"Secondly, being able to spot which geoengineering technologies are most popular among alien civilisations - potentially giving us a heads up on which techniques work well."
There are surely many other ways closer to home that are significantly more promising in ascertaining the effects of geoengineering schemes, no? It's true that *if* we had the technology and *if* we could find aliens then we *may* be able to zoom in with our lovely new wizard technologies and see flourishing civilisations, but it's a bit of a stretch to say the very least. Of course there's a non-zero probability, though, but that's true for many things and doesn't give reason to pursue it over something else. A couple of obvious things that this would be prone to ***even*** if we had all those wonderful new super astronomical tools literally at our disposal in the next couple of decades is a) the observation selection effect: if geoengineering really was a way to 'flag' them up and get noticed then we'd be seeing only civilisations that are DOING them - there could perhaps be many who tried it, and it went horribly wrong, and they're extinct now, or something. We wouldn't know about or notice ones who tried it for a while, and it worked, and now they're fine. We wouldn't know about or notice ones that had a bad experience, stopped it, but survived. And b) Aliens might well also have different value systems, and cognitive abilities. For example, consider "The range of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and activities accessible to human organisms presumably constitute only a tiny part of what is possible. There is no reason to think that the human mode of being is any more free of limitations imposed by our biological nature than are those of other animals. In much the same way as Chimpanzees lack the cognitive wherewithal to understand what it is like to be human – the ambitions we humans have, our philosophies, the complexities of human society, or the subtleties of our relationships with one another, so we humans may lack the capacity to form a realistic intuitive understanding of what it would be like to be a radically enhanced human (a “posthuman”) and of the thoughts, concerns, aspirations, and social relations that such humans may have. Our own current mode of being, therefore, spans but a minute subspace of what is possible or permitted by the physical constraints of the universe. It is not farfetched to suppose that there are parts of this larger space that represent extremely valuable ways of living, relating, feeling, and thinking." Nick Bostrom, Transhumanist Ethics. The social issues surrounding geoengineering are certainly hugely important, and could be THE crucial point in whether 'scheme X' works - even if the science side is perfect and we know how to do it. Aliens with different values, and ways of communication wouldn't be the best guys to learn from about whether WE could or should do it. We should look to ourselves, to our values, our ethics, our institutions and assess it from this standpoint. As for "As such, we should at least consider the possibility that geoengineering would directly betray our existence to aliens." I doubt putting aerosols in the stratosphere or doing enhanced weathering will blow our 'cover' even if aliens do exist... consider Martian dust storms that occur naturally and many other 'peculiar' yet natural things throughout the entire universe. And, as you mention, we're doing many other things to the surface of the planet anyway. I doubt we should really worry about blowing our cover to aliens, who may or may not exist/care about us, with geoengineering. There are bigger concerns to worry about. I appreciate you say it's far-fetched, but I really don't think there's much point in pondering too long over things that have probabilities that aren't technically zero, but are so small, all whilst we have better things to be doing. Best regards, Simon ________________________________________________ Simon Driscoll Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department of Physics University of Oxford Office: 01865 272930 Mobile: 07935314940 http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/driscoll ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Andrew Lockley [[email protected]] Sent: 07 April 2013 18:58 To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Aliens spotting geoengineering, aliens doing geoengineering. >From current issue of 'NewScientist' << Astronomers have begun to sniff out the chemical make-up of a few exoplanet atmospheres, finding spectral lines of CO2, CH4, H2O and Na. These substances have been found around giant planets that orbit very close to their starts, making them relatively easy to detect. In principle it should also be possible to see the much fainter spectral signature of synthetic gases such as the CFCs in the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet. Unintentional pollution would probably be at too low a level for us to detect, and if it lasts only decades or centuries we'd have to be very lucky to spot it anyway. But such gases might be used to warm planets to make them suitable for habitation. "I think the only way we would see something like this over interstellar distances would be as a signatures of artificial global warming", says Mark Claire at the UEA, UK. "If we were to colonise Mars, we might consider engineering the climate with CFCs or NaF6 to make it warmer." >> This raises two interesting (albeit far-fetched) possibilies: 1) We could potentially scan the cosmos for active geoengineering schemes on other planets. Likely, what we'd be able to detect most easily is more akin to terraforming - using greenhouse gases to raise temperature, as described above. However, it is also perhaps possible that we might look for effects of manufactured aerosol haze, etc. I can't think of a way to do this, but a successful detection would have two effects. Firstly, letting us detect an alien civilisation (pretty cool). Secondly, being able to spot which geoengineering technologies are most popular among alien civilisations - potentially giving us a heads up on which techniques work well. If we find for example that plenty of planets have sulphur haze schemes, it suggests that they can be safely used (although not necessarily with our own technology). This would potentially be the first possible interplanetary technology transfer. (Trust me, I'm an alien) 2) We should give consideration to the interplanetary risks of geoengineering schemes. While it's likely that any long-lived alien civilisation would be able to find humans by looking for albedo changes resulting from land use change, or spectral lines in our atmosphere from pollution, it's nevertheless a non-zero possibility that geoengineering would be the first detectable 'tell tale' of an industrial civilisation. As such, we should at least consider the possibility that geoengineering would directly betray our existence to aliens. Bearing in mind the history of contact between technological and primitive societies on Earth, breaking cover might not be a very smart thing to do. I accept that this is all very speculative, but it's nevertheless interesting. Furthermore, most big steps forward start with seemingly ludicrous ideas : TV, manned flight, moon landings, etc. A -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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