

How habitable is the Earth? - cwan
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html

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thaumaturgy
I don't understand the author's point.

One of the traits of the human species that differentiates it from many other
animals is its capability to transform its environment to suit itself. We long
ago developed this ability to an even greater extent than any other animal on
our planet, and we are still further developing this ability.

So, in dropping a _mindless_ "meat probe", he's experimenting with something
that isn't really human. It isn't bringing resources with it, or building
shelter, or altering its environment. He's instead artificially limiting the
terms of the experiment to environments that are between 40 and 90 degrees
Fahrenheit, with arable soil, no predators, and readily available food and
(clean) freshwater sources.

Well, hell, under those conditions, many of the places that we live today
aren't supposed to be habitable.

~~~
tokenadult
_One of the traits of the human species that differentiates it from many other
animals is its capability to transform its environment to suit itself._

This is an outstanding characteristic of Homo sapiens, but many other living
things (not just animals) improve their environments. Everyone in North
America is familiar with the example of the beaver

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams>

(the mascot of MIT and Caltech), the classic example, but lowly fungi improve
their environment by poisoning it against bacteria with antibiotics, and many
living things poison, shade, predate in, or otherwise alter their
environments.

~~~
thaumaturgy
My favorite example of other animals doing this is the ants. They are
_incredible_ : they explore, have organizational structures, wage wars, expand
territories, transform large areas -- possibly, in one case, a couple of
continents in size.

Didn't know about plants/fungi though. :-)

~~~
Mz
As I understand it: Gators make swamps. In essence, they terraform.

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drhodes
In a nutshell: The human race is prolific, therefore, the earth is a nice
place to live.

This argument contradicts the conclusion of a hypotethical alien probe, which
declares the planet uninhabitable due to and over abundance of water, snow,
deserts and mountains. The probe in this scenario is a collection of randomly
distributed naked mindless humanoids tasked with surviving for 24 hours.

snippets from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe>

The author states that our planet has been habitable for about 8% of its life
and that the Sun's impending death would detract from Earth's appeal.

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teeja
100 years ago many people -in the US- had 10 kids in hopes that 2 or 3 would
survive. Earth was far from habitable up until then. Most of us -in the US-
live far better than a _king_ did two centuries ago. (One example: look into
the history of royal toilets.)

Good article for reminding us that life has never (until lately) been a
(relative) bowl of cherries. He missed one thing: we're our own worst enemies.
E.g., we nearly killed ourselves off not too far back (nuclear war).

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fjabre
Excellent read.

Take into consideration threats from external sources like asteroids & evil
spaceships and you've got even less of a probability of survival. ;)

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wglb
For an antidote, read Larry Niven, some of the Known Space novels--he claims
that humans are not suited to space, because they grew up in this idyllic
world which prospered in a narrow band.

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etherael
From article:

There are other mechanisms that might render the Earth uninhabitable by our
kind of life. Over geological time, the partial pressure of oxygen in the
atmosphere has risen. With more solar energy inputs, it may be that oxygen
levels continue to soar. Above about 28%, even waterlogged biomass will burn
handily: and there are indications that atmospheric oxygen (currently down
around 16%) has been well over 20% in the past. If oceanic photoautotrophs
pump out too much of the stuff, the continents may well be burned back to
bedrock by the resulting lightning-triggered fires.

I get that more oxygen in the atmosphere = a potentially combustible
atmosphere.

What I'm a little confused about is why we never hear about spontaneous
greenhouse fires? Wouldn't the presence of all those leafy greens push large
amounts of oxygen into the (relatively) closed local atmosphere? or is the
innate ventilation to the outside world from a not purposely constructed
vacuum environment enough to offset the potential dangers of this? I assume it
must be or we'd at least occasionally hear of greenhouses resulting in
explosions?

