise, and ten thousand years later suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse, and then a new civilization could arise, eventually suffering complete demise through ecosystem collapse,and then a new civilization could arise, it too suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse, and then a new civilization could arise, suffer complete demise through ecosystem collapse...

.... a thousand times over before a big meteorite arrives to give us an extinction-event type of whack.

A hundred million years is a long time. Even one million years is long. I would worry about the human time scale problems. We haven't licked them yet.

[eyeknow]

I'm all for extinction (nothing personal)