Beech Tree News Network

In 2018, Stephen Hawking theorized that humans would turn this planet into a giant ball of fire by the year 2600, due to overcrowding and energy consumption, which will make Earth uninhabitable (cnbc.com).  There are others who have made the same predictions.  At the forefront of solutions for our predicament is the idea that the entire human race will have to pack their bags and move to Mars.  I, for one, hope the powers-that-be have a more viable back up plan.

I am not opposed to space travel.  As a matter of fact, I am quite attached to some of the products NASA has churned out since its first foray into space.  My personal favorites are satellite TV, cell phones, GPS and Corning Ware (the idea derived from the heat shields on the first rockets).  After reading about the atmospheric conditions on Mars, however, I am not so sure I would want to live there, let alone visit the place.

According to weather.gov>fsd>mars, the red planet has an atmospheric of only 1 to 2 percent of Earth’s.  “Temperatures on Mars average about minus 81 degrees F.  However, temperatures range from around minus 220 degrees—wintertime at the poles—to plus 70 degrees.”  The pull of gravity on Mars is only 38 percent as strong as it is on Earth (letstalkscience.com).  This means if we colonize Mars, we will have to live in a large, heavy biosphere.

I really hope the practice biosphere goes better than Biosphere 2, built in the Arizona desert in 1994.  The experiment ended with less than stellar results.  The history of the project was revisited by a New York Times columnist in 2019.  The headline read, “The Lost History of One of the World’s Strangest Science Experiments.”  The subheading added, “The Hummingbirds were dying, Cockroaches were everywhere.  And then Steve Bannon showed up” (the former Trump advisor invested in what was left of the place, then sold it later).

I’m sure Scientists have learned a  lot of what does and doesn’t work since 1994, so maybe they are ready for Biosphere 3.  There are plenty of places on Earth that partially mimic the landscape on Mars.  Tourradar.com, suggests seven such places, from Chile to Iceland.  Wadi Rum, Jordan, known for its hot summers and frigid winters, as well as for its red dunes, was the location Ridley Scott chose to film his movie, “The Martian.”  If we are in for a third of what Matt Damon faced while living on Mars, I will take my chances on Earth.

While Hawking theorized us going out in a blaze of glory, other scientists theorize that the warming temperatures will cause massive flooding of Earth.  According to nasa.gov, Mars had water at one time, but for some reason it dried up.  Here is the part I don’t understand.  If, at one time in history, Mars had water and life, but something happened to destroy that water and life; and presently on Earth, we have water and life, but our planet is on the same projectory as Mars was a gazillion years ago, why are we going to Mars? 

If Earth is going to experience massive flooding, we have no further to look than The Netherlands for brilliant answers to the problem.  They are geniuses when it comes to dealing with too much water.  One of my favorite contraptions is their Maeslantkering, built in 1977.  This huge structure is a set of large curved doors that “block off the ocean when sea levels rise too high.”  It has one large arm that swivels the doors in place.  When the doors are in place over the channel of water, water is pumped into the frame, which is hollow.  This sinks the doors into the channel, making them so heavy they are immovable.  The Maeslantkering protects the land it guards against a rise in sea level up to 16 feet.  This one invention is part of many more systems the Dutch have in place to protect the southwestern area of the Netherlands (wildernessclassroom.org).

There is a wonderful old story—can’t remember the author—in which there is a poor man who has a dream, and in the dream, he is directed to a faraway land to a bridge, where he is told he will find a great treasure.  The man travels to the faraway land and comes to the bridge in his dream.  He approaches a guard on the bridge and tells him of his dream.  The guard scoffs and says, “If I believed every dream I ever had, I would travel to—he names the old man’s town—and look in the chimney behind the stove of—he calls the old man’s name—for a treasure.”   The old man travels back home and finds the treasure in his chimney.  The moral is, sometimes we travel far to find what is near.

Evidently, we have the money and know-how to colonize Mars, which means we have the money and know-how to colonize Earth.  We’re already here, and we won’t need money for gas.