Earth to Scientists. Come in Please. Over.

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“MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Scientists are using the pine-forested slopes of a Mexican volcano as a test bed to see if trees could grow on a heated-up Mars, part of a vision of making the chilly and barren red planet habitable for humans one day.

"Planetary scientists at NASA and Mexican universities believe if they can warm Mars using heat-trapping gases, raise the air pressure and start photosynthesis, they could create an atmosphere that would support oxygen-breathing life forms.”

So we screw up this planet, and instead of spending the time and energy (as well as the money) to deal with the mess we’ve made, scientists are chasing a theory that might not bear fruit until 50 years from now, if at all.

I’m all for science; it’s a wonderful, beautiful thing. I’m all for the brilliant people who were and are brave enough to persevere when others call them charlatans and kooks, or worse yet, heretics (shout-out to Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei and the theory of heliocentrism—it only took the Roman Catholic Church 370-something odd years to express regret for persecuting Galileo for reacquainting everyone with the fact that the Earth does revolve around the sun). I also love NASA; in another life I would have loved to have been an astronaut. I'd also like to thank NASA and the crew of Apollo 17 for the gorgeous photograph of Earth; without them, we wouldn’t have it.

Still I don’t get it—is it just me or does it seem these scientists today are living in a vacuum? They can’t possibly believe that anything they do on Pico de Orizaba* will be useful in the 10 or so years we have left to save the environment. Are they seriously concerned for the human
race, or just trying to win Nobel prizes? Or are they visionaries who know that Earth is dead on arrival and are busy looking for alternatives? Does the human race even deserve a new place to live, especially since we haven’t seemed to be able to take care of this jewel that is Earth?


*Photo of Pico de Orizaba by David Tuggy, www.sil.org/~tuggyd. Licensed with Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License

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