Why do people think terraforming other planets is a solution to problems on this one?

[Narz]

Alot of times nerdy/techy/gamey types like to talk about terraforming other worlds to suit human needs presupposing we've rendered our own climate uninhabitable.

No matter how badly we screw up our atmosphere, it couldn't ever be half as bad as Mars', right? So, IMO, we shouldn't even consider terraforming other planets & instead should focus on "terraforming" this one.

BTW, I'm not against terraforming other planets just for the hell of it, just to have done it. I imagine it will be a marvelous & momentous achievement, to be the first human seeing a blade of grass grow in a non-Earth environment (besides a space ship). However, I think it's misguided to think it will be easier to fix Mars for our habitation than to fix Earth. A small space station perhaps but even that will require an inordinate amount of effort & probably better to create a bubble on Earth & then venture outwards from there.

Thoughts?

 

[Mise]

I don't know anyone who thinks that...

But yeah, if we're assuming we have the technology to radically alter a planet's ecosystem to support human life on an otherwise barren rock, why can't we use the same technology to fix the environmental problems on the uniquely fertile rock we already have...

 

[Yared]

I've only heard it as a solution for housing our growing population.

 

[Narz]

I don't know anyone who thinks that...

I've heard it mentioned various times on forums, IIRC even Stephan Hawkins said something along those lines.

 

[Bill3000]

Uh, because it's awesome?

 

[Perfection]

Earth has only so much resources. If we want to use more, we need to go elsewhere. Simple as that.

The idea is not to move from Earth because we screwed it up, but to move beyond the constraints imposed by only having people on Earth.

 

[Cutlass]

Odds are we won't find another planet that humans can live on without massive intervention. But transforming may only mean replacing a substantial portion of the native life whit Terran life.

 

[Inca]

It will be easier to create artificial "habitats" (hollow spheres that orbit the sun and serve as "planets") than transform a planet like Mars. Mars is much smaller than Earth and it has a much weaker gravitation. Furthermore we need technologies we have not discovered yet for both of these solutions. If we build "habitats" that orbit the sun like Earth does we could make them more Earth-like. The material for the habitats will have to come from the Kuiper belt. All stars in our vicinity have such Kuiper belts around them - ours is approximately 2 lightyears away from the Sun - as is Alpha Centauri's. The Asteroid belt is nearer but is too small in terms of what it holds as material. The Kuiper belt has enough material.

However these things will only be feasable in the far future (Millennia from now). For the time being the best we can do is to preserve Earth as best as we can. And even when the habitats become feasable and actually do get made we should still preserve Earth as long as it is possible - for it is unique.

In the very long run we have several limits to overcome. Earth becoming too small is just one of those limits. Eventually the Sun will turn into a red giant and will swallow up both Mercury and Venus. By that time Earth will become uninhabitable. Much later the Milkyway and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide. But problems will arise much sooner. As yet we have not been able to create artificial isolated environments that were able to maintain a balance over more than just a few weeks. There have been experiments with isolated cupulas with plants and animals inside and none of these isolated environments managed to keep a balance over more than a few weeks. We've got a lot to learn in that respect. Mars and our Moon may serve for some scientific purposes in the future - maybe even for some limited special industrial fabrications. But they will never hold billions and billions of people. If we need a lot more space we gotta learn how to build these artificial "habitats".

The concept of those habitats is the way to go. In the extreme longrun they would make us independent of the solar system and much later even independent of the galaxy. But there's way to go before we even have the necessary technologies for the very first habitat. And without those technologies we would not be able to terraform Mars either.

 

[Hakim]

Nah, the coolness of terraforming have nothing to do with the current state of this one. It's about an engineering task of epic proportions and expanding the borders of human civilization and so on. The nerdy type knows he can never make his non-nerdy friend understand that so he says something about global warming to get him on the hook.

It's an interesting notion to think of climate talks as a kind of local terraforming. Humanity tries to come to agreement on how much of a certain gas should be released into the atmosphere in order to affect weather on a global level. It's not the first time either, the international effort to save the ozone layer could perhaps be considered a initial take on terraforming on earth itself. At least the size of the undertaking and the perspective is similar.

 

[GoodGame]

I believe we could screw up our planet as bad as Mars or Venus. I think the main attraction to teraforming other planets, or just plain screwing around with their enviroment is it may be a useful laboratory for understanding our own. I'd rather experiment on the neighbor's house than my own, in other words.

Though I agree there's some cool projects we could on Earth, like increasing biodiversity, etc..

 

[Narz]

I think I can understand the joy that comes with contemplating terraforming. I felt it while working on a permaculture project in Southern Utah. For those who haven't been, Utah kind of feels like another planet. There isn't much rain, there isn't much life, the soil is clayish & not very good at sustaining most plant life.

And yet there is something profoundly exciting & challenging about the idea of working with that arid, rocky, hostile land. It's the feeling of having a blank slate. A feeling of power, of what it means to be human. No other animal could make anything of Utah but Utah but with careful planning & some hard work a person could, to some extent or another, green the desert.

I imagine those who get excited about terraforming experience similar emotions.

 

[mdwh]

I too am not sure that anyone really makes this argument. Stephen Hawking has talked about space colonisation, but I'm not sure his argument was about the environment on earth, rather other things such as risk of meteorite hits, or overpopulation.

OTOH, if we do develop terraforming, developing it on another planet is more sensible than trying things out on Earth, due to the risks of messing things up.

 

[Inca]

Let me share a few thoughts about mountains with you. I have long doubted that the Gulf Stream is the main agent causing the relatively mild and moderate climate in central Europe.

Let's look at the mountains. Central Europe is shielded off from harsh climate influences on thress sides. In the South you have the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Dolomites (all parts of the same mountain chain actually..). In the East you have the Caucasian mountains and the Ural. In the North you have the scandinavian mountain chains. This is what is essentially providing the mild climate in Europe.

Now take a look at North America. There you have a kind of a funnel-type situation with large mountain chains in the East and in the West forming a funnel-type shape that is open towards the North and narrows down towards the South. There are mountains in the North of Canada as well but they are too far North to provide real protection. So the situation in North America is not as ideal as it is in central Europe but it is still much better than having no protection at all.

Next compare the situation in South America and in Africa. South America is much better off climate-wise than Africa because of it's mountain chains. Again the mountain chains in South America are not as ideal as they are in Europe but still much better than the situation in Africa.

Africa actually lacks a large mountain chain along the West coast. Africa is not getting much protection from the Alps because the lack of a large mountain chain along the West coast. The Alps would help Africa if it had such a large mountain chain along the West coast - but it doesn't.

Well, we are talking about terraforiming. So let's consider the idea of artificially building a large mountain chain like the Andes or the Rocky Mountains. This won't be an easy job. First of all we would have to check whether the continental plate can even support such a weight - chances are it woud be pushed down too much. Then you have to consider that - while population density is very low in the Sahara - there are a lot of people living along the West coast of Africa. So the mountain chain would have to be placed some 200 miles inland with maybe a few mountain arms reaching out to both sides - which would form niches that are protected from three sides. This position is also more likely not to cause too much problems when the weight of the mountains pusches down on the continental plate. But where to get all the rock material from? If you take away too much material from elsewhere you might be causing problems at the places where you are getting the material from. In addition we still mainly rely on fossil fuels for moving large masses of stuff around - so that's not environmentally friendly. With out present technologies such a project would hardly work out.

Seeing the problems associated with creating a mountain chain as big as the Alps or the Rocky Mountains (or the Andes) we might actually settle for a smaller solution. So instead of one huge mountain chain we might actually end up building several smaller maountain chains that run parallelly along the West coast of Africa. That would put less stress on the contintal plate and we could have mountain arms reaching to both sides - thus forming many protected niches. This seems to be a more realistic view but still not feasable with today's technology. It still would require moving a massive amount of material. So the question about where to get the material still remains.

Now briefly take a look at Australia. The situation in Australia is much the same as in Africa. Australia lacks a larger mountain chains along some coasts. There are mountains along some coasts but they are not high enough to give sufficient protection. So either they would have to be increased in height or there would have to be additional small mountain chains in some places. Again we have the problem of the pressure on the continental plate. Also we have the problems of where to get the material, people living in places that would be required for mountains and so on.

Lastly take a look at China. China lacks a larger mountain chain along it's East coast. There are mountains there but they are not high enough to give sufficient protection. It also lacks a mountain chain running from West to East at the Northern edge of the desert Gobi. While there aren't a lot of people dwelling on the edge of the desert Gobi there is a massive amount of population dwelling along the East coast of China. In fact the majority of China's population is dwelling there. So building an additional mountain chain in that region is hardly feasable. Building some smaller mountain chains in the area of the desert Gobi might still somewhat help with the climate in China though.

Presently China is (amongst other things) beeing criticized for the Three-Valleys-Dam-Project. They have been warned about the problems associated with that project. They are destroying a region of tremendous natural beauty that used to be called the "Chinese Switzerland". Many cities, villages and historic sites are getting destroyed as well. The Assuan Dam in Egypt is a good example of how huge dam projects can go wrong. First of all the Assuan Dam is constantly being filled with mud from the stream. They have to keep on removing the mud all the time to keep the dam functioning. At the same time the crop fields along the stream are suffering from not getting the mud they used to get. Before the dam existed the mud served as an important fertilizer and also helped to prevent erosion. Since the dam was constructed the whole region along the stream has become less fertile.

These two dam projects are much smaller interventions than the construction of additional mountain chains that I boldly projected. You can imagine the outcry of the people living in those areas if anyone proposed such a project. Even if it is clear that Africa would profit from having some additional mountain chains in the long run.

Getting back to the question of where to get the material from to build those mountains. Let's assume we would get past the present stage of needing vast amounts of fossil fuels for propelling minute amounts of freight into space. Let's just assume we develop some other propulsion technology that is not so prohibitively uneconomical as the present tech. Then we could harvest asteroids from the Asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt to get the rock material needed for extra mountains. But this might cause another problem. Just think about it - we would be moving HUGE amounts of material. Even though this would still be a small amount in astronomical terms it micht upset the gravitational balance of the planetary system. So we would need measures to balance that out again. The same holds true for the projected artificial habitats I wrote about in my post above. Even though they would be hollow they would still require landmasses and oceans inside of them to function as balanced eco systems. So they would consist of quite some mass - which again would upset the gravitational balance of the planetary system - unless we find some way of balancing it out again.

This is all far beyond our present state of technology at the moment. We do not have the technology of terraforming Mars today. Yet there is an initiative of some former Nasa members who want to start colonizing Mars RIGHT NOW! These people are nuts. Even building just a small research station capable of supporting a few humans on Mars is prohibitively expensive at the time being. Terraforming another planet is totally out of the question at present. We just cannot do it. We even cannot do it very well on Earth yet.

(You are not taking me seriously when I talk about artificial mountains - are you? Well at least not for the next few hundred years or so. I hope you see the irony... Still it is clear that the influence of mountains on a continent's climate is immense.)

As long as we do not have a much more econical propulsion technology for space craft and many other techs still missing for real space colonization it is best to stick with unmanned research probes. Robots can do what we need for research in space. Supporting a large "animal" like a human being - with a fragile metabolism - in space is just too costly right now. If we need to drill deeper into Mars' surface to find out more about the sediment layers there we can let machines do that. We don't need a human being on Mars - no matter how musclebound he or she might be - to operate a drill on Mars - just for research purposes.

If some of those Ex-NASA guys want to get away from all of the mayhem here on Earth they can become monks in a monastery. That's much cheaper to do. They could be just as lonely there as on Mars if they wanted to. And it's not a one-way journey - as it would be when travelling to Mars nowadays. You can come back from a stay at a monastery - even though you might have to find a new job afterwards.

(Edited because I confused East and West and corrected "thress sides" to "three sides" - stupid typo...)

 

[peter grimes]

Central Europe is shielded off from harsh climate influences on thress sides.

Typo's still there

So I'm confused about whether or not you seriously think that the Pyrenees, Alps, Dolomites, Urals, and Caucasus mountains protect Central Europe? (Protect them from what, exactly??)

...Because I thought it was pretty well established that the Gulf Stream is indeed the source of the heat energy that results in Stockholm being much more hospitable than, say, Magadan (roughly the same latitude).

 

[Inca]

Hello Peter Grimes,

yeah - got some of the typos back. I edited twice - and on the second go my browser reloaded the typos from cache - so they were revived from the ashes. Have to clean out the cache when editing twice - forgot that.

Anyways, while it is unrealistic to build artificial mountains with todays technology I actually do have strong doubts that the Gulf Stream is the main cause for the moderate climate in Europe. Just think about it - it has to travel some 4000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. Then it meets the Channel (meaning the Channel between France and Great Britain). Most of the Gulf Stream actually does not pass through the narrow Channel but turn North along the West coast of Great Britain - then cools down towards the Arctic belt, where the water sinks down and flows back towards the Gulf of Mexico.

So when you look at that you might explain why Penzance and Lands End (lovely South-West end of Great Britain) do enjoy a very mild climate (they even grow palm trees at Penzance) but that does not really explain the climate for all of central Europe. There are a number of other theories. One is about volcanic heat from within the Earth. This is certainly true for the Eiffel - an area with lots of old volcanoes in Western Germany - near the border of France. That area has a much milder climate. Yet again I do not think this explains the moderate climate in all of central Europe.

The mountains do have a shielding effect. And this becomes especially clear when you compare South-America with Africa. In Europe it is almost as if a layer of air is kept in a kind of "pond" (or "lake") between those mountains. Thus the air that is kept in that area absorbs more heat coming from within the Earth (volcanic heat and heat dissipating through the mantle of the Earth). It also absorbs more heat from man-made emmissions. The Gulf Stream is a minor factor in this but not the main factor. The heat would not be kept without the mountain chains.

The mountains also provide more humidity (rain, dew, etc.) because when the air rises at the edges of the mountains it cools down as it gains height - causing the humidity to condensate and rain off - thus keeping more humidity within the range protected by the mountains. It flows back through the rivers. On the other hand Africa, Australia and China just get "robbed" of their humidity because they do not have enough protection from mountain chains that hold it back.

Please note that Spain is not very well protected by mountain chains. It only has the Pyrenees in the North-East. Therefore it has a desert-like climate - more like North Africa than like central Europe.

So it is pretty clear that the Gulf Stream is not the main factor. Yet solutions for the desert parts of the world are not easy to find. Artificial mountains that would be high enough would put too much burden on the continental plates. Even if you find a way of migrating people to other places (including compensation for what they give up) it would still not work out because the continental plate would not hold the extra weight. Building a grid of walls in the desert areas might actually do something - and then maybe a few smaller artificial mountain chains - but they would not be high enough to make humidity rain off where we want it in order to hold it back. A grid of walls would provide shadow and protection from wind though - so eventually plants would find a way of thriving in those shielded niches and bring back some soil - with a lot of patience... One would have to experiment on smaller areas first before building these walls big scale - not knowing much about the required grid sizes, the needed height of the walls and the thickness of the walls. Remember that there were forests in most of North Africa some 2000 years ago. The Romans were the ones who started cutting them down and others have continued with that afterwards. There seems to be a kind of threshold where plant life can hold back enough humidity by itself. We would have to reach that threshold again. Also the Spanish have turned their own country into a desert by cutting down the forests that they once had. The mountains are the reason why central Europe did not undergo the same fate.

So there are some things we can actually do here on Earth - but even here on our home planet it is obvious we still lack a lot of knowledge and need other technologies than we are using today. We don't even know how to do it properly down here - so how should we know how to do it on more hostile planets?

 

[Perfection]

It will be easier to create artificial "habitats" (hollow spheres that orbit the sun and serve as "planets") than transform a planet like Mars. Mars is much smaller than Earth and it has a much weaker gravitation. Furthermore we need technologies we have not discovered yet for both of these solutions. If we build "habitats" that orbit the sun like Earth does we could make them more Earth-like. The material for the habitats will have to come from the Kuiper belt. All stars in our vicinity have such Kuiper belts around them - ours is approximately 2 lightyears away from the Sun - as is Alpha Centauri's. The Asteroid belt is nearer but is too small in terms of what it holds as material. The Kuiper belt has enough material.

Few points...
1. The Kuiper belt is a belt of icy bodies 30AU to 55AU away from the sun. It is not 2 light years away (a light year is ~63,000 AU) You're probably thinking the Oort Cloud which some have speculated is that far out; I should stress how speculative our understanding of the Oort Cloud is and how far it lies out.
2. Why the heck would you want a hollow sphere? Getting uniform gravitation (which you seem concerned about) on the surface would be impossible!
3. Transforming Mars has a huge advantage, notably, you have a planet to extract resources out of, instead of using hugely expensive, and time consuming importation from space (especially if you're going way the hell out to the outer solar system). It's way easier to dig then to send a vehicle out hundreds of millions of miles to rig your material to come back.
4. Everyone should keep in mind that there's lots of possibilities here that aren't being mentioned. Here's a couple:
Colonizing Mars tremendously without atmospheric transformation
Altering ourselves to require different circumstances to live (say reduced gravity environments) or even abandoning our present forms in favor of some other technology (downloading brains into computers)
It's important to remember that we are just speculating here and shouldn't give unwarranted credence to our opinions.
.

However these things will only be feasable in the far future (Millennia from now). For the time being the best we can do is to preserve Earth as best as we can. And even when the habitats become feasable and actually do get made we should still preserve Earth as long as it is possible - for it is unique.

In the very long run we have several limits to overcome. Earth becoming too small is just one of those limits. Eventually the Sun will turn into a red giant and will swallow up both Mercury and Venus. By that time Earth will become uninhabitable. Much later the Milkyway and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide. But problems will arise much sooner. As yet we have not been able to create artificial isolated environments that were able to maintain a balance over more than just a few weeks. There have been experiments with isolated cupulas with plants and animals inside and none of these isolated environments managed to keep a balance over more than a few weeks. We've got a lot to learn in that respect. Mars and our Moon may serve for some scientific purposes in the future - maybe even for some limited special industrial fabrications. But they will never hold billions and billions of people. If we need a lot more space we gotta learn how to build these artificial "habitats".

The concept of those habitats is the way to go. In the extreme longrun they would make us independent of the solar system and much later even independent of the galaxy. But there's way to go before we even have the necessary technologies for the very first habitat. And without those technologies we would not be able to terraform Mars either.

A few more things:
1. When the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy collide (which is estimated to be around the time of the Sun's death, not much later); they're just going to make one big galaxy. It's not some sudden emergency that will render it all uninhabitable or anything. Certainly there are some dangers associated with the event, but nothing that a successful interstellar race couldn't handle.
2. I can't believe that we'd simply ignore the Moon and Mars, they're giant buffets of cheap resources! I find it goofy that we wouldn't do more with them then a couple of bases if we had advanced technology to make space habitats.
3. We've had isolated ecosystems run for decades. I don't see establishing one to be a particularly difficult problem, especially if we have humans in the mix who can help with the upkeep.

I'll get to the other posts when I get to the other posts.

 

[azzaman333]

It sounds like a challenge to see how many worlds we can destroy before we destroy ourselves.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Yea, I think basic idea isn't that we move from planet to planet ravaging them each in turn before moving to newly terraformed lands beyond, but that we expand from Earth and use other planets to gather resources from or to house population.

In the very long run we have several limits to overcome. Earth becoming too small is just one of those limits. Eventually the Sun will turn into a red giant and will swallow up both Mercury and Venus. By that time Earth will become uninhabitable.

1. When the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy collide (which is estimated to be around the time of the Sun's death, not much later)

Just in relation to this, isn't the sun getting gradually hotter? IIRC the effect of this will render Earth uninhabitable in aprox. a billion years, something like five billion years before the sun actually becomes a red giant.

 

[Inca]

@ azzaman_333: I like your post. Yes, that is exactly the point why I'm reluctant to start colonizing the Moon and Mars with our nowadays technology. We'd spoil what they might be good for in the future - when we have better tech.

@ Darth_Pugwash: Yes, the Earth will become uninhabitable before the Sun actually turns into a red giant. Scientists do not agree on the time spans for both events yet (i.e. the time when the Sun turns into red giant because fuel is used up and the time when Earth starts to get roasted to the extent life is no longer possible).

@ Perfection: There is a lot in your last post - actually this is the kind of discussion I was looking for. But we have to be aware that the topic will be branching out in various directions as we start to go more into detail - which might not necessarily be a bad thing though.

Basically when we discuss terraforming Earth vs terraforming other planets (or both) vs "other solutions" (habitats and possibly more....) we are talking about the future of mankind. So we are asking what is going to become of mankind and what options do we have. That's a big topic. Basically my idea is that we won't make it if we do not solve some existential problems on Earth first. Otherwise time will be running out before we do get to the point where we can find extraterrestrial solutions. There may actually come a point where we might be forced to terraform parts of the Earth simply to just survive. I don't see the extraterrestial solutions becoming feasable fast enough.

First of all there is a LOT we can do on Earth. There are a many possible strategies to extend the space that is available on Earth - including using ocean space, building underground factories, eventually building underwater production facilities (many storeys high). We've only just begun to use some of these strategies. We are not very good at recycling stuff yet but we are slowly getting there. Trying to revive the deserts is not the only option to extend the available space on Earth.

Coming back to the topic of the habitats I talked about. Yes, I am concerned about gravitation as you figured - in several ways, not just one. Of course we have more sources of gaining material than the ones mentioned. We have Jupiter, Saturn, Neptunus and Uranus. These are all MASSIVE huge planets that hold giant amounts of material. But if we take too much material from them we might upset the gravitational balance of the planetary system - eventually causing mayhem in the Solar System. That is why I was thinking about other sources for getting material. But even if we start accumulating material in places where there was none before (such as building those artificial habitats) we would still upset the gravitational balance of the planetary system. So we gotta work out something to fix that before we even start building something that large. I may have been wrong about the Kuiper belt - but like you said with the Oort cloud - we do not have sufficient data yet to know what is there in terms of useable material. Ice is not bad per se. If you build an artificial habitat you do need enough water - and you do need oxygen (and nitrogen) for breathable air. So ice bodies can be used. But of course you also need a lot of other chemical elements that might have to be mined elsewhere.

I'm not very optimistic about the human body adapting well to a much lower gravitation in a short time. Just think about the lymphatic circulation - which is vital for keeping the blood circulation up because without the "sucktion" of the lymphatic circulation the heart would not be able to pump the blood through the body. This is all adapted to the present level of gravitation and will not change fast. Also think about bowl movement. The whole colon with all it's functions is relying on the present level of gravitation. Then think about the intra-cell pressure and the cell membranes which are also adapted to the present gravitation level and are vital to our metabolism. There are so many parts of our organism relying on the present gravitation that you would experience dramatically shorter life spans on a planet with much lower gravitation like Mars. Mars' gravitation is only something like a quarter of that of planet Earth. It is well known that a human body loses muscle tissue and bone density in space. It would lose almost as much on Mars. For instance your heart would also lose substance and then it might not be balanced with the lymphatic circulation any more. Mankind would turn into cripples on Mars within just a few generations. And there is no way back once you have been living under much lower gravitation for a longer time. Your body loses the ability to cope with the gravitation on Earth.

As for functioning isolated eco-systems for decades this is not entirely true. All the artificial eco-systems we have been able to build so far needed constant external regulation and intervention to keep them from collapsing. I was talking about isolated eco-systems under a cupula that were left alone - without any external regulation and intervention. They all collapsed within a very short time - even here on Earth - with normal gravity. If you talk about a place for millions or even billions of people to live in you cannot rely so much on external regulation (i.e. costly machinery and big energy consumption) to keep things barely alive. This might work in a spacecraft or space station meant for just a few astronauts or scientist - not for giant colonies. Also you will need an environment that is pleasant enough - otherwise "normal" people will become depressive. On Mars you will hardly have anything but settlements under a kind of shielding cupula - not providing the variety of living conditions on Earth and also not providing the beauty of nature we have on Earth. So far astronauts could always count on having a chance to return to Earth. When we consider colonizing Mars we talk about a whole life away from Earth - never being able to return to Earth.

Regarding the Moon and the Mars - we will do something with them in the long run. But they are not suitable for large scale colonization. They do suit special purposes such as research (ultra-low temperature conditions, vacuum conditions, low gravity, telescopes without much atmosphere interfering etc.) and they can be useful for specialized industrial production that needs to make use of just such conditions as mentioned for the research. These two celestial bodies will have their uses (as will some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn) but they will not become our new home. Btw. I'm not fond of the idea of dumping nuclear waste on other celestial bodies of the Solar System - because we screw up places we might use better with future technologies. Also there have been discussions about spaceships with nuclear propulsion starting from the back side of the moon - thus polluting the back side of the moon with nuclear radiation - making it unusable for other purposes. Doing things too early while we are not ready for them yet is generally a bad idea.

 

[peter grimes]

@Inca:
I appreciate that you're skeptical of the effects warm water currents on the overlying air masses. And you're certainly correct that mountain ranges have local and regional effects on humidity and temperature. But your doubts about the Gulf Stream moderating the air that flows into northern Europe are ill-founded.

I only have time for a cursory search, but I came across a page from Indiana University's Geology course that summarizes the mechanisms involved pretty well:
http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/1425chap4.htm

The key thing is towards the bottom of the page. There is a map labeled 'General Pattern of Ocean Current.

What happens is that the warm surface current of the Gulf Stream radiates heat into the otherwise very cold arctic air near Greenland. Without that heat transfer, the air hitting northern Europe would be just as cold as the air spilling south from Northern Canada into the US, and the air over Russia's far east. In other words, nearly 15 degrees (C) colder than it is. In order to see that this is indeed the case, just look at the other areas of the globe that have a similar arrangement. If the gulf stream doesn't have a moderating effect, then those other similar areas should not have a temperate climate regardless of the presence of mountain ranges (which you claim are the biggest factor in an area's temperateness). How do you explain coastal Alaska and British Columbia's moderate climate?

As far as deserts are concerned, again it's the air circulation cells that have the greatest impact on evaporation. Deserts are mostly confined to the latitudes where Hadley Cells meet north of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. There is extremely high evaporation in these areas, which is why you'll find deserts in a band around the globe in these latitudes both north and south of the equator.

That's all I have time for right now. If work isn't too busy tomorrow I'll try to go into more depth. Climatology was one of my favorite classes in college