(August 14, 2012 at 12:20 am)cato123 Wrote: TL;DR warning!
Modern cosmology suggests that saving the species is ultimatley futile; big rip, big freeze, big crunch...big certain death for life as we know it. These terms invoke theories regarding the end of the known universe, but say nothing of the dangers invoked by the known universe.
We know our star is middle aged; only about 4.5 billion years left, but this is not the time we, as a species, has left on the clock. Increasing luminosity of the sun suggests that in about 600 million years trees will not be possible because of their unique photosynthesis. There are other species of plants that will last a few million years more, but will this be enough for oxygen replenishment to support 'us'? This of course ignores the potential that flora and fauna will evolve to continue to supply 'us' with enough oxygen, but there is absolutely no guarantee that our symbiotic relationship ensures our future coexistence. Plants will evolve in accordance with their own natural circumstance.
The last bit of projected fact funnels our existence down to less than a billion years, despite how long we think the sun and planet will exist (yes, I took your invocation of 'saving the planet' to mean keeping it in a condition to support us. Earth will outlive us by billions of years). This has not yet accounted for terrestrial or extraterrestrial dangers to 'us'. A decent size supervolcano will make survival of our species a living hell. The same would happen if an extraterrestrial object of sufficient size impacted the Earth. In either case, the Earth will still be here, we wouldn't. The sun could send a significant coronal mass ejection our way that would render our 'modern' way of life unrecognizable and result in a significant population reduction.
My point with this is that if we are serious about the continution of the species then we have to get off this rock, but to what end? What will morality mean if we must invade other worlds to sustain our species at the expense of a more primitive lifeform? Haven't we already projected this? Much of our science fiction invokes an alien race that cares nothing about 'us', only exterminating an obvious nuisance on their way to consuming natural resources. Prime Directive be damned, our survival is more important.
This is all science fiction right now, but not unachievable. Do we ignore fellow 'third world' inhabitants? Essentially stating that you are a strain on our global resource in accordance with our ultimate goal? So much for humanity. Or?????
Do we recognize the futility of the effort of continuing the species and make everyone comfortable until the time nature will take us out?
Life is an extremely precious thing in the universe, and this will be true no matter how much we eventually find. If there's ever a point to life existing, it is to exist as long as it possibly can.
Perhaps it will be necessary one day to colonize worlds we could never inhabit today. Who knows, perhaps we'll start replacing biological parts of ourselves with artificial parts and the range of habitable worlds explodes in number, and we'll never need to disturb native life anywhere. I can be science fiction here if I want to!
I dunno, my worldview is that, if I could, I would live long enough to see humanity to the very end, whatever it is. I feel cheated that I can't do that. So, I would advocate our survival at the cost of most (but not all) other things, if last resorts forced us.
