Biosphere Earth — 2, Biosphere Mars
This blog is part of a series on Biosphere Earth.
Here’s Part 1: Terms & Conditions.
Here’s part 2:
— Okay, then. The things that make up Biosphere Earth are called biodiversity. Biodiversity is microorganisms… it’s plants, it’s animals, it’s insects… it’s every single form of life you can think of.
Trees are part of biodiversity, as are blue whales, as are you and I. But, as a sum of its parts “biodiversity” creates virtually everything for us. At the fundamental level biodiversity is driving human continuation, our resilience, our wealth... the existence of our economy in the first place… I’ve talked about the idea of Earth’s “Pre-Profit Economy” in the past. Here’s a diagram:
This handmade graphic is showing how human existence is based-on stacked ecological and biophysical assets, i.e. biodiversity, ecological conditions, and wilderness integrity — and that the functionality of this base layer determines the capabilities of the Earth’s biospheric system. These two layers generate the benefits upon which we continously build, reap, and maintain our personal lives and our Civilization.
So it is in our most basic self-interest to protect biodiversity.
Biodiversity represents Biosphere Earth’s strength and sustainability.
Um, Let’s talk about Mars.
Mars.
A lot of people assume that with today’s super minds and tomorrow’s super computers we can just go to another planet.
Among other things: Mars’ planetary temperature is about 80 degrees below Fahrenheit. It’s. Frozen. And, even though we’ve been looking at it for 50+ years, we haven’t found a single indication of life there, not one animal, not one tree, not one microbe.
Why? Great question. Mars is inhospitable to Life.
Take the worst desert on Earth. Spread it over 86% of the planetary surface. Super freeze it. You got Mars. Here’s a photo from NASA’s Pathfinder Mission:
On top of that, Mars — the planet, has no atmosphere. Literally, Mars has less than 1% of Earth’s atmosphere. Why? No biodiversity. No life. This of course means there is no air, which makes breathing impossible people. !!! Mars has no atmosphere because it has no magnetosphere, meaning, no magentic field. This makes building and keeping an atmosphere impossible. It also makes deadly solar flares pretty hard to avoid.
So that’s: planetary desert, frozen, without an atmosphere, or any hope of an atmosphere, and unpredictable barrages of deadly solar flares, also i forgot to mention ongoing cosmic radiation and solar winds.
We don’t have these problems here.
Sprinkle over those Martian challenges: too little water on the planet to ever form an Earth-like biosphere, soils that are too poor to ever host an Earth-like biosphere (or maybe even ever grow food there at all, according to the latest science), and — and… you get the idea.
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More soon, thanks!
Citations
- Science on how biodiversity affects humanity and human society can be found in this recent draft of my forthcoming paper, “Biosphere Earth = all GDPs + all lives.”
- Science on Mars: 80 degrees below Fahrenheit; No life; No atmosphere; No hope of an atmosphere anytime soon; Deadly solar flares; Cosmic radiation; Too little water to form an Earth-like biosphere, ever; Soils too dead.
Read the previous blog: Terms & Conditions.
